For decades, auto accidents have been the leading cause of death among children, but researchers say guns were the biggest killer of Americans between the ages of one and 19 in 2020.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released updated official mortality data that showed 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the United States in 2020 — a new peak,” said a research letter in New England Journal of Medicine.
Overall firearm-related deaths increased 13.5% between 2019 and 2020, but such fatalities for those 1 to 19 years old jumped nearly 30%, according to that report.
While suicides contributed to the toll, the data shows that homicides form the majority of gun-related deaths.
Homicides, the study noted, disproportionately impact young Americans.
More than 390 million guns are owned by civilians in the United States, which has a population of only .
Patrick Carter, one of the authors of the research letter and co-director of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, said about 10% of those deaths — 4,357 in total — were children.
Studies have shown that firearm violence increased during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, according to the research letter, the reason behind the increase in child deaths attributed to guns is unclear.
For decades prior to 2020, motor vehicle accidents were the leading cause of death among children. Carter tells NPR that the reason the two have swapped places is a “tale of two stories.”
“Firearm deaths we haven’t made much progress on, in fact it increased in recent years. And we have had a decrease in moto vehicle deaths,” said Carter.
“Every child deserves to live a life free from violence,” said Lisa McCormick, a gun control advocate in New Jersey. “Our nation’s kids pay an enormous price for America’s weak gun laws because many politicians give lip service to the issue instead of getting results.”
When she challenged US Senator Bob Menendez in 2018, McCormick argued that despite his rhetoric about guns, the incumbent’s efforts had failed during his 25 years in Congress.
McCormick said a “sunset provision” attached to the assault weapons ban enacted in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, an election-year package meant to illustrate that Democrats were “tough on crime” made the prohibition on deadly firearms automatically expire after 10 years.
When assault weapons became legal to purchase again in 2004, Menendez failed to stop it.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, while Barack Obama was president, an attempt to reinstate the ban attracted even fewer votes in the Senate.
The rate of gun-related deaths per 100,000 residents rose among both men and women and across ethnic demographics between 2019 and 2020, with the largest increase among black Americans.
In past years, gun-related deaths were second only to car crashes as the leading cause of death among young Americans. Car deaths, however, have fallen over time and in 2020 approximately 3,900 Americans under 19 died in vehicle crashes.
Incidents of drug overdoses and poisonings rose 83.6% between 2019 and 2020, and now are the third leading cause of death in that age group. A separate study published earlier in April found that 954 young people died of overdoses in 2020, compared to 492 in 2019.
Gun violence in the US has increased since the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020.
“The reasons for the increase are unclear,” the research letter said. “It cannot be assumed that firearm-related mortality will later revert to pre-pandemic levels”.
A separate study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in February, found that 7.5 million US adults – just under 3% of the population – became first-time gun owners during the pandemic between January and April 2021.
This, in turn, exposed 11 million people to household firearms, including five million children.
According to a separate study, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of child deaths for more than 60 years. But over time, cars have become safer and driver education has improved.
“Research has shown that most injuries can be prevented by means of the manufacture and appropriate use of safe products and the implementation of policies reducing product-related danger and the occurrence of hazardous situations — the principles of harm reduction,” said that study. “Since the 1960s, continuous efforts have been directed toward preventing deaths from motor vehicle crashes.”
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and others have pushed for better child safety in cars, taking a scientific approach to the problem, but advocates for gun safety have met extraordinary resistance.
“We can do the same thing with firearms. We just haven’t been able to do that in the same amount of years yet,” Carter said. “It takes time to figure out what the underlying issues are with the problem and then finding the solutions.”
The figures between adults and children and firearms are almost an inverted image of each other. For adults, 65% of gun related deaths are attributed to suicide, while 30% are homicides and about 2% come from accidental discharges, Carter said. For children, 65% of firearm deaths are homicides and 35% are categorized as suicide, he said.
And though mass shootings, which have drastically increased over the past 30 years, are clearly part of the problem, the vast majority of kids are killed by guns in smaller, day-to-day incidents.
“Most commonly what makes the news is these horrific mass shootings, but they are a small aspect of the overall problem,” Carter said. “The smallest portion are the mass shootings. … it’s these daily deaths that are occurring making up the totality of what we are seeing.”