The death rate for US children has surged by 25 percent over the past decade, according to a study published last month by pediatrician Dr. Christopher Forrest and colleagues in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Even as the child mortality rate has slowly fallen in other developed countries, it has surged in the US, along with every other indicator of chronic illness.
It’s not actually healthcare that’s making the difference, though (at least not for children >1 year old; not sure about infants). The real causes of the high death rate are cultural: shootings, car wrecks (i.e. car-dependent infrastructure), and drugs.
Basically, the actual policy changes we need to fix this problem are:
(Side note: although I posted the chart from the article, I don’t support its bias: “firearms” and “homicide” should not be separate categories. Attributing the problem to access to guns is bullshit; there are other places that have similar access but don’t have the death rate. The real difference is that people in those places simply don’t want to kill kids as much Americans do to begin with.)
Net differences in rates =/= rates.
Over the last 30 years cars are the largest killers of kids.
I would say gun violence taking the lead is actually due to work from home reducing car traffic and therefore collisions.
USA is a society of violence, and guns is a significant part of that.
USA needs both socioeconomic reform and much stricter gun control laws.
Just because you can’t blame guns alone, it doesn’t follow that guns aren’t a significant part of the problem.
It’s both the mentality like stand your ground, and 3 times and you’re out, and the guns that enable extreme violence extremely easy.
Already common rhetoric is extremely violent in USA, with “the war” on everything. How’s that war on drugs going? When did it begin? Wasn’t it in the 80’s? That’s nearing a half a century war now! No other country in the world has been at continuous war for that long.