On 5/24/2010 2:38 AM, jps wrote:
at the same rate as city kids do..

CHICAGO — Children in the most rural areas of the United States are as
likely to die by gunshot as kids in the biggest cities, a new analysis
of nearly 24,000 deaths finds.

Not surprisingly, deaths involving firearms are more common among city
youth. But gun suicides and accidental fatal shootings level the
sco They are more common among rural kids.

"This debunks the myth that firearm death is a big-city problem," said
lead author Dr. Michael Nance of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
"This is everybody's problem."

The findings were published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

The researchers analyzed data on nearly 24,000 gun-related deaths
among children 19 and younger from 1999 through 2006. That included
about 15,000 homicides, about 7,000 suicides and about 1,400
accidental shootings for the eight-year period.

The researchers sorted them by county then compared the gun-death
rates for the most urban counties — those with populations of 1
million or more, like Dallas County in Texas — and the most rural
counties — the ones far from cities or with fewer than 2,500 people,
like Powder River County in Montana. They found essentially the same
rate, about 4 deaths per 100,000 children.

Totally unacceptable. Ban all guns.