More American children and teens die from firearms than any other cause

More American children and teens die from firearms than any other cause, but there are more deaths — and wider racial disparities — in states with more permissive gun policies, according to a new study, reported by Nada Hassanein of Stateline.

The study, published in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics last week, analyzes trends in state firearm policies and kids’ deaths since 2010, after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in McDonald v. City of Chicago. The ruling struck down the city’s handgun ban, clearing the way for many states to make it easier for people to buy and carry guns.

The study authors split states into three groups: “most permissive,” “permissive” and “strict,” based on the stringency of their firearm policies. Those policies include safe storage laws, background checks and so-called Stand Your Ground laws. The researchers analyzed homicide and suicide rates and the children’s race.

Using statistical methods, the researchers calculated 6,029 excess deaths in the most permissive states between 2011 and 2023, compared with the number of deaths that would have been expected under the states’ pre-McDonald rules. There were 1,424 excess deaths in the states in the middle category.

In total, about 17,000 deaths were expected in the post-decision period, but 23,000 occurred, said lead author Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, in an interview.

Among the eight states with the strictest laws, four — California, Maryland, New York and Rhode Island — saw statistically significant decreases in their pediatric firearm death rates. Illinois, which was directly affected by the court’s decision in the McDonald case, and Connecticut saw increases in their rates. In Massachusetts and New Jersey, the changes were not statistically significant.

The rate increased in all but four (Alaska, Arizona, Nebraska and South Dakota) of the 41 states in the two permissive categories. (Hawaii was not included in the study due its low rates of firearm deaths.)

Non-Hispanic Black children and teens saw the largest increase in firearm deaths in the 41 states with looser gun laws. Those youths’ mortality rates increased, but by a much smaller amount, in the states with strict laws.

Experts say the study underscores the power of policy to help prevent firearm deaths among children and teens. The analysis comes less than a month after the release of a federal report on children’s health that purported to highlight the drivers of poor health in America’s children but failed to include anything on firearm injuries — the leading cause of death for children and teens in 2020 and 2021, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Trauma surgeon Dr. Marie Crandall, chair of surgery at MetroHealth medical center and a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, researches gun violence. She previously practiced at a Jacksonville, Florida, urban trauma unit, where she frequently saw children and teens caught in gun violence.

“When I see children come in with 10 holes in them that I can’t save — that is a loss. That is a completely preventable death, and it is deeply emotionally scarring to have to have those conversations with families when we know, as a society, there are things we could do to de-escalate,” said Crandall, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

When I see children come in with 10 holes in them that I can't save — that is a loss. That is a completely preventable death.

– Dr. Marie Crandall, chair of surgery, MetroHealth medical center, Cleveland

In her state of Ohio, firearm death rates among children and teens increased from 1.6 per 100,000 kids in the decade before the McDonald decision to 2.8 after it, according to the study. Ohio was categorized in the group with the most permissive laws.

The study adds to previous research that shows state laws around child access to firearms, such as safe storage and background checks, tend to be associated with fewer child firearm deaths.

“We know that child access prevention decreases unintentional injuries and suicides of children. So having your firearms locked, unloaded, stored separately from ammunition, decreases the likelihood of childhood injuries,” Crandall said. “More stringent regulation of those things also decreases childhood injuries.”

But she said it’s hard to be optimistic about more stringent regulation when the current administration dismisses gun violence as a public health emergency. The Trump administration earlier this year took down an advisory from the former U.S. surgeon general, issued last year, that emphasized gun violence as a public health crisis.

Faust, the lead author of the new study, stressed that firearm injuries and deaths were notably missing from the Make America Healthy Again Commission report on children’s health. He said the failure to include them illustrates the politicization of a major public health emergency for America’s kids.

“It’s hard to take them seriously if they’re omitting the leading cause of death,” Faust said. “They’re whiffing, they’re shanking. They’re deciding on a political basis not to do it. I would say by omitting it, they’re politicizing it.”

Faust and pediatric trauma surgeon Dr. Chethan Sathya, who directs the Center for Gun Violence Prevention at the Northwell Health system in New York, each pointed to the development of car seat laws and public health education, as examples of preventive strategies that helped reduce childhood fatalities. They support a similar approach to curbing youth gun deaths.

“We really have to apply a public health framework to this issue, not a political one, and we’ve done that with other issues in the past,” said Sathya, who wasn’t involved in the study and oversees his hospital’s firearm injury prevention programs. “There’s no question that this is a public health issue.”

In Louisiana, which the study categorized as one of the 30 most permissive states, the child firearm mortality rate increased from 4.1 per 100,000 kids in the pre-McDonald period to 5.7 after it — the nation’s highest rate. The study period only goes to 2023, but the state last year enacted a permitless carry law, allowing people to carry guns in public without undergoing background checks. And just last month, Louisiana legislators defeated a bill that would have created the crime of improper firearm storage.

Louisiana Democratic state Rep. Matthew Willard, who sponsored the safe storage legislation, said during the floor debate that its purpose was to protect children. Louisiana had the highest rate of unintentional shootings by children between 2015 to 2022, according to the research arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for stricter gun access. Willard cited that statistic on the floor.

But Republican opponents said Willard’s proposal would infringe on residents’ gun rights and make it more difficult for them to use guns in self-defense.

“Nobody needs to come in our houses and tell us what to do with our guns. I think this is ridiculous,” Republican Rep. R. Dewith Carrier said during the debate.

Another Republican opponent, state Rep. Troy Romero, said he was concerned that having a firearm locked away would make it harder for an adult to quickly access it.

“If it’s behind a locked drawer, how in the world are you going, at 2 or 3 in the morning, going to be able to protect your family if somebody intrudes or comes into your home?” Romero said.

Gun violence researcher Julia Fleckman, an assistant professor, and her team at Tulane University in New Orleans have started to collect data on the impact of the state’s permitless carry law.

“It places a disproportionate impact on really vulnerable people, really, our most vulnerable people,” Fleckman said, noting kids bear the brunt of legislators’ decisions. “They don’t have a lot of control over this or the decisions we’re making.”

In South Carolina, another one of the most permissive states, the mortality rate increased from 2.3 to 3.9 per 100,000 kids in the time before and after the McDonald decision. South Carolina Democratic state Rep. JA Moore, who lost his adult sister 10 years ago today in the 2015 racist shooting that killed nine at a Charleston church, said state policy alone isn’t enough. He implored his colleagues to also examine their perception of guns.

“We have a culture here in South Carolina that doesn’t lend itself to a more safe South Carolina,” said Moore, who added he’s been advocating for background checks and stricter carry laws. “There is a need for a culture change in our state, in our country, when it comes to guns and our relationships with guns as Americans, realizing that these are deadly weapons.”

And investing in safer neighborhoods is crucial, he said.

“People are hurt by guns in places that they’re more comfortable, like their homes in their own neighborhoods,” he said.

Community-based interventions are important to stemming violence, experts said. Crandall, the Cleveland surgeon, said there’s emerging evidence that hospital-based and community-based violence prevention programs decrease the likelihood of violent and firearm-related injury.

Such programs aim to break cycles of violence by connecting injured patients with community engagement services. After New York City implemented its hospital-based violence interruption program, two-thirds of 3,500 violent trauma patients treated at five hospitals received community prevention services.

After her 33-year-old son was killed in her neighborhood in 2019, Michelle Bell started M-PAC Cleveland — “More Prayer, Activity & Conversation” — a nonprofit collaborative of people who’ve lost loved ones to violent crime. She’s encountered many grieving parents who lost their children to gunfire. The group advocates and educates for safe storage laws and holds peer grief support groups.

She also partners with the school district in a program that shares stories of gun violence’s long-lasting impact on surviving children, families and communities and non-violent interpersonal conflict resolution.

“Oftentimes, the family that has lost the child, the child’s life has been taken by gun violence, there are other children in the home,” she said.

“It’s so devastating. It’s just so tragic that the No. 1 cause of death for children 18 and under is gun violence,” Bell continued.

The decision to “pull a trigger,” she said, changes a “lifetime of not only yours, but so many other people.”

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Oklahoma enacts unconstitutional law imposing death penalty for sex offense against a child

People convicted of sex offenses against children can be sentenced to death or life without parole on their first offense under a new law signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt, according to the Oklahoma Voice.  The U.S. Supreme Court has unequivocally determined that the death penalty may apply only in cases where the life of the victim has been taken. In Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the death penalty for the rape of a child when the victim did not die and the crime was not intended to cause death. 

Senate Bill 599, authored by Sen. Warren Hamilton, R-McCurtain, allows prosecutors to pursue the death penalty for the rape of a child under 14 for first-time offenders. Under existing law, the offender must have been previously convicted of the sex crime to be eligible for the death penalty. 

For lewd molestation against a child under the age of 12, an offender can receive the death penalty, a sentence of at least 10 years or life or life without parole. The law currently requires a sentence of at least 25 years of incarceration.  

“Oklahoma is sending a clear and unequivocal message, crimes against our most vulnerable citizens, our children, will be met with the harshest consequences,” Hamilton said in a statement.

The Oklahoma District Attorney’s Council was involved in the crafting of this legislation and made recommendations to shape its language, he said. Prosecutors will continue to have discretion about which sentence to seek.

Hamilton said this law makes Oklahoma one of the states with the toughest penalties for child sex offenses.

“I deeply appreciate Gov. Stitt for signing this crucial legislation,” he said. “His action reaffirms our state’s commitment to justice and to protecting children from predators who, frankly, don’t deserve a second chance.”

The legislation passed through the Legislature with the only “no” votes coming from some House and Senate Democrats. 

The new law takes effect Nov. 1.

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Gun violence kills more children in America than disease and car accidents

On this Christmas Eve pause for a moment between the eggnog and gift wrapping to consider that gun violence recently surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for American children, according to The New York Times.

For much of the nation’s history, disease was the No. 1 killer of children. Then America became the land of the automobile, and by the 1960s, motor-vehicle crashes were the most common way for children to die. Twenty years ago, well after the advent of the seatbelt, an American child was still three times as likely to die in a car accident as to be killed by a firearm. We’re now living in the era of the gun. 

The gun-death rate for children is nearly five in every 100,000. It was flat for more than a decade starting in 2000, and most years fewer than three in every 100,000 children were killed by guns. In 2014, the rate began to creep up, and by 2020 guns became the leading killer.

Last year was a particularly violent one: 3,597 children died by gunfire, according to provisional statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The death rate from guns was the highest it has been in more than 20 years. While the statistics for this year are incomplete, it is clear that the carnage has not receded.

In May, the nation watched as horror unfolded in Uvalde, Texas. Yet another school ripped apart by bullets — yet another group of children to mourn. Yet another shooting in a long line of school shootings. And though the number of school shootings has recently risen to the highest level on record, the overall picture is so much worse; these shootings account for less than 1 percent of the total gun deaths suffered by American children.

No group of American children has been spared, but some have fared far worse. Last year, nearly two-thirds of gun deaths involving children — 2,279 — were homicides. Since 2018, they have increased by more than 73 percent. Most homicides involved Black children, who make up a small share of all children but shoulder the burden of gun violence more than any others, a disparity that is growing sharply.

The number of children who die by suicide with a gun has also risen to a historical high over the last decade. Last year, suicides made up nearly 30 percent of child gun deaths — 1,078.

Unlike homicides, suicides disproportionately involve white children, mostly teenage boys. A decade ago, the number of white children who killed themselves with a gun totaled around 500 annually; in three of the last five years, that figure has surpassed 700.

Gun accidents that kill children have also ticked up in the last decade, though they are relatively uncommon, totaling fewer than 150 in most years.

God bless you and let's resolve to save our children this New Year.

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