No abstract

To better understand motivations behind purchase and storage of firearms during the COVID-19 pandemic, we used Amazon Mechanical Turk to conduct an online survey of individuals who did and did not purchase a firearm since 1 January 2020 in response to COVID-19. The survey was fielded between 1 and 5 May 2020. We asked about motivations for purchase, changes in storage practices and concern for themselves or others due to COVID-19. There were 1105 survey respondents. Most people who purchased a firearm did so to protect themselves from people. Among respondents who had purchased a firearm in response to COVID-19 without prior household firearm ownership, 39.7% reported at least one firearm was stored unlocked. Public health efforts to improve firearm-related safety during COVID-19 should consider increasing access to training and framing messages around the concerns motivating new firearm purchase.

Washington State children have unmet needs upon returning to public schools after concussion. The student-centered RTL model and checklist for implementing RTL guidelines can help schools provide timely RTL services following concussion.

Objectives. To evaluate the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) as a surveillance system for fatal shootings of civilians by law enforcement in the United States. Methods. We cross-linked individual-level mortality data from the 2015 NVDRS and 5 open-source data sets ( FatalEncounters.org , Mapping Police Violence, the Guardian’s “The Counted,” Gun Violence Archive, and The Washington Post’s “Fatal Force Database”). Using the comprehensive cross-linked data set, we assessed the proportion of study-identified fatal police shootings that were captured by NVDRS, overall and by state, and by each open-source data set. Results. There were 404 unique study-identified fatal shootings by law enforcement in the 27 states for which data were available from NVDRS, 393 (97%) of which were captured in NVDRS. The proportion of shootings captured by NVDRS varied only slightly by state. Conclusions. The NVDRS provides a comprehensive count of fatal police shootings. Public Health Implications. Expanding NVDRS to all 50 states would provide comprehensive counts of fatal police shootings and detailed circumstantial information about these deaths at the national level. Open-source data can continue to provide real-time data collection as well as more complete information about nonfirearm officer-involved deaths.