Gun deaths rising among white kids as more families own handguns

The shift to more families with firearms having handguns in their homes "may be partially responsible for the doubling in the firearm-related mortality rate among very young children - 1- to 5-year-olds - over the past decade," said study leader Kate Prickett, director of the Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families and Children at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Between 1976 and 2016, the proportion of U.S. families with young kids who owned any kind of firearm dropped from 50 percent to 45 percent among whiles and from 38 percent to 6 percent among blacks, the study found. Firearm-related fatalities are a leading cause of death among children in the U.S., researchers note in Pediatrics.