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"Guns are the leading cause of death for kids"

The Narrative

"Guns are now the leading cause of death for American children."

Verdict: Misleading. It's true only as the CDC words it, and only if you don't count the unborn. The CDC's "leading cause" figure counts deaths after birth, starting at age 1, so it leaves out the largest number of children's deaths in America by far: abortion. Even within the CDC's own age range, "children" includes 18- and 19-year-old adults, and most of the deaths are homicides and suicides among older teens, not the accidental shootings of young children that the slogan brings to mind.

The record

  • The CDC states that "firearm injuries were the leading cause of death among children and teens ages 1–19" in 2022.1 Note the age range. It starts at 1 and ends at 19.
  • A 2022 letter in the New England Journal of Medicine found that firearm injuries became the leading cause of death for ages 1–19 in 2020, passing motor-vehicle crashes. Before that they had been second.2
  • Johns Hopkins researchers report that firearms have also been the leading cause of death for ages 1–17 since 2020. They add that, for some individual youth age groups, firearms are "among the leading causes, but not always the top cause."3

So the CDC's sentence is accurate for what it measures. The question is what it leaves out.

What's left out

1. The leading cause of death the CDC doesn't count

The CDC tracks abortion in a separate report, apart from its causes-of-death tables. In 2021, the 47 reporting areas that send the CDC data every year reported 622,108 abortions. In 2022, 48 areas reported 613,383.6 Reporting is voluntary and not every state takes part, so the true national total is higher.

Compare that with the 4,752 firearm deaths among Americans aged 0–19 in 2021.4 Even by the CDC's incomplete count, that's about 130 abortions for every child or teen killed with a gun that year. (This is our arithmetic, 622,108 ÷ 4,752.)

Whether an unborn child counts as a "kid" is a moral question, and we answer it plainly: yes. Once you count them, guns aren't the leading cause of death for American children. They aren't even close.

2. Many of these "kids" are adults

In 2021, CDC data counted 4,752 firearm deaths among Americans aged 0–19.4 Pew Research's analysis of the same CDC database counted 2,590 firearm deaths among those under 18 that year.5

That leaves about 2,160 deaths, or roughly 45% of the 0–19 total, among 18- and 19-year-olds. They are legal adults who can vote, enlist and sign contracts. (This is our arithmetic, 4,752 − 2,590, from two published counts of the same 2021 CDC data.)

3. The deaths are concentrated among older teens

  • In the 2021 data (ages 0–19), 82.6% of firearm deaths were among those aged 15–19.4
  • Among those under 18 in 2021, ages 12–17 accounted for 86% of gun deaths. Children 11 and under accounted for about 14% (363 deaths), and each of those deaths is a tragedy.5
  • In 2023 (ages 1–17), the counts were 118 deaths (ages 1–4), 116 (5–9), 530 (10–14) and 1,802 (15–17).3

4. Mostly homicide and suicide, not accidents

Of the 2021 firearm deaths among ages 0–19, 64.3% were homicides, 29.9% suicides, and 3.5% unintentional.4 Among those under 18, Pew found 60% homicide, 32% suicide and 5% accidents.5

So the main problems are teen violence and teen suicide. Each one has different causes and needs different answers. A policy aimed at the type of gun or the law-abiding owner doesn't touch either problem directly.

5. Infants are excluded

The CDC's "ages 1–19" framing leaves out children under age 1, whose deaths researchers usually analyze separately. That's a standard choice, but it shows again that the headline number depends on which age bracket someone picks.12

Bottom line

The claim holds only inside the CDC's frame: deaths after birth, ages 1 to 19. Count the unborn, and abortion outnumbers gun deaths by more than a hundred to one. Even inside that frame, a "kid" in that statistic is usually a 15-to-19-year-old, nearly half of the 0–19 total are 18 or 19, and more than nine in ten of the deaths are homicides or suicides. Grief is real, and so are the numbers. Solutions should follow the numbers, which point to violent crime and teen mental health, not to the rights of law-abiding adults.

  1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Fast Facts: Firearm Injury and Death": https://www.cdc.gov/firearm-violence/data-research/facts-stats/. See also CDC, "Preventing firearm violence and injuries impacting children and teens" (leading cause for ages 1–19 in 2020 and 2021): https://www.cdc.gov/firearm-violence/php/research-summaries/children-and-teen-impacts.html ↩↩

  2. Goldstick, J. E., Cunningham, R. M., & Carter, P. M. "Current Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States." New England Journal of Medicine 386 (2022): 1955–1956. doi:10.1056/NEJMc2201761: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761 ↩↩

  3. Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, "Annual Gun Violence Data 2023" (CDC WONDER analysis): https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions/data/annual-gun-violence-data-2023. Note: the Center advocates for gun-control policies. We cite it here for its CDC counts. ↩↩

  4. Roberts, B. K., et al. "Trends and Disparities in Firearm Deaths Among Children." Pediatrics 152(3), e2023061296 (2023), CDC WONDER data, ages 0–19: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10471507/ ↩↩↩↩

  5. Gramlich, J. "Gun deaths among U.S. children and teens rose 50% in two years." Pew Research Center, April 6, 2023 (CDC WONDER, under 18): https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/06/gun-deaths-among-us-kids-rose-50-percent-in-two-years/ ↩↩↩

  6. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2022," MMWR Surveillance Summaries 73(7) (2024), doi:10.15585/mmwr.ss7307a1: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/ss/ss7307a1.htm. Reports 613,383 abortions from 48 reporting areas in 2022, and 622,108 in 2021 among the 47 areas reporting every year. ↩