The massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 students and two teachers were shot dead by an 18-year-old gunman with an AR-15-style rifle, has once again drawn America’s attention to the number of children killed by gunfire.
Medical journals and news reports have stated that guns now kill more of America’s youth than do motor vehicles. President Joe Biden repeated that claim during his speech Thursday night. But a closer look at the data shows that while gun deaths are close in number to vehicular deaths, much depends on how the numbers are sliced.
While gun and motor vehicle deaths increased substantially in 2020, the latest year for which final numbers were available, claims that more children and teenagers die due to guns than motor vehicles only hold up when 18- to 19-year-olds are included, a group that accounts for nearly as many gun deaths as 1- to 17-year-olds combined do, according to an NBC News analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The gap between vehicular deaths and firearm deaths is narrowing among 1- to 17-year-olds, and may close entirely, according to the CDC’s provisional and incomplete 2021 data.
More than 40,000 people died by firearms in 2020. Adults ages 18-33 make up 20 percent of the country’s population but nearly 40 percent of its gun deaths.
Notes: The number of deaths per 100,000 people is shown. The CDC did not calculate...
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