With future of gun research in question, new report finds US emergency departments see a firearm injury every 30 minutes

Source: CNN Health

Published 7:55 AM EDT, Mon April 21, 2025


CNN — When Dr. Christina Johns, a pediatric emergency medicine physician, thinks about her time working at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, one case always comes rushing back: Two-year-old. Gunshot wound. Chest. ETA five minutes. The child was rushed to the emergency department after being accidentally shot by an older sibling who was playing with a gun that was left unlocked in the house. “I’ll never forget the … child on the stretcher and the blood-curdling screams of the parent outside the room, lying on the floor, distraught,” Johns said.

Every 30 minutes, an emergency department treats another firearm injury, according to a new analysis from researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that looked at 10 jurisdictions, including the District of Columbia. But cuts from the US Department of Health and Human Services and proposed changes to the federal budget could threaten research that reveals these kinds of firearm injury patterns. Experts say it would be nearly impossible to replicate the scale and scope of the timely firearm research the federal government is able to conduct.

The recent study, which was published last week in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, says that the firearm injury visits are not evenly distributed. There were more firearm injury presentations at night, on the weekends and on some holidays, like Independence Day and New Year’s Eve.

Experts say the results are not surprising but that the findings from this analysis — which the authors say is the largest of its kind to use timely data in urban and rural areas — can inform staffing to provide better care. “Knowing when firearm injury emergency department visits are higher can help inform decisions about physician staffing, resource allocation, and trauma preparedness to reduce delays in care and use resources most effectively,” the CDC said in an email to CNN.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/21/health/emergency-department-firearm-injury-research/index.html