By John R. Lott Jr. for RealClearWire
A favorite talking point from the Biden White House is that guns are the leading cause of death of children. The problem is that it is false.
“The number one cause of death of the children in America is gun violence,” Vice President Kamala Harris claimed on June 2. Later the White House tweeted, “Guns are the #1 KILLER of CHILDREN.” President Biden has made the same claim multiple times this year.
The Washington Post parroted this claim, running the headline: “Why guns are America’s number one killer of children.” Similarly, the NPR headline says: “Firearms overtook auto accidents as the leading cause of death in children,” and even the BBC got in on the act: “Gun deaths were the leading killer of US children in 2020.” Fact-checkers from Newsweek to Snopes also push these claims.
The first question is: What is a child? For those under 18, vehicle deaths are consistently greater than those from firearms. Adding homicides, unintentional deaths, and suicides together shows 2,443 total deaths from vehicles and 2,218 from firearms. In 2021, there were again 2,668 vehicle and 2,519 firearm deaths. When we exclude justifiable homicides that are committed in self-defense, that number falls by several hundred.
So, even if we are counting 17-year-old gang members as “children,” the White House’s claim is incorrect. In 2019 and 2020, more minors died from suffocation.
Homicides for all ages have been on the upswing across the country starting in 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.
Many people would even define children at even younger ages. But the claims by gun control advocates like Biden and Harris are only possible if they define everyone under 20 as children.
