Fatal injuries due to bullet firearms

Abstract

Summary: Injuries due to firearms are a major public health problem, especially because they occur more frequently in young people, lead to human loss or disability of the population, and the mortality due to these injuries is greatly high. The work aims to highlight the frequency, dynamics, structure as well as some general peculiarities of lethal traumas produced by bullet firearms. The analysis includes 36 cases of fatal trauma caused by bullet, investigated at the Center for Forensic Medicine, during 2019-2023. The study determines that lethal trauma from bullet firearms accounts for 1.3% of all violent deaths and 59 % of all firearm deaths. More frequently, in 86% cases, men are traumatized, from urban localities, mainly in winter and summer months, and being drunk, which can be explained by their more frequent use of firearms for various purposes or this being a conception of interpersonal supremacy between men, as well as supremacy over women, respectively. The seasonal frequency can also be incident to annual holidays, in association with the consumption of alcohol. Mostly, the fatal injuries produced by bullets are localized at the level of the head, as transfixing wounds, and the death more frequently occurs at the people’s home (aggressor/sufferer).