Claim: Teen Vogue’s article from May 14, 2025, stated that gun violence has recently surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for American children.
Verdict: False. (This interpretation only holds if voters aged 18 and 19 are classified as “children.”)
Breitbart News pointed out that former President Joe Biden initially made the inaccurate statement on June 2, 2022, labeling guns as the “first child murderer.” This claim was echoed by Derrickson and other advocates of gun control.
In response to each assertion, Breitbart conducted a fact-check using data from disease control and prevention sources for the 18-19 age group, classifying them as “children,” and claiming higher “child” firearm-related fatalities in 2020 compared to car-related deaths. Specifically, there were 4,368 firearm-related deaths among individuals aged 0-19 in 2020, while car accidents led to 4,036 deaths within the same age range.
Breitbart was able to perform tailored searches utilizing CDC statistics that limited the definition of “children” to those under 0-17, meaning those not old enough to vote. For this narrower group, the data showed 2,281 deaths due to firearms in 2020, compared to 2,503 from car accidents.
Teen Vogue has revisited these misleading claims without addressing the inaccuracies. A study pointed out that it clearly defined its scope around “children and adolescents (ages 1-19).”
Essentially, the notion that individuals of voting age can be counted as “children” supports the validity of Teen Vogue’s claim.
