Gun Deaths Rising Sharply Among Children, Study Finds

Julvonnia McDowell was making dinner one evening when she got a call saying that her 14-year-old son, JaJuan — a gentle boy who loved animals, who was so generous that he gave a pair of shoes to a classmate who was being teased — had been shot.

He was visiting a relative’s home when another teenager pulled a gun out from a drawer, where the firearm had been stashed under a T-shirt.

“JaJuan told him to put it away, but the other teenager said that it wasn’t loaded, not realizing it was loaded,” said Ms. McDowell, who lives in Atlanta and has become an advocate for gun safety with the local chapter of Moms Demand Action. “He pulled the trigger, and it hit JaJuan in the chest. JaJuan died 17 minutes later.”

Children are generally medically healthy, which is why accidental injuries pose the greatest threat to their lives. Car accidents have long accounted for the bulk of injury-related fatalities among children.

But according to an analysis published on Thursday, the rate of firearm fatalities among children under 18 increased by 87 percent from 2011 through 2021 in the United States. The death rate attributable to car accidents fell by almost half, leaving firearm injuries the top cause of accidental death in children.

The finding underscores additional data showing that firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death among Americans under 20, after excluding deaths of infants born prematurely or with congenital abnormalities.