Fact Check — Hakeem Jeffries: Gun Violence the No. 1 Killer of Children

CLAIM: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) used a Thursday post on X to claim that gun violence is the number one killer of children in America.

VERDICT: False.

Jeffries is not the first Democrat to make this false claim, one based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) numbers focused on causes of death for people 0-19 years of age.

For example, during a June 2, 2022, prime-time speech, President Joe Biden reacted to the CDC figures by claiming: “Guns are the number one killer of children.” The “children” referenced by Biden include people of voting age, i.e., 18 and 19-year-olds. CDC figures show firearm-related deaths of people ages 0-19 totaled 4,368 in 2020, while motor vehicle deaths for the same age range totaled 4,036.

However, Breitbart News pointed out that if you do a custom search on the CDC website, adjusting the numbers so that you are limiting the category of “children” to the ages 0-17, i.e., individuals that are actually minors, then the data flips. The number of firearm-related deaths for children aged 0-17 was 2,281 in 2020, while the number of motor vehicle deaths for the same ages was 2,503.

Despite the demonstrable falsehood of Biden’s claim, Vice President Kamala Harris repeated it, as did actresses Allysa Milano and Jennifer Lawrence.

Jeffries is repeating it now, and it is still false.