In a Sept. 27 post shared on X, President Joe Biden claimed guns are the number one killer of children in America.
Guns are the #1 killer of children in America.
It’s sick. And it’s sick if your response is “get over it” or it’s a “fact of life” as some of my colleagues across the aisle have said.
Who the hell do these people think they are?
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 27, 2024
Verdict: Unsubstantiated
Both data and comments from multiple experts indicate that the accuracy of the claim depends on how the term “children” is defined and what age groups are counted.
Fact Check:
Biden recently signed two executive orders regarding gun safety, including one that addresses threats posed by ghost guns, according to The New York Times.
In his Sept. 27 X post, Biden claimed guns are the number one killer of children in America. Biden made the same claim during an event focused on gun violence at the White House the day before.
A transcript of Biden’s remarks from the event indicates he said the following: “You just heard [Vice President] Kamala [Harris] cite the statistics all Americans should be ashamed of. Guns are the number one — hard to believe — they’re the number one killer of children in America — more than any other cause: accidents, ca- — more than any other cause. It’s almost in- — in- — unbelievable to think that’s — it’s sick.”
The claim depends on definitions on what a child is. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Wonder data shows firearms were the injury mechanism responsible for 4,603 deaths through 2022. In comparison, motor vehicle traffic, poisoning, and non-injury: all other diseases (residual) were the injury mechanisms responsible for 3,740, 2,088, and 1,928 deaths, respectively, for the same time period, the data shows. The single-race results are representative of single-year ages 1 to 19 and a population of 77,390,066 individuals.
However, when the data is filtered to represent single-year ages <1 to 17 years old, firearms are the leading cause of death among teenagers ages 13 to 17 years old. Firearms were the injury mechanism responsible for a total of 2,128 deaths among 13- to 17-year-olds (127 13-year-olds, 243 14-year-olds, 414 15-year-olds, 557 16-year-olds, and 787 17-year-olds) through 2022, the same data shows.
When the CDC WONDER data is filtered to represent <1 year to 16 years old, firearms were the second leading cause of death in 2022 behind motor vehicle traffic at 1,755 compared to 1,777. The same data shows firearm deaths (1,755) were also behind suffocation deaths (2,005) in 2022.
Nevertheless, firearm deaths surpassed motor vehicle traffic deaths among teenagers in 2022 when the CDC WONDER data is filtered to represent <1 year to 18 years old. For example, 414 15-year-olds died as a result of firearms in 2022 compared to 203 who died as a result of motor vehicle traffic the same year. Similarly, 557 16-year-olds died as a result of firearms in 2022 compared to 377 who died as a result of motor vehicle traffic the same year.
Likewise, according to a July 2023 piece from KFF, “in 2020 and 2021, firearms contributed to the deaths of more children ages 1-17 years in the U.S. than any other type of injury or illness.” KFF indicated the child firearm mortality rate “had doubled,” increasing from “1.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2013 to 3.7 in 2021.”
Figure 1 that appears in the piece shows firearms played a role in the deaths of 2,270 children between 1-17 years old who died in 2020 with the number increasing to 2,571 in 2021. In comparison, motor vehicles played a role in the deaths of 2,159 children in 2020 with the number increasing to 2,348 in 2021. Similarly, cancer played a role in the deaths of 1,407 children in 2020 with the number increasing to 1,427 in 2021, according to the same figure. The numbers are derived from a KFF analysis of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Wonder Underlying cause of death data. A White House official directed Check Your Fact to the piece when contacted about Biden’s claim.
Similarly, a September 2023 study published in the journal Pediatrics indicates firearms were the “leading cause of death among U.S. children and adolescents” in 2020 and 2021 with a “41.5% increase in firearm death rate” occurring overall between 2018 and 2021. The study was conducted via an analysis of the CDC’s Wonder data representing firearm mortalities among children and adolescents, ages 0-19 years old. The same White House official directed Check Your Fact to the study. (RELATED: Tim Walz Speech About Visiting Afghanistan Lacks Important Context)
Furthermore, a recent report from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health indicates gun violence has been the “leading cause of death” among children ages 1-17 years old since 2020, with gun death rates increasing by 106% since 2013. According to the same report, a total of 2,526 gun deaths occurred among 1 to 17-year-olds in 2022. The overall U.S. gun violence rate peaked in 2021, then fell 2.7% in 2022, also according to the report. The report defines children as ages 1 to 9, teenagers as ages 10 to 17, and emerging adults as ages 18 and 19.
Multiple experts shared their perspectives on the claim with Check Your Fact.
E. Gregory Wallace, a law professor at Campbell University’s School of Law, said the claim is “misleading at best and a lie at worst.”
“It all turns upon how ‘children’ is defined,” Wallace said. “According to CDC cause of death statistics, firearms are the leading cause of death for teens ages 13-17, mainly due to gang violence. For children ages 1-12, there are other leading causes of death. For age 12, it’s (1) all other diseases, (2) cancers, (3) suffocation, and (4) motor vehicle traffic. For age 11, it’s (1) cancers, (2) all other diseases, (3) motor vehicle traffic, and (4) firearms. And so on.”
Wallace also criticized the Bloomberg School of Health report, saying it was “misleading” and that “according to the CDC, firearms are not the leading cause of death for children age 9 and under (or even 12 and under).”
“The Bloomberg report concedes that ‘[a]pproximately 70% of all gun deaths among young people ages 1-17 occurred among older teens ages 15-17” (p. 8). Note also the racial disparities in gun deaths in Figure 3.1. The report does not include infants under the age of 1 (see fn. to Figure 4, p. 7),” Wallace said.
Mark Bryant, founding executive director of the Gun Violence Archive, said Biden’s claim is “correct.”
“That is correct,” Bryant said. “There’s a combination of reasons for that. The number of deaths among children ages 0 to 18 has gone up in 2022 and 2023 compared to [things like] car deaths and cancer.”
“Not [looking at it politically], just looking at it in broad statistics, drive-by shootings, road rage incidents, school shootings, finding unsecured guns, the number starts piling up. Adding 13-to-18 year-olds, the number is going up due to participation in gangs,” he added. Bryant pointed out that while gangs can be hard to define, “it’s not a race thing, but an organizational thing,” citing examples such as MS-13, the Hells Angels, and even a group of kids hanging out together that get into a fight with another group and then start shooting. The main question to ask, Bryant reiterated, is “is it organized or not?.”
Despite Bryant labeling Biden’s claim as correct, he said he thinks that for this year, “the total aggregate number [of deaths] will go down.”
“[Data for 2022 and 2023] is the last aggregate years the CDC has available. The numbers will fluctuate, [it’s] real close together right now,” Bryant said. “Mass shootings are down 20%, the total number of deaths is down 20%, [and] mass murders are down 30%,” he continued. Bryant explained that the term mass shooting refers to when more than four people are injured or killed, while mass murders refer to when four or more people are killed.
Bryant also explained that “2021 was the spike year for mass shootings” as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. “People lost their minds in 2020 [and there was] a continuous build up in 2021. Look at it as a wave, [it] peaked in 2021, [and has been] diminishing since then, but [is] still high.”
Amy Swearer, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told Check Your Fact that Biden’s claim was misleading “because it is only true with respect to older teenagers, and not with respect to all age groups of children, as his post implies.”
Swearer said that CDC WONDER data shows that “firearms are not even remotely the leading cause of death for children aged 0–12, whether counting in the aggregate or by individual age group. Nor are they the leading cause of death in the aggregate for all children ages 0-16, or with respect to White, Hispanic/Latino, or Asian children ages 0-17, either in the aggregate or by individual age group.”
Swearer also stated that Biden’s claim is “lacking important context that helps explain why firearms are now the leading cause of death for older teenagers.”
“Firearms have long been the second leading cause of death for older teens, just behind motor vehicle deaths…Firearms recently surpassed motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death for older teens almost entirely due to an acute increase in gun homicide rates amongst those age groups consistent with a broader nationwide spike in gun homicide rates that began in the summer of 2020,” Swearer said.
Nick Wilson, senior director of gun violence prevention at the liberal Center for American Progress, also labeled Biden’s claim as “correct.”
“President Biden is correct that guns are the number one cause of death for children and teens in the United States,” Wilson said.
“In 2022, 2,526 young people ages 1-17 died by a firearm, surpassing deaths from motor vehicle crashes, cancer, poisoning, and suffocation. A new report by Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions analyzing CDC data found that youth firearm death rates doubled from 2013 to 2022, with children in marginalized communities being disproportionately impacted. Gun deaths of children are preventable and policies including requiring the secure storage of firearms when children are present and investments in community violence intervention programs can save children’s lives,” he added.
Both The Washington Post and PolitiFact fact-checked the claim, with the former stating it would be more accurate to say children and teenagers when citing the data and the latter rating the claim as “mostly true” depending on how children are defined.
Check Your Fact has also contacted the White House for comment.