Be Aware of the Facts During ‘Gun Violence Awareness Week’

The gun control lobby’s self-proclaimed “Gun Violence Awareness Week” is quickly approaching, and we’re soon to be inundated with columns and commentary declaring our Second Amendment rights are a huge problem in need of an anti-gun fix. One of the talking points that’s sure to be trotted out is the claim that guns are the number one killer of children in the United States, but as McClatchy columnist David Mastio writes, “the facts tell a different story.” 

Guns are not the number one killer of children at any age between 0 and 12. They never have been. Cars are the biggest killer. Who says? The CDC database called WONDER that tracks the cause of death in most U.S. deaths indexed by race, sex and age among other characteristics. For a number of kids’ years of life, drowning or falls are a greater threat than guns.

… Here’s what the CDC says: “Taking into account all types of firearm injuries, including homicides, suicides, and unintentional injuries, firearm injuries were the leading cause of death among children and teens ages one to 19 in 2020 and 2021.” What they mean is if you lump all the dead children and teens in one pile and count how they died, for the whole gruesome pile, the No. 1 killer was guns. But that is only because guns kill so many teens — a large number of them 18- and 19-year-old adult teens. It has nothing to do with children’s deaths. Elsewhere on its website, the CDC admits this difference, giving the cause of death for different groups of children as “accidents.”

Remember Mark Twain’s adage about lies, damn lies, and statistics? The gun control lobby and their allies in the media use a skewed definition of “children” to get their preferred findings; excluding children under the age of 1, for instance, while including adults who are 18 and 19 years old. But as Mastio writes, even under that tightly-controlled definition guns aren’t the leading cause of deaths for female adolescents, white teens, Hispanice teens, Asian teens, or Native American teens. 

Firearms are the leading cause of death for Black adolescents; a finding that Mastio rightfully says is statistically troubling in itself. But by declaring that guns are the number one killer of teens in general, Mastio argues the gun control lobby is simply putting its interests above the truth. 

If your goal is to raise campaign donations and build a national political movement to restrict gun rights, it doesn’t matter. Scaring parents whose kids are not at much risk by fudging the issue works great. 

If your goal is to get Congress to fork over millions in research grants on the problem of gun violence, it works great to make Congress think the bullets are flying everywhere and that the blood is flowing on rural, suburban and urban congressional district streets alike. 

But if your goal is to actually solve the problem, well, then it really does matter just who is dying and why. Only when we face the answer to that question can we focus resources where the problem is and come up with ways to do something about it.

The gun control lobby might pay lip service to targeted deterrence efforts and strategies that are specifically designed to address violent crime in urban areas or high rates of gun-involved deaths among young Black men, but their primary goal is the eradication of the right to keep and bear arms. Declaring that guns are the number one killer of kids and adolescents is a means to an end, and what they’re aiming for is the end of the Second Amendment and the establishment of a culture in which gun ownership is socially taboo and legally fraught with danger. 

Sadly, they’ve gotten their wish in places like Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., but the decades-long attack on gun ownership hasn’t made those cities crime-free. To the contrary. It’s easier for an teenager in this country illegally to acquire a gun in New York City than it is for an adult without a criminal record to legally purchase and possess a firearm, and it’s not unusual to see headlines involving teen robbery crews in gun-controlled cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and the District of Columbia. 

That isn’t a gun problem. It’s a crime problem, and as Mastio says, framing these deaths as a gun issue helps the gun control lobby, but it does nothing to help save the young men who are most likely to lose their life in a shooting. Programs like Operation Ceasefire and non-profits like Camp Compass are far more effective at reducing violence and saving lives, but you’re not likely to hear about them during “Gun Violence Awareness Week” because they don’t rely on putting new gun laws in place or infringing on our fundamental right to keep and bear arms.