America’s gun violence has changed the way we parent
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Parents do what they can to keep their children safe from all sorts of dangers. We lock them in car seats, make them wear helmets. We teach them how to cross a street safely. But many feel powerless when it comes to gun violence. They don’t know if their teen might get caught up in a fight that involves a gun instead of a fist. They don’t know if their child might go to first grade and lose their life to a semiautomatic weapon of war.
In 2020 and 2021, guns killed more children than car accidents, formerly the leading cause of death among young people, where Black children suffered the most, with a 39 percent jump in gun deaths in 2020. More than 348,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. Between January 2022 and January 2023, there were more than 600 mass shootings.
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