Gun control advocates often claim that guns are the leading cause of death among children — but that is false.
Earlier this year, Virginia’s new governor-elect, Democrat Abigail Spanberger, demanded new gun control laws, calling guns “the number one killer of kids in our country.” Other Democrats such as North Carolina’s Democrat Gov. Josh Stein also mentioned it. In June, the Ad Council launched a $10 million campaign touting the “alarming statistic — gun injuries at the number one killer of children and teens in this country.” And, of course, there were parting shots from Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, literally days before they left office earlier this year, pushing the claim.
Over the last couple of years, the media has continually pushed the assertion regarding children being at risk. The Washington Post’s headline warned: “Why guns are America’s number one killer of children.” An NPR headline wrote: “Firearms overtook auto accidents as the leading cause of death in children” and the BBC noted: “Gun deaths were the leading killer of US children in 2020.” Fact-checkers from Newsweek to Snopes also push these claims.
What defines a child? For those under 18, vehicle deaths consistently outnumber firearm deaths. But in 2023 they were essentially tied. The combined total of unintentional deaths, homicides, and suicides reached 2,580 for vehicles and 2,581 for firearms. Yet those firearm numbers make the two causes seem closer than they are, because they include “justifiable homicides” — cases in which civilians or police shot young offenders who posed deadly threats.
When we exclude those justified killings and use the FBI’s count of murders instead, the firearm total drops by more than four hundred, from 2,581 to 2,166 deaths.
About 72 percent of firearm homicides involving minors occur among 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds alone make up about 57 percent of those cases. These killings overwhelmingly stem from gang activity, and even a total gun ban would do little to stop gangs from obtaining weapons to protect their highly valuable drug supplies.
So even if we classify 17-year-old gang members as “children,” the gun control claim doesn’t hold up. In 2019 and 2020, more minors died from suffocation than from firearms, and the two causes were nearly equal in 2022 and 2023.
If we define children as those under 15, motor vehicle deaths far exceed firearm deaths. From 2019 through 2023, motor vehicle deaths were 64 percent to 153 percent higher than firearm deaths (excluding justified homicides), while suffocation deaths were more frequent in 2019 and 2020, and similar in later years.
Murder Rates Up, Even After Gun Bans
Homicides and murders of those under 18 have risen across the country after 2020. Democrats blame this increase on guns while ignoring police budget cuts, refusal to prosecute violent criminals, bail reform, and mass release of many young, healthy inmates during the pandemic.
The assumption behind these false claims about firearms is that if you could only ban guns, you could save all these lives. Yet, things don’t work that way. Banning guns might reduce firearm suicides and cases of self-defense, but it won’t reduce firearm murders. Indeed, a ban on guns, even a handgun ban like the ones we’ve seen in Washington and Chicago, inevitably makes things much worse. After every gun ban, murder rates have gone up.
One would think that just once, out of simple randomness, murder rates would have gone down or remained the same after a ban. But whenever crime data are available from both before and after a ban, we can see that murder rates have gone up (often by huge amounts).
Gun control advocates will tell you that Washington and Chicago weren’t fair tests. They will point out that criminals there could still get guns in Virginia or Maryland, or in Illinois or Indiana. While that might explain why murder rates didn’t fall as promised, it doesn’t explain why murder and violent crime rates went up.
Even island nations have fared no better. After the United Kingdom banned handguns in January 1997, its homicide rate rose by 50 percent over the following eight years. The rate returned to earlier levels only after a 14 percent increase in the number of police.
Even more dramatic post-ban surges occurred in Jamaica and Ireland, with six or sevenfold increases in homicide rates.
No Effect on Suicides
Nor does it make sense to blame suicides on guns. When gun bans are enacted, there are many other effective ways to commit suicide, such as hanging, walking in front of a train, jumping from a height, using explosives, or taking cyanide. Indeed, while gun bans are associated with drops in firearm suicides, there is no change in total suicides.
With the FBI data, firearm suicides make up about 35 percent of all firearm deaths. So, for example, in 2023, for those under 18, removing suicides would reduce the number of firearm deaths — using the numbers from the CDC — from 2,581 to 1,835, and — using the FBI murder rate data — from 2,151 to 1,405.
Guns aren’t the leading cause of death among children, even when adolescents are included. Eliminating guns won’t save lives — bans consistently drive murder rates higher and leave overall suicide numbers unchanged. But Democrats want to ban guns, repeating the false claim that firearms are the number one killer of “children” to justify their agenda.
