I'm calling BS on "guns are the greatest threat to children".
Here is an article that shares SOME details from the study (but is still grossly lacking):
Current causes of death in children and adolescents
At a glance, the following things jump out of the article to me:
- They are calling 18 and 19 year old adults "children". That's misleading.
- It's a COMPARISON to automobiles (which were being driven less in 2019-2020 due to COVID)
- Children under the age of 1 are excluded from the study. That means young children who died in vehicles were not included, but it also means those same young children were unlikely to be a firearm statistic (because 1 year olds can't hold a gun). Excluding children under 1 in a comparison of auto deaths to firearm related deaths also skews the results.
- The article specifically notes that the vast majority of kids killed with guns are NOT killed in mass shootings
- The rate for black or African American is 4X the rate for whites (even though they are only 13% of the population). That's awful.
- The incident rate is also higher for Hispanics than Whites.
- Firearm related deaths for children (age 1-19) increased 29.5% in 2019-2020. Drug overdose and poisoning increased by 83.6% for the same group in the same period. Why no concern about drugs and poisoning?
NOTE: 2 facts seem to be avoided in that article:
1- There is no age breakdown. When they say "firearms are the leading cause of death in children", they shouldn't avoid the age breakdown. If half of those that died are under the age of 10, we are gonna feel very different than if 90% of those that died are between the ages of 18-19
2- There is no correlation to mass shootings. The actual statistics of how many children died in mass shooting incidents is avoided. But the article was released in May of 2022, clearly implying it has something to do with mass shootings.
BOTH of these issues are misleading, and appear to be manipulating the data for political gain.
Here is how I read that article:
We made kids stay home because of COVID. That reduced vehicle deaths (less driving), but also increased mental health issues. This led to an increase in firearms related deaths (35% of "child" firearm deaths were suicide). The mental stress kids faced increased both firearms incidents AND drug and poisoning incidents. The terrible imbalance among races probably points to violent incidents in inner cities, and since we are including older teens in the statistic, it also likely includes crime and gang related firearm incidents. I don't see evidence in that study that says anything about mass shootings. More likely, increased incidents of home firearm accidents, gang violence, and mental stresses created from trauma from a national health crisis.
So, no. I don't buy it. It is factual, but carefully constructed to communicate a message which is not entirely accurate.
I am very concerned about increased gun violence, and want to see changes. But distorted statistics that basically say "OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN" is absolutely the wrong way to handle the problem.