While the media and gun control advocates constantly claim that firearms are the leading cause of death for those under 18, that is clearly incorrect. We have previously shown that for those under 18, vehicle deaths are consistently greater than those from firearms. When you use the FBI murder data, the vehicle deaths exceed the firearm deaths for 2019, 2020, 2022, and 2023 and likely 2021, though the FBI data isn’t available for that year. The gap is even larger if you use the CDC’s measure of all transport related deaths. The pattern continues to hold for the newly released 2024 CDC data.
Homicides involve both murders and justifiable homicides. While murders are clearly a bad effect from guns, justifiable homicides are a benefit from gun ownership. If a woman shoots a serial rapist who breaks into her home at 2 AM, it isn’t the same as a robbery murdering his victim. But homicides treat those two as the same, and the whole point of these comparisons. New discussions such as by PEW Research about these recent numbers don’t seem to understand this point.
For those under 18 in 2024, total firearm deaths using the FBI murder data and the CDC data for suicides, unintentional deaths, and undetermined deaths comes to 1,893. The CDC’s motor vehicle deaths totaled 2,193. The CDC’s transportation deaths including other transportation deaths (but not things like pedestrian deaths) equals 2,239.
Suffocation deaths for those under 18 are also greater than total firearm deaths using the FBI numbers in 2024 (1,893 firearm deaths versus 1,973 suffocation deaths).
A similar pattern exists for all ages, with 40,164 deaths involving firearm deaths (using murders, not homicides) and 41,241 for motor vehicle traffic deaths and 42,012 including other transportation deaths.
The common theme behind the claim that firearms are the most common way that children die is that if you get rid of guns, you will supposedly save those lives.
About 72% of the firearm murders for those under 18 involve 15, 16, and 17-year-olds. So that would be 40% of all the firearm deaths. About 57% of those involving 16 and 17-year-olds. That is 32% of all firearm deaths. These deaths are largely gang-related and even banning guns is unlikely to stop drug gangs from getting a hold of guns to protect their extremely valuable drugs.
Suicides should also be excluded because the common claim is that if guns are eliminated, people either won’t try to commit suicide or cannot do it successfully. Yet, in places where guns are banned, total suicide rates remain unchanged — people change how they commit suicide. In 2024, firearm suicides with the FBI murder data make up 69% of firearm deaths, which is something that has been consistent over many years.
As to accidental gun deaths involving children, over the ten years from 2011 to 2020, there was an average of 43 deaths per year for children under 10. Over that period for children under 18, it averaged 92 accidental gun deaths a year. The number of accidental gun deaths increased dramatically for both age groups during the Biden administration (to 69 in 2024 for those under 10 and 125 for those under 18), and it leads us to believe that there has been a change during the Biden administration in how cases are counted.
For those under 10, earlier research showed about 2/3rds of those accidentally shot to death were shot by adult males, usually in their late 20s who have violent criminal records and are drug addicts or alcoholics. Presumably, since these individuals are illegally owning guns, it is unlikely that even banning guns would have a big impact on the rate of these accidental gun shots.
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