Anthony Vazquez /Chicago Sun-Times via AP
Parents wait in line to pick up their children at Walt Disney Magnet School, Tuesday May 17, 2022 in Chicago.
CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago mother has been charged with child endangerment after a gun in her second grader’s backpack accidentally discharged at school, injuring a 7-year-old classmate, police said Wednesday.
The 28-year-old woman appeared in court on Wednesday on three misdemeanor child endangerment counts. A judge ordered her release from Cook County Jail on $1,000 bond.
During the hearing, prosecutors alleged that the woman’s 8-year-old son found the gun underneath her bed and took it to Walt Disney Magnet School on the city’s North Side on Tuesday. The mother has a valid firearm owners identification card.
According to police, the backpack was in the boy’s classroom when, just before 10 a.m. on Tuesday, the gun discharged. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that prosecutors said during the hearing that the bullet ricocheted off the floor and grazed the child’s abdomen. The child was taken to a hospital in good condition, police said.
In an email to parents, the school’s principal said the bullet “caused some debris to ricochet in your child’s classroom, which hit a member of our school community and caused minor scrapes.” The school did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
A teacher then grabbed the backpack and gave it to security officers who found a Glock 19 handgun inside, prosecutors said during the hearing.
The woman’s attorney, Rodger Clarke, acknowledged that the gun should have been locked up and not just placed under the bed. But, he said, “This wasn’t something she planned or something she did on her own volition.”
Cook County Judge Michael Hogan was not impressed by that argument.
“This may not have been an intentional act, but it is a supremely negligent act,” he said.
He continued: “We are inches away, possibly centimeters away, from a very different case and a very different tragedy.”
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Photo Credit: Prath / Shutterstock
Over the past few years, the U.S. has seen sharply increasing levels of violent crime. After two decades of decreases beginning in the mid-1990s, incidents have begun to rise again. Within the last two years, the trend has become especially pronounced. FBI data recently showed a 5.6% increase in violent crime from 2019 to 2020, even as rates of property crime continued to decline. In the same year, the murder rate rose by around 30%, one of the largest year-over-year increases on record.
Guns are closely tied to this trend in the U.S. The U.S. has the highest rate of civilian gun ownership of any country, and researchers have found the prevalence of guns to be associated with greater amounts of violent crime and gun deaths generally. Given these dynamics, it is unsurprising to see that gun-related deaths have spiked in recent years during the broader increase in violent crime.
Recent data from the CDC reveals how this trend has played out. In 2014, there were only 3.5 gun-related homicides per 100,000 population. By 2016, that figure increased to 4.6, and in 2020, it jumped to 6.2. Separately, gun-related suicides have also increased in recent years—from a low of 5.5 per 100,000 population in 2006 to 7.0 in 2020—but this increase has been more gradual.
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In total, 45,221 deaths in 2020 were gun-related, which is a 14% increase over the prior year and a 43% increase over a decade before. These gun-related deaths constitute a majority of both homicides and suicides. Over the past three years, more than three in four U.S. homicides (76.4%) involved a gun, while more than half of suicides (51.2%) were gun-related.
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While the overall growth of gun-related deaths is a nationwide issue, some locations are more affected than others. Many of the states with the highest rates of gun-related deaths are states that also have the highest rates of gun ownership. These states include locations in the South and Mountain West, along with Alaska. Mississippi leads the nation in gun-related fatalities per 100,000 residents at 28.6, followed by neighboring Louisiana at 26.3 and Wyoming at 25.9. At the other end of the spectrum, Hawaii has the lowest rate of gun-related fatalities at 3.4 per 100,000 residents, followed by a group of Northeastern states including Massachusetts (3.7) and New Jersey (5.0). However, gun ownership is not a perfect predictor of gun deaths: for example, states like New Hampshire and Maine have relatively high levels of gun prevalence, but are also in the bottom 10 states for gun deaths per capita.
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Gun-related deaths are also unevenly distributed at the local level. While some of the Southern and Western states with higher levels of gun fatalities do have counties with similarly high levels of gun deaths, many of the top counties are found in Rust Belt locations like Philadelphia, Indianapolis, and Detroit. These more economically distressed locations may have greater levels of gun violence due to the relationship between factors like social mobility and income inequality and gun deaths.
The data used in this analysis is from the CDC’s WONDER Database. To identify the locations with the most gun deaths, researchers at BackgroundChecks.org calculated the rates of gun-related deaths per 100,000 residents in 2020. In the event of a tie, the location with the greater total number of gun-related deaths in 2020 was ranked higher. To provide additional context, researchers also calculated the proportion of all homicides and suicides that involve a gun, using data from 2018–2020.
Here are the counties with the most gun deaths.
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Photo Credit: Christopher May / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 19.0
- Total gun-related deaths: 145
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: -15.2%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 87.1%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 57.3%
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Photo Credit: Rudy Balasko / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 19.4
- Total gun-related deaths: 159
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +23.3%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 85.9%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 51.6%
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Photo Credit: RCole3 / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 19.5
- Total gun-related deaths: 207
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +1.5%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 69.4%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 60.7%
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Photo Credit: Jonathan Siegel / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 20.4
- Total gun-related deaths: 1,040
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +45.7%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 87.2%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 33.5%
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Photo Credit: Luciano Mortula – LGM / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 21.4
- Total gun-related deaths: 231
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +29.1%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 83.1%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 51.1%
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Photo Credit: Nick Fox / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 23.1
- Total gun-related deaths: 186
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +0.5%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 79.0%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 58.2%
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Photo Credit: The American Wanderer / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 24.3
- Total gun-related deaths: 298
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +29.6%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 82.1%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 48.6%
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Photo Credit: Paul Brady Photography / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 25.6
- Total gun-related deaths: 242
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +69.2%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 82.3%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 42.3%
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Photo Credit: CHARLES MORRA / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 25.6
- Total gun-related deaths: 247
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +14.4%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 83.1%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 56.6%
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Photo Credit: Sergey Novikov / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 26.3
- Total gun-related deaths: 458
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +30.9%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 86.2%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 51.8%
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Photo Credit: Rudy Balasko / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 26.4
- Total gun-related deaths: 262
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +15.9%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 90.8%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 51.9%
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Photo Credit: Jonny Trego / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 31.0
- Total gun-related deaths: 238
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +65.3%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 89.2%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 53.0%
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Photo Credit: Rudy Balasko / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 32.8
- Total gun-related deaths: 317
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +46.1%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 85.2%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 58.0%
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Photo Credit: Sean Pavone / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 34.1
- Total gun-related deaths: 538
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +46.6%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 86.8%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 38.1%
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Photo Credit: The Speedy Butterfly / Shutterstock
- Total gun-related deaths per 100k: 40.6
- Total gun-related deaths: 380
- Change in gun-related deaths since 2019: +36.7%
- Gun-related homicides as a share of total homicides: 91.5%
- Gun-related suicides as a share of total suicides: 64.0%
