US Business

Firearms have surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death among American youngsters, with official data showing a strong rise in gun-related homicides such as the killing of 19 children in a Texas school rampage.

Overall, 4,368 children and adolescents up to the age of 19 died from firearms in 2020, a rate of 5.4 per 100,000 a dashboard by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed.

Homicides made up nearly two-thirds of the gun deaths.

By comparison, there were 4,036 deaths linked to motor vehicles, the previous leading cause of death among this age group. 

The gap has been narrowing as road safety measures have improved over the decades, while gun related deaths have risen. 

The trend lines crossed in 2020, the latest year for which data is available — a finding identified in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) last week.

The letter’s authors noted the new data was consistent with other evidence that gun violence rose during the Covid-19 pandemic, for reasons that aren’t fully clear, but “it cannot be assumed that (it) will later revert to pre-pandemic levels.”

The newly updated CDC dashboard shows that nearly 30 percent of the deaths were suicides, just over three percent were unintentional, and two percent were of undetermined intent.

– ‘Deadly consequences’ –

A small number were categorized as “legal intervention” referring to killings by law enforcement.

The deaths disproportionately impacted Black children and adolescents, who were more than four times as likely to die as white children — for whom motor vehicles still posed a greater threat.

The second most impacted group by guns were American Indians, followed by white Hispanics.

Males meanwhile were six times likelier to die by a gun than females.

By region, the gun-related death rate was highest in the capital Washington, followed by the state of Louisiana, then Alaska.

The figures served to underscore that while mass shootings such as the one in Uvalde provoke horror, they make up only a small fraction of overall childhood gun deaths.

“Since the 1960s, continuous efforts have been directed toward preventing deaths from motor vehicle crashes,” wrote the authors of another recent letter to the NEJM, contrasting the situation with that of firearms, where regulations have been loosened.

While vehicle safety has been spearheaded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there is no equivalent agency to regulate gun safety, and historically very little government research funding was assigned to the area because of Republican opposition.

Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of leading journal Science published an editorial Thursday calling for more research into the public health impacts of gun ownership to advance policy change.

“Scientists should not sit on the sidelines and watch others fight this out,” he wrote.

“More research into the public health impacts of gun ownership will provide further evidence of its deadly consequences,” he continued, arguing that severe mental illness, often blamed for mass shootings, was prevalent at similar levels in other countries that do not have regular mass shootings.

Meghan Markle, the wife of Britain’s Prince Harry, on Thursday made an unannounced visit to the Texas town of Uvalde to pay her respects to the victims of an elementary school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

The 40-year-old Duchess of Sussex — wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a blue baseball cap — reached down with her head bowed and placed flowers at a makeshift memorial outside the courthouse in Uvalde.

She also walked around the memorial, looking at the white crosses bearing the names of the victims of Tuesday’s carnage.

A spokesperson for Markle said the duchess had been visiting Uvalde in a personal capacity and as a mother, to offer her condolences and support for a grieving community.

Harry and his wife quit royal life and moved to North America two years ago. They now live in California with their two children.

Buckingham Palace announced this month the couple would not be present for official celebrations of Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee on June 2.

Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey is facing sexual assault charges in the UK, police and prosecutors said on Thursday, after a review of allegations against him.

The two-time Oscar winner for “The Usual Suspects” and “American Beauty” was artistic director of The Old Vic theatre in London between 2004 and 2015.

Allegations against him first emerged in the wake of the #MeToo movement that saw numerous claims of sexual assault and harassment in the movie industry.

That prompted an investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police, and a review by The Old Vic of the 62-year-old Spacey’s time in charge there.

The Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement that it had “authorised criminal charges” against the actor “for four counts of sexual assault against three men”.

“He has also been charged with causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent,” said Rosemary Ainslie, from the service.

“The charges follow a review of the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police in its investigation,” added Ainslie, who heads the special crime division.

The Met said separately that the first two counts of sexual assault date from March 2005 in London, and concern the same man, who is now in his 40s.

The third is alleged to have happened in London in August 2008 against a man who is now in his 30s. The same man is alleged to be the victim of the separate charge.

The fourth sexual assault charge is alleged to have occurred in Gloucestershire, western England, in April 2013 against a third man, who is now in his 30s.

None of the alleged victims can be identified under English law.

The CPS, which brings prosecutions in England and Wales, and the police both referred to Spacey by his full name, Kevin Spacey Fowler.

British legal restrictions are in place limiting what the media can report until the case comes before a jury to avoid prejudicing any trial.

The CPS said that when considering whether to approve charges, it makes “fair, independent and objective” assessments about whether a case should go to court.

Claims against Spacey in 2017 led to the end of his involvement in the filming of the final season of the political drama “House of Cards”.

He was also dropped from a Gore Vidal biopic on Netflix and as the industrialist John Paul Getty in “All the Money in the World”.

Christopher Plummer was brought in as a last-minute replacement.

Spacey, considered one of the finest actors of his generation, has previously denied similar charges in the United States.

A criminal case against him for sexual assault there was dropped in 2019.

The actor is currently in New York and facing a civil case arising from the abandoned criminal action, US court documents show.

British media said it was understood he had not been formally charged in the UK because he was not in the country, and there was no immediate word if he would have to be extradited.

Firearm deaths have surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death among American youngsters, with official data showing a strong rise in gun-related homicides such as the killing of 19 children in a Texas school rampage.

Overall, 4,368 children and adolescents up to the age of 19 died from firearm-caused injuries in 2020, a rate of 5.4 per 100,000 a dashboard by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed.

Homicides made up nearly two-thirds of the gun deaths.

By comparison, there were 4,036 deaths linked to motor vehicles, the previous leading cause of death among this age group. 

The gap has been narrowing as road safety measures have improved over the decades, while gun related deaths have risen. 

The trend lines crossed in 2020, the latest year for which data is available — a finding identified in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) last week.

The letter’s authors noted the new data was consistent with other evidence that gun violence rose during the Covid-19 pandemic, for reasons that aren’t fully clear, but “it cannot be assumed that (it) will later revert to pre-pandemic levels.”

The newly-updated CDC dashboard shows that nearly 30 percent of the deaths were suicides, just over three percent were unintentional, and two percent were of undetermined intent.

– ‘Deadly consequences’ –

A small number were categorized as “legal intervention” or self-defense.

The deaths disproportionately impacted Black children and adolescents, who were more than four times as likely to die as white children — for whom motor vehicles still posed a greater threat.

The second most impacted group by guns were American Indians.

Males meanwhile were six times likelier to die by a gun than females.

By region, the gun-related death rate was highest in the capital Washington, followed by the state of Louisiana, then Alaska.

The figures served to underscore that while mass shootings such as the one in Uvalde provoke horror, they make up only a tiny fraction of overall childhood gun deaths.

“Since the 1960s, continuous efforts have been directed toward preventing deaths from motor vehicle crashes,” wrote the authors of another recent letter to the NEJM, contrasting the situation with that of firearms, where regulations have been loosened.

Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of leading journal Science published an editorial Thursday calling for more research into the public health impacts of gun ownership to advance policy change.

“Scientists should not sit on the sidelines and watch others fight this out,” he said.

“More research into the public health impacts of gun ownership will provide further evidence of its deadly consequences,” he continued, arguing that severe mental illness, often blamed for mass shootings, was prevalent at similar levels in other countries that do not have regular mass shootings.

Actor Ray Liotta, who starred in Martin Scorsese’s gangster classic “Goodfellas,” has died in the Dominican Republic, the country’s cinema authority said Thursday. He was 67.

Liotta, whose blistering turn as real-life mobster Henry Hill in Scorsese’s crime masterpiece won universal admiration, was shooting a new film in the country when he died, a spokeswoman for the Dominican Republic’s General Direction of Cinema said.

“We understand that he was accompanied by his (fiancee) and that the (fiancee) asks that you please respect her grief,” the spokeswoman told AFP.

Liotta’s publicist in Los Angeles confirmed his death, saying the actor died in his sleep and that there were no suspicious circumstances.

He was working on a movie called “Dangerous Waters” at the time of his death. 

Liotta’s breakout came in 1990 when he was cast alongside Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in what is widely considered one of the greatest films of the 20th century.

“Goodfellas” won one Oscar, and was nominated for five others, and scenes from the movie continue to resonate as cultural touchstones more than three decades later.

A year before “Goodfellas,” Liotta had played baseball star “Shoeless Joe” Jackson in beloved sports movie “Field of Dreams,” opposite Kevin Costner.

The film was nominated for three Oscars, including best picture.

Tributes began to be paid soon after news of Liotta’s death broke, with “Goodfellas” co-star Lorraine Bracco, who played his on-screen wife, Karen, saying she was “utterly shattered to hear this terrible news.”

“I can be anywhere in the world & people will come up & tell me their favorite movie is Goodfellas,” she tweeted.

“Then they always ask what was the best part of making that movie. My response has always been the same… Ray Liotta.”

Despite branching out to show his breadth as an actor, Liotta had recently returned to the world of mob films, with roles in Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move” and “The Sopranos” prequel “The Many Saints of Newark.”

Liotta was born in Newark, on the US East Coast, in December 1954.

Variety reported he was left at an orphanage at birth and adopted when he was six months old.

At the University of Miami he performed in musicals, and after graduating landed a role in a soap opera that would provide him with three years’ work to 1981.

His first movie came in 1983, but it wasn’t until 1986’s “Something Wild” opposite Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels that he came to wider attention.

The comedy-action-romance was screened at Cannes and scored Liotta a Golden Globe nomination for supporting actor.

A distraught Texas grandmother of a girl killed in the massacre in Uvalde pleaded Thursday for urgent action by US authorities to prevent future school shootings, as the country plunges again into the roiling debate over guns.

Ten-year-old Amerie Garza — a fourth-grader who loved her classes, drawing, and playing with clay — was one of 19 children murdered by a teen gunman at Robb Elementary School in an act of evil that has forever changed this small Texas town.

“My granddaughter was in there. She was an innocent little girl, loving school and looking forward to summer,” Dora Mendoza told reporters after paying respects at a makeshift memorial outside the school.

But the 63-year-old, who lived with Amerie and saw her at an end-of-year ceremony Tuesday just hours before she was killed, quickly made clear she wanted US officials like President Joe Biden and Texas Governor Greg Abbott not to shy away from working together on reforms.

Biden, who is due to visit Uvalde in the coming days, and Abbott are polar opposites regarding restrictions on gun sales. Like many in the Democrat vs Republican divide, the two also differ on other paths to take to curb the nation’s surging gun violence. 

“They shouldn’t just wait for… tragedy to start,” she said. 

“They need to do something about it. They need to not forget us, the babies…. Don’t forget them, please,” Mendoza, speaking in a mix of English and Spanish, pleaded through her tears.

“Do something about it, I beg you. I beg you!” she wailed. “All the cries and all these little innocent babies… we don’t know what they went through.”

Amerie’s “abuela” was among several Uvalde residents who came to pray or leave flowers at the school memorial, where 21 small white wooden crosses have been erected bearing names of the 19 children and two teachers who were killed.

Among the mourners was Yaritza Rangel, 23, who brought her four children to lay flowers.

“We’re all hurt. We never thought this would happen here” where most town residents know each other, she said.

But Rangel, while avoiding politics, did point to three reforms she wants enacted: an expansion of background checks for gun purchases, tightening of security in schools, and raising the minimum age for buying firearms.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “You have to go and wait until you’re 21 to go and buy alcohol. Why are they letting 18-year-olds be able to buy rifles?” she questioned. 

Rangel, whose young nephew was in a Robb Elementary classroom that the shooter tried but failed to enter, and has been traumatized by the attack, is now worried about her own children.

Her son will be going to elementary school soon, and the prospect of violence keeps her awake at night.

“What if it happens again?”

Republicans in the US Senate prevented action Thursday on a bill to address domestic terrorism in the wake of a racist massacre at a grocery store in upstate New York.

Democrats had been expecting defeat but were seeking to use the procedural vote to highlight Republican opposition to tougher gun control measures following a second massacre at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday.

There was no suggestion of any racial motive on the part of the gunman who shot dead 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. 

But the shock of the bloodshed, less than two weeks after the May 14 murders in Buffalo, New York, has catapulted America’s gun violence crisis back to the top of the agenda in Washington. 

“The bill is so important, because the mass shooting in Buffalo was an act of domestic terrorism. We need to call it what it is: Domestic terrorism,” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer said ahead of the vote.

The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act would have created units inside the FBI and departments of justice and homeland security to combat domestic terror threats, with a focus on white supremacy.

A task force that includes Pentagon officials would also have been launched “to combat white supremacist infiltration of the uniformed services and federal law enforcement.” 

Schumer had urged Republicans Wednesday to allow the chamber to start debate on the bill, offering to accommodate Republican provisions to “harden” schools in the wake of the Texas murders.

Just ahead of the vote, Schumer said he had wept while studying pictures of the young victims, calling the state’s pro-gun governor, Greg Abbott, “an absolute fraud.”

Abbott has made efforts to loosen gun restrictions in Texas, including signing into law a measure last year authorizing residents to carry handguns without licenses or training.

The domestic terrorism bill’s 207 co-sponsors included three moderate Republicans in the House. 

But there was not enough support in the evenly split 100-member Senate to overcome the Republican filibuster — the 60-vote threshold required to allow debate to go forward.

Republicans say there are already laws on the books targeting white supremacists and other domestic terrorists, and have accused Democrats of politicizing the Buffalo massacre, in which 10 Black people died.

They have also argued that the legislation could be abused to go after political opponents of the party in power. 

Democrats are looking for Republicans to support a separate gun control bill, and said Wednesday they would work over the coming days to see if they could find common ground with enough opposition senators to circumvent a filibuster.

“Make no mistake about it, if these negotiations do not bear fruit in a short period of time, the Senate will vote on gun safety legislation,” Schumer said