A child or youth shot each day in Ontario

25% shootings intentional, author says

• Firearms injure a child or youth almost every day in Ontario, say researchers, who analyzed hospital records to determine which groups of young people are most at risk for gun- related accidents or violent assault.

Their study, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, found there were 355 firearm injuries on average each year among children and youth, with about 23 to 25 resulting in death.

“Three- quarters are unintentional, so these are accidents that happen, and about 25 per cent are intentional or assault,” said senior author Dr. Astrid Guttmann, a pediatrician at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.

When the researchers looked at emergency room records for gun-related injuries, they found Canadian- born youth, particularly males, had the highest rates of unintentional firearm injury — 12 per 100,000 people versus about seven per 100,000 for immigrant males.

But when it came to firearm injuries due to assault, immigrants and refugees were at much higher risk.

Refugee children and youth were 1.4 times more likely to be shot than Canadian- born residents of the same age, while immigrant children and youth from Africa were almost three times as likely and those from Central America almost four times as likely to be a victim of a firearm assault, the study found.

“When we looked at unintentional injuries, children who live in rural areas are more likely to suffer one of these injuries,” she said. “And when we looked at immigrant versus long- term residents — the majority of whom would be Canadianborn — i mmigrants are much less likely to be injured in accidental shootings.”

In contrast, firearm injuries due to violent assault tended to be clustered in low-income neighbourhoods in urban centres, where immigrant and refugee children and youth often live, Guttmann said.