18 About 3 in 4 children ages 5-14 with gun-owning parents know where firearms are stored and more than 1 in 5 have handled a gun in the home without their parents’ knowledge. An estimated 4.6 million children live in homes with at least one unlocked and loaded gun-and most children know where these guns are kept.A third of households with children have a gun and nearly half of gun-owning households with children do not store all of their firearms safely.With a growing number of children learning and playing at home during COVID-related closures, the risk of gun accidents and suicides has only increased. Too often, this leads to tragic accidents and preventable deaths.
Many children even live in homes with loaded, unlocked guns and know where they are kept. 16Ĭhildren are learning there are no safe spaces in our gun-saturated nation.
Nearly 1 in 5 guns are sold without a background check due to a loophole in federal law exempting sales at gun shows, online, or between private individuals. Americans accounted for less than five percent of the global population, but owned nearly half (46 percent) of all civilian guns in the world. military and law enforcement agencies possessed 5.5 million. As of 2017, American civilians owned 393 million firearms-more than one gun per person. Even before the pandemic drove up fear and gun sales, there were too many firearms in our homes and streets-and a shocking number were sold without background checks. No child is safe in a nation with easy access to deadly weapons. In 2019, 86 children under 5 were killed with guns compared with 51 law enforcement officers in the line of duty. Eighty-five percent of child and teen gun deaths occurred among 15- to 19-year-olds, but infants and toddlers were far from immune. Guns killed more preschoolers than law enforcement officers in the line of duty. Black boys were 18 times more likely to be killed in gun homicides than white boys. Boys were six times more likely than girls to die in gun homicides. Eighty-six percent of children and teens who died from gunfire in 2019 were boys. Black children and teens were four times more likely to be killed with guns than their white peers. 
Although Black children and teens made up only 14 percent of all children and teens in 2019, they accounted for 43 percent of child and teen gun deaths. Black children and teens had the highest gun death rate in 2019 (11.9 per 100,000) followed by American Indian/Alaska Native children and teens (6.4 per 100,000). Gun violence affects all children, but children of color, boys, and older youth are at greatest risk. An estimated 16,644 children and teens were injured with guns in 2018-one every 32 minutes. For every child or teen fatally shot, another 5 suffered non-fatal gunshot wounds. Many more children and teens are injured than killed with guns each day in our nation. Shamefully, gun deaths reflect only part of the devastating toll of America’s growing gun violence epidemic. soldiers killed in action in the Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars combined. 
Since 1963, nearly 193,000 children and teens have been killed with guns on American soil-more than four times the number of U.S.While mass shootings grabbed fleeting public and policymaker attention, routine gunfire took the lives of more children and teens every week than the Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Columbine massacres combined.Guns killed more children and teens than cancer, pneumonia, influenza, asthma, HIV/AIDs, and opioids combined.In 2019, nine children and teens were killed with guns each day in America-one every 2 hours and 36 minutes.Child and teen gun deaths hit a 19-year high in 2017 and have remained elevated since.In 2019, 3,371 American children and teens were killed with guns-enough to fill more than 168 classrooms of 20 (see Table 3 5). 1 Children and teens are far more likely to die from gunfire than COVID-19, 2 yet our leaders continue to allow gun violence to go uncurbed and gun laws to go unchanged.Īfter years of congressional inaction, a growing number of children are paying with their lives. Gun violence was the leading cause of death for all children and teens ages 1-19 in 2018, surpassing motor vehicle accidents for the first time in history. Even before COVID-19, another epidemic was killing our children at higher rates: gun violence.
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