Gangs, Not Guns, Are Leading Cause of Death for “Children”

I don’t know about you, but I have grown increasingly sick of listening to liberals seeking to ban firearms misquote vague statistics that are peddled by organizations seeking to ban firearms.  The usual mantra is that “guns are the leading cause of death for children in the US.”  This morning, I stumbled upon this idiotic post on X: “Thousands of babies dying by gun violence every year.”

That fabrication based on twisted stats sent me down a rabbit hole.  This is one of those cases of “tell a lie loud enough and long enough and it becomes fact.” 

For years we have been told by the federal government, in the form of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), that guns are the leading cause of death for “children.”  You have other organizations, most privately funded, many funded by gun hating billionaires*, repeatedly stating that “gun violence is a public health epidemic,” like you can be hanging out with your friends and catch a gun death just like you can a cold.

The problem is, all of those statements rely on dishonest use of loosely gathered statistics.  Let me explain what I mean, and to do so, I will be referring to an August 2023 article by the American Academy of Pediatrics titled “Trends and Disparities in Firearm Deaths Among Children.”  This article has the best breakdown of gun deaths for “children” that I have seen, even though it still promotes quite a bit of misleading data.

The biggest problem with their data is that they refer to a great number of legal adults as “children.”  Their statistics include people ages 18 and 19, both of which are not children in any definition of the word.  A child is most often defined as a person between birth and puberty, which is typically about the time they become a teenager.  You know this, I know this, and you can bet your ass they know this.  In fact, that is exactly what they want you to picture when they talk about gun violence killing our children.

The fact of the matter is, like all of their “statistics,” the further you look into them the less water they hold.  So, back to the AAP article and their breakdown of children’s gun deaths.

“In 2021, firearms continued to be the leading cause of death among US children. From 2018 to 2021, there was a 41.6% increase in the firearm death rate. In 2021, among children who died by firearms, 84.8% were male, 49.9% were Black, 82.6% were aged 15 to 19 years, and 64.3% died by homicide. Black children accounted for 67.3% of firearm homicides, with a death rate increase of 1.8 from 2020 to 2021. White children accounted for 78.4% of firearm suicides.”

Let’s unpack that a bit. To start with, 82.6% of the “children” killed with a gun were aged 15 to 19 years, which means they were in fact not children, but were teens and even adults.  Sadly, they do not break that portion down further.  I would be curious to see how many were actually minors as opposed to legal adults.

Taking the dissection a step further, 84.8% of those killed with a gun were male, and 49.9% of them were black. Keeping those numbers in mind, consider the next bit.  “Black children” accounted for 67.3% of firearm homicides.

To anyone who has ever been a cop, those numbers are a bit of a “no duh” statement.  You know what other statistics align almost perfectly with that?  Street gang participation by race and gender. 

According to the National Gang Center, street gang participation hovers around 93% male, and averages just under 40% black, with anywhere from 35-50% of gang members being under the age of 18. I realize that it is socially unacceptable to discuss race, ethnicity and gang participation because some idiots consider it racist (CA literally outlawed the keeping of gang databases), but ignoring inconvenient data is not how you address a problem.

(Note: I am not remotely suggesting any race or ethnicity is more prone to criminal behavior due to their race or ethnicity. Crime is a socioeconomic problem, not a race problem. Well to do people do not join gangs and participate in gang crime. Statistically speaking, ethnic minorities are vastly overrepresented below the poverty level, thus they have a higher participation rate in street crime.)

When looking at the two sets of data next to one another, it does not take a leap to determine that the overwhelming majority of “child” gun homicides are gang related.

The other large number of firearm related “child” deaths were suicides.  In fact, suicides make up the majority of firearm related deaths every year.  Suicides typically make up about ⅔ of firearm related deaths.  While everyone agrees that we should seek to reduce the number of suicides, guns are not the way to address it.  As a point of comparison, Japan has a higher suicide rate (17.6 per 100K) than the US (14.0 per 100k) but firearm ownership is completely banned in Japan (aside from some hunting shotguns).  Sadly, people who want to kill themselves will find a way, whether or not they have access to a gun. 

The problem with treating firearm related deaths as a health problem is that it completely ignores the underlying issues.  While the AAP did actually separate homicides from suicides, that is where they stopped.  They, and all the other groups seeking to ban guns, act like firearms are a disease killing people indiscriminately.  They want you to think that banning guns will somehow save children’s lives.  

That would be like trying to reduce the number of deaths from heart disease by outlawing hearts.  They don’t do that with heart disease.  They look at the underlying factors such as diet, exercise and genetics.  Why are they unwilling to do the same with the “public health epidemic” of “gun violence?”

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* Both Michael Bloomberg and George Soros have donated billions to organizations seeking to ban firearms from civilian ownership.