Guns Now Leading Cause Of Death Of Children

PENNSYLVANIA — More American children lost their lives to gun violence in 2020 than in any year, putting the United States in first place of similar sized countries across the nation, according to recent studies.

Most of the 4,357 children and adolescents who died in firearms violence in 2020 were not killed in the high-profile mass school shootings that we all know about.

They were killed in neighborhoods - yours and mine - throughout the nation.

They died by suicide, homicide or by accident.

Motor vehicle crashes, formerly the leading cause of death, came in second with 4,311 children killed in 2020, according to a study conducted by Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, that studies mortality rates.

Mass killings are intermittent

Mass killings in which a gunman opens fire in a crowd in school draws much more media attention because of the enormity of the tragedies of a large number of children gunned down in public schools.

• The high-profile mass shootings in schools started in earnest nearly a quarter century ago when two teens stormed into Columbine High School, Littleton, Colo., April 20, 1999, killing 12 students and one teacher.
• The high-profile killings continued in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Conn., with 26 killed and again on Valentines Day 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, with 17 killed.
• The most recent mass shooting occurred May 24 at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas when a gunman killed 19 children and two adults.

The massing shootings put a spotlight on child gun violence, especially for parents who lost children.

As the country mourns, groups rally to end gun violence. On June 6, 400 people rallied outside the West Chester Historic Courthouse, calling for lawmakers to strengthen gun safety laws or resign.

The group "Moms Demand Action For Gun Violence" lobby for stricter gun laws.

The numbers show child deaths are everywhere.

Data collected by the Centers of Disease Control shows that the vast majority of gun deaths of children and adolescents are suicides, homicides and accidents.

In Pennsylvania, an average of 118 children and teens die by guns every year, and 63% of these deaths are homicides, according to a study by the New York-based nonprofit, Everytown for Gun Control.

The gun violence resulting in the death of children in neighborhoods does not appear to be letting up in Pennsylvania.

• As an example, in February, a 4-year-old shot himself in the head with a firearm his 18-year-old brother had left on the table in the family’s Coatesville home in Chester County.
• The boy, Roman Aguilera-Ortiz, died Feb. 28 of a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Chester County coroner’s office.
• His brother, Victor Lara-Ortiz, 18, is free on $100,000 bail awaiting trial in the Chester County Justice Center on involuntary manslaughter and related charges.
• A semi-automatic Glock model 43x pistol lying next to the victim on the floor inside Lara-Ortiz’s bedroom, police said.

In another recent case, a 17-year-old was fatally shot when trying to protect three young children from masked men in a home-invasion robbery in an apartment in northern Chester County.

• David Doyle III died as a result of a gunshot wound to the stomach Sept. 24, 2017.

• In April, the shooter, Ricardo Rivera, 28, of Reading, was sentenced to life in prison.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t break out firearms mortality among children.

Overall, in 2020, 1,752 people died as a result of firearm injury in Pennsylvania, an 8% increase over 2019, according to the CDC data.

A recent analysis of the data by University of Michigan researchers showed firearm deaths for ages 1 to 19 increased by 29% from 2019 to 2020.

U.S. Comes In First

Firearm deaths among children are not a unique American problem, but the United States outpaces other similar countries in this category, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation study.

Kaiser’s research shows firearms are the 15th leading cause of death among children in the United Kingdom and Japan.

Firearms deaths of children rank 13th in the Netherlands and Germany; 11th in Australia; ninth in Sweden, Austria and Belgium; eighth in France; sixth in Switzerland; and fifth in Canada.

The United States accounts for 97% of gun-related child deaths among the 12 nations, despite having only 45% of the population of the cluster, according to the Kaiser study.

Gun Sales Set Record

One reason for the increase in firearms deaths is easy access to guns, researchers report.

Americans purchased 43 million guns in 2020 and 2021 and there were more than 45,000 fatalities during the two years, according to a Washington Post analysis published July 8.

The analysis also shows that many states that saw an increase in overall gun deaths also saw an increase in gun sales.

That kids die in gun violence is no longer unthinkable, but politicization of guns has taken priority over public health, Drs. Eric W. Fleegar and Lois K. Lee, researchers and emergency room pediatricians who study firearms injuries, wrote in Scientific American.

The toll of gun violence on America’s youth has reached a reckoning point, Fleegar and Lee said in their opinion piece in Scientific American.

“With thousands of children killed each year in the U.S. by firearms, we must, as a country, ultimately reckon with the essential question of what is most important: Is it the narrow focus on individuals’ rights or the broader vision of societal responsibility?” they questioned.

A Reckoning Point?

No one knows how many guns there are in the United States because some states don’t track gun sales or require registration, but estimates are around 400 million.

As of Aug. 1, a total of 1.53 million Pennsylvania individuals have permits to carry a weapon, and 8,122 have sportsman permits.
In Pennsylvania, there is no law pertaining to assault weapons.

The process for getting a license to carry a gun is simple.

• Anyone over 21 can apply for a gun permit in a sheriff’s office.
• A person over 18 can apply for a sportsman license to hunt, fish or trap.

Pennsylvania lawmakers are working to strengthen gun laws.
State Rep. Melissa Shusterman, a Chester County Democrat, recently introduced three bills to restrict assault weapons. They are:

• Requiring a semi-automatic assault rifle safety certification course and completion before purchasing an assault rifle.
• Prohibiting the sale of semi-automatic assault rifles that hold more than five rounds of ammunition for anyone under age 21.
• Ban 3D printed guns in Pennsylvania. These ghost guns can be bought without a background check and assembled at home. They are untraceable

Gun Violence In America

The common denominator in gun violence is that it happens in towns and neighborhoods across the country to people we know.

It touches our communities in multiple ways, from children who pick up their parents’ handguns and accidentally shoot themselves to adolescents who end their lives with handguns, to mass shootings.

In this reporting project, Patch explores those and other ways gun violence impacts our lives, and what is being done to make our communities safer.

Do you have a story idea for this series? Email beth.dalbey@patch.com.