No, guns are not the number one cause of death for children in the US.
From The Washington Post, Feb. 25 this year:
The Biden White House, in various venues, has made that claim. But the source cited in the White House news release — a 2022 study by the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University — reports data with a broader focus. It cites gun deaths of “children and teens,” meaning it includes deaths of 18- and 19-year-olds, who are legally considered adults in most states.
When you focus only on children — 17 and younger — motor vehicle deaths (broadly defined) still rank No. 1, as they have for six decades, though the gap is rapidly closing. Indeed, deaths of children from gun violence have increased about 50 percent from 2019 to 2021, the CDC data shows. During the coronavirus pandemic, there was a surge in firearm sales and an increase in the use of firearms in deaths by suicide — especially among children in rural areas.
The Facts
There’s no question that 18 and 19 signify the final years of being a teenager, but there is also broad agreement around the world that 18 is a threshold age between being a child and adulthood.
The National Institutes of Health, for grant applications, defines a child as “an individual under the age of 18 years.” The European Union has a similar definition. The United Nations, in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, says “a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years.”
