Guns May Pass Cars in Causing Death by Injury : Violence: Shooting fatalities rose 60% from 1968 to 1991, a federal study finds. Auto deaths decreased 21% but remain the leading category.

Deaths from firearms are soaring at an extraordinary rate, U.S. health officials said Thursday, and guns will replace traffic accidents as the nation’s No. 1 cause of death by injury within the next 10 years if the trend continues.

From 1968 to 1991 shooting deaths increased 60% nationwide, while automobile-related deaths decreased 21%, largely as a result of efforts to curb traffic accidents and make vehicles safer, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Automobile accidents still remained the leading cause of injury-related deaths across the nation in 1991, however, with 43,536 fatalities compared to 38,317 shooting deaths, the CDC said in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The agency called on government officials to take steps to reduce firearm injuries by enacting tougher gun-control laws, encouraging the use of safety devices on weapons and promoting educational programs.

“It is appalling that in the world’s strongest and wealthiest country, death by firearms is increasing at the alarming rate these studies find,” Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said in a statement.

The report coincides with Clinton Administration efforts to enact tough gun-control legislation. The Administration already has succeeded in winning passage of the so-called Brady bill, which requires a waiting period for would-be handgun purchasers.

But while that effort was applauded, James Mercy, acting director of the CDC’s division for violence prevention, said: “I don’t think any one particular type of intervention is going to solve the problem. . . . It would be unrealistic to suggest that the Brady bill by itself will substantially decrease the problem.”

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The report said that firearm deaths already had surpassed traffic accident fatalities in 1991 as the leading cause of injury-related deaths in the District of Columbia and six states: California, New York, Texas, Louisiana, Nevada and Virginia.

In the three years from 1988 to 1991, shootings were the leading cause of injury-related deaths for people ages 25 to 34, while firearm-related deaths remained second to traffic fatalities for people 15 to 24. In that category, however, gun-related deaths rose by 40%.

CDC officials predicted that, if the rate of increase from 1968 to 1991 continues, the number of firearm-related deaths will overtake automobile accidents by the year 2003. If the rate follows the pattern of the last three years of the study, however, gun-related deaths will become the leading cause of injury-related deaths by the mid-1990s.

Black males are more than three times as likely to die in shootings than white males, the report said, while people 15 to 24 are in the most susceptible age group.

In California in 1990, automobile-related deaths outpaced deaths from firearms by 11%. But in 1991, firearm deaths were 1% higher than traffic deaths.