I had already debunked this completely misleading claim from the CDC even before it spread widely and before Biden incorporated it into his gun control speech.
After the Uvalde school shooting, the CDC and the media are pushing a misleading claim that, “firearms were the leading cause of death for kids one and older for the first time in 2020.”
There’s no statistical reason for the CDC to group infants and teenagers together into the same category except to push a gun control agenda. 1-year-olds and 19-year-olds don’t have much in common when it comes to gun violence. And when the numbers are broken down, teenagers have catastrophically high murder and suicide rates, while babies are much less affected.
The CDC’s letter to the New England Journal of Medicine claims that “in 2020, firearm-related injuries became the leading cause of death” for “persons 1 to 19 years of age”.
The CDC buries the salient data in its appendix. It claims that the “increase was seen across most demographic characteristics”. Its own data however shows a massive increase among black teens and a fairly limited one among most other groups.
Nevertheless, in his gun control address, Biden pushed an even worse version of the same claim.
“According to new data just released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, guns are the number one killer of children in the United States of America. The number one killer. More than car accidents.”
Fairly few children are actually killed by guns.
Any statistical category that tops out at 19 years old obviously can’t be characterized as “children”. The majority of deaths in that category involve teenagers and gang activity.
NBC News’ fairly nuanced fact check makes the same point.
While gun and motor vehicle deaths increased substantially in 2020, the latest year final numbers were available, claims that more children and teens die due to guns than motor vehicles only hold up when 18- to 19-year-olds are included, a group that accounts for nearly as many gun deaths as 1 to 17-year-olds combined do, according to an NBC News analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The gap between vehicular deaths and firearm deaths is narrowing among 1 to 17-year-olds, and may close entirely, according to the CDC’s provisional and incomplete 2021 data…
Provisional data from 2021 shows a gap of 9 deaths separating vehicle fatalities from firearm deaths among children.
A key difference though is that while gun deaths are heavily concentrated among black teens in inner cities, car accidents are widely dispersed. This is the same issue as the mischaracterization of widespread AIDS risk in the eighties. The school shootings are the Ryan White of risk assessment. The data here is skewed by a very high rate of fatalities among a very narrow demographic.
The Johns Hopkins report on gun deaths in 2020 put out last month was much more revealing.
It had the numbers that should have been front and center at the CDC, such as, “In 2020, one out of every 1,000 young Black males (15–34) was shot and killed.”
Even though young black males only make up “2% of the total population”, they account for “38% of all gun homicide fatalities” with a gun homicide rate “almost 21 times higher than white males of the same age group.”
“More than half of all black teens (15–19) who died in 2020—a staggering 52%—were killed by gun violence,” it shockingly observes.
So you have a very high death rate among 2% of the population that’s being narrative laundered to make it seem as if all of America’s kids are at risk.
Guns are the number one killer of black teens. But then again black men are unique in that they’re the only group for whom murder is the top cause of death.
Homicide doesn’t even make the CDC’s top 10 causes of death for men in America, but it’s number four for black men. In 2017, it caused 5% of the deaths of black men, more than strokes, diabetes, or most diseases. The only things more likely to kill black men than black-on-black crime are heart disease, cancer, and accidents.
Among black men under the age of 20, homicide is the leading cause of death at 35.3%.
It’s also the leading cause of death for black men from 20-44 years old at 27.6%.
Only at the age of 65 does homicide drop out of the top 10 causes of death for black men.
So all that the number Biden is quoting really tell us is that a population with high crime rates now has such a high death rate among teens that when combined with the general population, it distorts those numbers dramatically.
Children, thank G-d, do have fairly low death rates in America. And so that data set is the most vulnerable to statistical distortion which I’m sure the gun control advocates at the CDC knew when they decided to push these dishonest statistics.
This is also a reminder of why Republicans were right to block the CDC from doing any gun violence research. The CDC can’t be trusted and any gun violence research inevitably becomes dishonest advocacy for gun control.
CogitoErgoSum says
So Biden lies all the time. It’s just another day in Bizarro World. I don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth. At this point it would be news if Biden were to tell the truth.
bill says
False comparisons. The fact that Americans seem incapable of grasping is that cars are rarely aimed at people (it happens but is rare) Accidents happen with both cars and guns. However guns have to be pointed at people and triggers have to be pulled. There have been quite a few deaths of mothers and siblings when a child found a gun and played with it.
Answer this question> How many times has a gun ‘incident’ been stopped or at least minimised by another person with a gun? I am sure if that happened the gun lobby would be shouting it from the rooftops. Yet they claim guns are necessary for ‘protection’
Also take note that in the majority of countries where gun ownership is restricted there is very rarely a school massacre or similar incident. That is the price you pay for your obsession with firearms.
So-Sad says
Suck the pablum, you fool.
Just ask Law Enforcement how many times their guns have stopped, or minimized an “incident”.
And, the number of times for private gun owners is in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly in the millions.
Yes, “school shootings” do happen in other countries …. used to happen in Israel (how did they stop them?)
bill says
I was not of course, as you very well know, referring to law enforcement, though they as we know usually arrive after the event. I asked for numbers and you give ‘perhaps millions’. Thanks for calling me a fool which tells more about your intellect than mine..
EODGhost says
“How many times has a gun ‘incident’ been stopped or at least minimized by another person with a gun?”
Do your home work.
The media refuses to publish this information or even talk about these incidents as news.
The gun lobbyists can yell and scream all the want, they are fully aware their complaints will fall on deaf ears, much like yours.
Gunfacts.info
Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year, or 6,849 every day. Most often, the gun is never fired, and no blood (including the criminal’s) is shed.
Every year, 400,000 life-threatening violent crimes are prevented using firearms.
60 percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they knew the victim was armed. Forty percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they thought the victim might be armed.
Felons report that they avoid entering houses where people are at home because they fear being shot.
Fewer than 1 percent of firearms are used in the commission of a crime.
gravenimage says
FACT CHECK: Biden Lies About Guns Killing More Kids Than Cars
…………..
Thanks for that breakdown, Mr. Greenfield. I’d heard this claim being bandied about, and it seemed *very* dubious to me.
Walter Sieruk says
Of course, Joe Biden lies about guns killing more kids than cars, Biden is just keeping within his natural character of being a pathological liar. That bogus “President” lies almost everything and anything.
Biden a chronic liar and likewise he’s so very disingenuous and dishonest that he’s also a fake .
“A fake” in the specfic sense that he’s a”president” pretender, who is such an impostor “President” that he puts on a masquerade that he’s a real ,genuine, Chief Executive ofthe United States when he’s actually just a terribly corrupt cheating vote stealing politician.
It’s been keyboarded about this villainous fiend before but still worth reiterating, which is the Joe Biden is such a constant , hibitural lair that if Biden tells someone that “It’s rain outside that person would be wise to first look out of the window before believing lying creepy old Joe.”
Infidel says
Being hit by a bullet or struck by a car is not a disease, and doesn’t belong in the CDC
James Lincoln says
Infidel,
I agree with you, but that is not how the CDC sees it.
Their goal is:
“…the protection of public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease, injury, and disability in the US and worldwide…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_and_Prevention
Perhaps injuries due to autos, guns, etc., should be tracked by law enforcement or agencies like the DOT as it applies…
Sid says
Joe’s on top of this as I type.
Fentanyl importation as a priority is getting itself positioned as a real contender for grim reaper achievement. Why, with the gun fights spilling over till everybody is down range, and the overdoses piling up cadavers like cordwood, Joe has bequeathed us the perfect remedy for cleaning up [ or cleaning out ] America’s Bad Neighborhoods: put’em into the cemetery.
Joe prefers there be no disruptive complaints, and no back talk. Joe prefers crickets.
Sid says
America’s Democrats chant their cheers for fundamental change while go-go dancers in elevated cages mesmerize the audience by juggling multiple hammers and sickles.
These are the same mentality that shot the Czar’s grandchildren and threw their bodies down a well. For the greater good.