TOO MANY, TOO SOON

Guns Surpassed Crashes as Top Killer of Young Americans for First Time in 2020

Thee number of gun deaths of Americans under 18 went up by 541 in 2020, compared to 198 total COVID-related deaths.

Gun violence surprised traffic crashes as the leading cause of death for Americans aged under 19 for the first time in 2020, with 4,368 recorded gun deaths, according to the CDC. While suicide rates edged up in 2020, most of the gun violence increase resulted from an uptick in homicides of Black boys and male teens, according to an analysis published earlier this month in the New England Journal of Medicine (PDF). Among Americans under 18, the CDC told The Daily Beast there were 2,281 gun deaths in 2020, up from 1,732 in 2019—541 more deaths in a year where there were also 198 COVID-related deaths (including 57 deaths in which it was a contributing factor) in that age group.