On Wednesday, the Biden administration posted the demonstrably false claim that “guns are the leading cause of death of children.”
The White House posted:
Guns are the number one cause of death among children in America.
Our Administration will continue to do all we can to end gun violence and save lives. pic.twitter.com/7xmvFNPhOW
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 5, 2024
Breitbart News showed that President Joe Biden was false when he first made this claim on June 2, 2022. Breitbart News dug into the data and found that for his claim to be accurate, 18- and 19-year-olds (i.e., people of voting age) would have to be counted as children. But 18- and 19-year-olds are not children, so Biden’s claim is false, just as the White House’s current claim is false.
FOX News report, May 26, 2022 I got it. According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were a total of 4,368 firearm-related deaths among 0-19 year olds in 2020, and a total of 4,036 deaths from motor vehicle accidents in that same age group. This has led gun control groups to claim that more children are being killed by guns than by motor vehicle accidents, but as reported, their age group also included 18- and 19-year-olds.
Breitbart News ran a custom search of the CDC numbers and restricted the “children” category to those ages 0-17 (i.e., individuals not yet of voting age), and the data was completely reversed: the number of firearm-related deaths among children ages 0-17 was: 2,281 The number of car accident deaths in that age group in 2020 was 2,503.
Breitbart further noted that even when the age range was expanded to 0-19, the CDC figures were still show Unintentional motor vehicle deaths were 27 times more likely to occur than unintentional firearm-related deaths. Deaths (number).
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the author and curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly Breitbart News newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment. He has served as a political analyst for Armed American Radio, a pro staffer for Pulsar Night Vision, and the Global Marketing Director for Lone Star Hunts. He was a visiting scholar at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and earned his PhD in Military History. Follow us on Instagram. FollowYou can subscribe to Downrange at breitbart.com/downrange . To contact me directly, please email awrhawkins@breitbart.com
