Alaska medicine
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To describe demographics, causal factors, intent, and incident locations of serious and fatal firearm injuries among children and adolescents in Alaska, for the years 1991 through 1997. ⋯ Firearm injuries are a leading cause of serious and fatal injuries to children and youth in Alaska. This study suggests that many children and adolescents in Alaska who were injured by firearms, or who caused injury to other children or youth by firearms, had easy access to them. Efforts should be made to convince adults not to let children or at risk teenagers have unsupervised access to firearms, and to promote safe storage of firearms.