Posted on 05/22/2026 6:30:23 AM PDT by Red Badger
A European friend approached me today, asking about guns in the US, saying, “There are so many guns in your country. It will take a long time to collect them all and get rid of them.” She was shocked when I responded, “We don’t want to get rid of them.”
Young adults ages 18 and 19, along with gang-related shootings and suicide, not school shootings, account for most of the gun deaths attributed to people under the age of 20. Photo courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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After she got over her immediate horror and confusion, she asked, “But aren’t you afraid of school shootings?” I said that I was not, while also making it clear that I opposed them. “Most Americans are against school shootings,” I added.
Then she said, “I read that school shootings are the number one cause of death of children in the US.”
I responded, “I believe you believe you read that, but you didn’t. No one is actually making that claim. Mainstream media and anti-gun lobbies are playing with statistics to make you think that is what you read.”
This or similar statements about school shooting deaths are now repeated constantly, not only in personal conversations but also on television talk shows and in the talking points of the anti-gun lobby. The claim, of course, is complete nonsense.
On average, school shootings result in fewer than 40 deaths per year, and not all of the victims are children. There was an uptick during the Biden administration and after COVID, but from 2000 through roughly 2020, the average was closer to six deaths per year.
And this is why no serious authority has actually made such an egregious claim. Rather, headlines are designed to make people believe that is what they read. The actual claim, according to CDC data, is that firearm injuries were the leading cause of death among children and teens ages 1 to 19 in 2020 and 2021.
There was a tremendous increase in shootings during the COVID lockdowns; at the same time, fewer people were driving to school and work. Consequently, 2020 was the first year guns killed more young people than cars.
The first problem with this data is that it is no longer true. It was true five years ago, but is still cited as if it were current. Second, ages 1 to 19 are an odd population to sample. Children are generally considered to be ages 0 to 17, while 18- and 19-year-olds are legally adults.
Furthermore, the firearm deaths include everything from suicide and homicide to accidents and gang violence, and the deaths are heavily skewed toward 18- and 19-year-olds. Teens ages 18 and 19 have a firearm mortality rate of 25.2 per 100,000. Children ages 1 to 17 have a rate of 3.7 per 100,000, nearly a 7-to-1 ratio.
There were 2,526 gun deaths in 2022 among children ages 1 to 17. The CDC’s broader 1-to-19 figure for the same year was approximately 4,400. That means 18- and 19-year-olds accounted for roughly 1,900 of the 4,400 deaths, nearly 43% of the entire figure, despite representing only two years out of the 19-year age range being sampled.
The death rate also varies dramatically by race. According to a Johns Hopkins University report, “In 2022, in the 1 to 17 age group, Black children and teens had a gun death rate 18 times higher than that of white children in the same age group.”
To put the numbers in perspective, more than 20,000 children die each year in the US from all causes combined, meaning firearm deaths represent only a percentage of total child mortality. When people hear the claim that gun deaths were the leading cause of death, many assume that means guns accounted for more than 50% of deaths. In reality, “leading cause” simply means the single largest category among many competing causes, including car accidents, poisoning, suffocation, drowning, fire-related injuries, and influenza and pneumonia.
Mass shootings are a rounding error among gun deaths in the under-20 age group. Suicide is the dominant driver, and gang-related shootings are second. Gang-related crime data, like demographic crime data broadly, is difficult to obtain because it challenges prevailing political narratives. The FBI’s NIBRS system depends on voluntary local reporting, and many high-gang jurisdictions under-report or classify gang homicides differently, leaving no unified federal gang homicide count broken down by victim age. That gap is not an accident.
What can be stated with certainty: 18- and 19-year-olds account for more than 40% of all gun deaths in the CDC’s 1–19 age bracket — a cohort that is legal adults by every measure and statistically more likely to be involved in gang activity than younger teens. Gang-related homicides averaged nearly 2,000 annually from 2007 to 2012, representing roughly 13% of all homicides nationally. In urban areas, the DOJ’s National Gang Center puts the share of gun homicides linked to gang and drug activity at 15% to 33%.
The anti-gun lobby frames child gun deaths as a suburban school shooting crisis requiring universal gun control. The data shows a different problem, an urban gang homicide problem concentrated in a small number of cities among a specific demographic. Those are not the same policy problem and do not have the same policy solution. Bundling them into a single “children are dying” statistic is a deliberate statistical manipulation.
Ping!................
Gun grabbers add gun deaths up to 20 years old as "children" to add to "child gun death" statistics. Most of these are gang members who shoot one another.
Someone 18, 19 or 20 years old is an adult, with adult "privileges" - and not a child - obviously.
Rather than trying to isolate the possession of firearms, by making access either difficult or prohibited altogether, seize the opportunity and get EVERY youth in America introduced to the practical aspect of firearms and other projectile weapons. This should be introduced as a course of study at the high school level, or even before, first of all demystifying guns of their “powers”, and stripping away the “magic” influence they have over the minds of many people.
Instruction in the care, feeding, grooming and PROPER use of firearms should be taught as a safety program, much like drivers’ education or well, frankly, sex education, but without the propaganda that goes along with it (sex is NEVER safe).
Firearms, like wrongfully used sex practices, have potential to cause considerable harm, both immediately and with far-reaching consequences. This training would serve to weed out the careless, by identifying them very early in the training course, and also may indicate the unstable or those with very bad attitudes rather more quickly than when they walk into a crowded space with loaded weapons and begin to blaze away against unarmed people.
And for the sake of the dear Lord, do away with “gun-free” zones. Anywhere. Everywhere. A very bad idea that DOES NOT WORK.
Murder is illegal in just about any jurisdiction I can think of. Yet it occurs anyway. Take away the opportunity, deny the unrestrained exercise of that act of will, and you may not prevent ALL the murders, but you can certainly keep the genie at bay.
I say, arm the school teachers. A deadly woman is a pretty weapon.
Oh sheesh.
The leading cause of child deaths in the U.S. is racist cops targeting black youth, followed closely by suicides among transgender youth who have been insufficiently validated and affirmed by our sexually oppresive, Puritanical society.
Everyone knows this.
Any critical thinker knows the Headline of this article is correct. The problem is schools don’t teach critical thinking any more.
WUT?! We been told of “mass” school shooting daily for years.
“The data shows a different problem, an urban gang homicide problem concentrated in a small number of cities among a specific demographic.”
I wonder exactly which demographic that might be.
It’s a complete mystery.
L
And living in URBAN areas on top of that!.....Totally weird.............
There's a perfect example going on right now about why the 2nd Amendment is so necessary and why we don't want to get rid of the guns: If the Iranian people had guns, they could get rid of the damn Ayatollahs in a hurry and build a decent country.
If anyone tries to take away the guns by force, they'll be shown the purpose of them being in private hands in the first place.
:)
A holocaust survivor who lived in my area and spent her life telling the story how she had lost her family in German concentration camps.
Key to Hitler’s strategy behind the takeover of Belgium:
1) Disarming the population
2) Cutting off communication
3) Capturing one city at a time
She stressed, “Never give up your guns.”
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The ROTC had an armory in my high school until forced integration. I don’t know at what point it disappeared. Probably shortly after the first of many riots.
“Most Americans are against school shootings,” I added.
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Most? You mean that there might be some that are FOR school shootings?
How many of the “shooting” deaths are actually suicides?
Democrats..............
Doesn’t Switzerland have the most guns per person.
I think it’s mandatory!...........
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