This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: One of the most significant and disturbing findings of Ms Fingerhut and colleagues¹ is that, although the numbers of youth homicides and youth firearm homicides are declining, the trend is that guns are responsible for an increasing proportion of the killings.

Three scenarios involving the presence of firearms at the time of youth assaults are consistent with this trend, and one or more may help explain it (Table 1).

Table appears in full text version. Table. Hypothetical Scenarios Illustrating the Effects of Gun Use Based on Recent Youth Homicide Data*

Scenario 1.

The percentage of assaults at which firearms are present has increased. This scenario assumes that the lethality of gun assaults is 0.20 (20 in 100 such assaults cause death) and that the lethality of nongun assaults is 0.005 (0.5 in 100 cause death) (J. L. Annest, PhD, written communication, August 1998). When the proportion of all homicides caused by guns is . . . [Full Text of this Article]

RELATED ARTICLE

Homicide Rates Among US Teenagers and Young Adults: Differences by Mechanism, Level of Urbanization, Race, and Sex,1987 Through 1995
Lois A. Fingerhut, Deborah D. Ingram, and Jacob J. Feldman
JAMA. 1998;280(5):423-427.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Past, Present, and Future Directions for Defining Optimal Treatment Outcome in Depression: Remission and Beyond
Keller
JAMA 2003;289:3152-3160.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT