A new study has found that some of America’s largest cities are more dangerous for young males than a war zone like Iraq or Afghanistan.
The study, conducted by the JAMA Network, included the cities of Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York City.
According to the Post Millennial, it looked at 129,826 young adults in these cities from 2020 to 2021.
The researchers, who hailed from Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania, came to a rather sobering conclusion.
“Zip codes with the most violence in Chicago and Philadelphia had a notably higher risk of firearm-related death than US military personnel who served during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” the study revealed.
The “risks were overwhelmingly borne by young adult males from minoritized racial and ethnic groups.”
Young minority men living in Chicago and Philadelphia were at the greatest risk, while New York and Los Angeles “were associated with less risk for young adult males than these theaters of war.”
Brandon del Pozo, one of the researchers behind the project, went into more detail on the findings late last week on Twitter.
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He explained that in the worst zip code in Philadelphia, “military aged males living in the city’s top 10% most violent zip codes also faced a risk of fatal firearm violence the same or greater than the risks faced by soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan; in some places, the death risk was almost double that of war.”
In Philadelphia, military aged males living in the city’s top 10% most violent zip codes also faced a risk of fatal firearm violence the same or greater than the risks faced by soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan; in some places the death risk was almost double that of war. pic.twitter.com/hPy4zscC4o
— Brandon del Pozo, PhD, MPA, MA (@BrandondelPozo) December 22, 2022
In Chicago, applying the same criteria found that “Chicago’s most dangerous zip code faced a risk of firearm-related death over 3x the risk of combat death in Afghanistan, and nearly 4x the risks of Iraq.”
Military-aged males living in Chicago’s most dangerous zip code faced a risk of firearm-related death over 3x the risk of combat death in Afghanistan, and nearly 4x the risks of Iraq. The death risks were also greater than combat for the 10% most violent zip codes in the city. pic.twitter.com/ZZXIWLbruz
— Brandon del Pozo, PhD, MPA, MA (@BrandondelPozo) December 22, 2022
“The death risks were also greater than combat for the 10% most violent zip codes in the city,” del Pozo reported.
This insane level of violence has led many Chicago residents to refer to the city as “Chiraq.”
Del Pozo further explained that if the numbers in Chicago and Philadelphia were applicable elsewhere with the rise of the overall murder rate, other cities may face the same issues.
“If high overall murder rates suggest cities where young men may face death risks greater than war, then Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Memphis, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Newark may compare to Chicago and Philadelphia,” he said, according to the Post Millenial.
Many of the cities mentioned are among those that began defunding the police in the wake of the 2020 protests by antifa and Black Lives Matter.
Needless to say, America’s cities are not in the best of shape at the moment.
The study also revealed that annual homicides increased by 30 percent, “with firearms becoming the leading cause of death for children, adolescents, and young adults for the first time,” JAMA reported.
Military-aged young adults range in age from 18 and 29, with researchers comparing the mortality and injury rates “in selected parts of 4 major US cities with rates of death and injury faced by US soldiers deployed to the recent US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.