{"id":113331,"date":"2025-11-17T13:44:44","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T19:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=113331"},"modified":"2025-11-17T13:44:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T19:44:44","slug":"113331","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=113331","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Democrats\u2019 Favorite Talking Point About Children And Gun Deaths Is A Lie.<\/a><\/p>\n

Gun control advocates often claim that guns are the leading cause of death among children \u2014\u00a0but that is false<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Virginia\u2019s new governor-elect, Democrat Abigail Spanberger, demanded new gun control laws, calling guns \u201cthe number one killer of kids in our country<\/a>.\u201d Other Democrats such as North Carolina\u2019s Democrat Gov. Josh Stein also\u00a0mentioned<\/a>\u00a0it. In June, the Ad Council launched a $10 million campaign touting the \u201calarming statistic \u2014 gun injuries at the number one killer of children and teens in this country<\/a>.\u201d And, of course, there were parting shots from Biden\u2019s Council of Economic Advisers, literally days before they left office earlier this year,\u00a0pushing<\/a> the claim.<\/p>\n

Over the last couple of years, the media has continually pushed the assertion regarding children being at risk. The Washington Post\u2019s headline warned: \u201cWhy guns are America\u2019s number one killer of children<\/a>.\u201d An NPR headline wrote: \u201cFirearms overtook auto accidents as the leading cause of death in children<\/a>\u201d and the BBC noted: \u201cGun deaths were the leading killer of US children in 2020<\/a>.\u201d Fact-checkers from\u00a0Newsweek<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Snopes<\/a>\u00a0also push these claims.<\/p>\n

What defines a child? For those under 18, vehicle deaths consistently outnumber firearm deaths. But in 2023 they were essentially tied. The combined total of unintentional deaths, homicides, and suicides reached\u00a02,580<\/a>\u00a0for vehicles and\u00a02,581<\/a>\u00a0for firearms. Yet those firearm numbers make the two causes seem closer than they are, because they include \u201cjustifiable homicides\u201d \u2014 cases in which civilians or police shot young offenders who posed deadly threats.<\/p>\n

When we exclude those justified killings and use the FBI\u2019s count of murders instead, the firearm total drops by more than four hundred, from\u00a02,581 to 2,166 deaths<\/a>.<\/p>\n

About\u00a072<\/a> percent of firearm homicides involving minors occur among 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds alone make up about 57 percent of those cases. These killings overwhelmingly stem from gang activity, and even a total gun ban would do little to stop gangs from obtaining weapons to protect their highly valuable drug supplies.<\/p>\n

So even if we classify 17-year-old gang members as \u201cchildren,\u201d the gun control claim doesn\u2019t hold up. In 2019 and 2020, more minors died from\u00a0suffocation<\/a>\u00a0than from firearms, and the two causes were nearly equal in 2022 and 2023.<\/p>\n

If we define children as those under 15,\u00a0motor vehicle deaths far exceed firearm deaths<\/a>. From 2019 through 2023, motor vehicle deaths were 64 percent to 153 percent higher than firearm deaths (excluding justified homicides), while suffocation deaths were more frequent in 2019 and 2020, and similar in later years.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Murder Rates Up, Even After Gun Bans<\/strong><\/p>\n

Homicides and murders of those under 18 have risen across the country after 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.<\/p>\n

The assumption behind these false claims about firearms is that if you could only ban guns, you could save all these lives. Yet, things don\u2019t work that way. Banning guns might reduce firearm suicides and cases of self-defense, but it won\u2019t reduce firearm murders. Indeed, a ban on guns, even a handgun ban like the ones we\u2019ve seen in\u00a0Washington and Chicago<\/a>, inevitably makes things much worse.\u00a0After every gun ban, murder rates have gone up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One would think that just once, out of simple randomness, murder rates would have gone down or remained the same after a ban. But whenever crime data are available from both before and after a ban, we can see that murder rates have gone up (often by huge amounts).<\/p>\n

Gun control advocates will tell you that Washington and Chicago weren\u2019t fair tests. They will point out that criminals there could still get guns in Virginia or Maryland, or in Illinois or Indiana. While that might explain why murder rates didn\u2019t fall as promised, it doesn\u2019t explain why murder and violent crime rates went up.<\/p>\n

Even island nations have fared no better. After the United Kingdom banned handguns in January 1997, its homicide rate rose by 50 percent over the following eight years. The rate returned to earlier levels only after a 14 percent increase in the number of police.<\/p>\n

Even more dramatic post-ban surges occurred in Jamaica and Ireland, with six or sevenfold increases in homicide rates.<\/p>\n

No Effect on Suicides<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nor does it make sense to blame suicides on guns. When gun bans are enacted, there are many other effective ways to commit suicide, such as\u00a0hanging, walking in front of a train, jumping from a height, using explosives, or taking cyanide<\/a>. Indeed, while gun bans are associated with drops in firearm suicides, there is\u00a0no change in total suicides<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With the FBI data, firearm suicides make up about 35 percent of all firearm deaths. So, for example, in 2023, for those under 18, removing suicides would reduce the number of firearm deaths \u2014 using the numbers from the CDC \u2014 from 2,581 to 1,835, and \u2014 using the FBI murder rate data \u2014 from 2,151 to 1,405.<\/p>\n

Guns aren\u2019t the leading cause of death among children, even when adolescents are included. Eliminating guns won\u2019t save lives \u2014 bans consistently drive murder rates higher and leave overall suicide numbers unchanged. But Democrats want to ban guns, repeating the false claim that firearms are the number one killer of \u201cchildren\u201d to justify their agenda.<\/p>\n

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Democrats\u2019 Favorite Talking Point About Children And Gun Deaths Is A Lie. Gun control advocates often claim that guns are the leading cause of death among children \u2014\u00a0but that is false. Earlier this year, Virginia\u2019s new governor-elect, Democrat Abigail Spanberger, demanded new gun control laws, calling guns \u201cthe number one killer of kids in our … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deceit","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113332,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113331\/revisions\/113332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}