I got an email from my senator today (Elizabeth Warren) saying that “Over the past two years, more than 6,000 children have been killed by guns.” At first I was curious as to why she didn’t just say “in the past year, 3,000 children have been killed by guns.” We’ll leave that for another blog.
In any event, if you know me, you know I am a stickler for statistics, and without any particular political agenda in mind, I did a little research. Since the nation will be locked in this debate for the next few weeks or months, here is the data from 2010, as provided by the CDC.
Two things: What does it mean to be “killed by a gun”? and “What is a child?” I felt that grouping all people age 0-19 was a little broad. I personally don’t think of 19 year olds as being on a par with 3 year olds, so I set the 15-19 year old group apart. Also the CDC splits it into homocide, suicide, and accidents (“unintentional”). To make your own charts, you can go here:
http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10_us.html
and submit your own parameters. It turns out that yes, if you count all gun-involved deaths including homicide, suicide and accidents in ages 0-19 you get about 3,ooo a year. Of course, when you look at motor vehicle deaths and suicide by suffocation you get another interesting set of numbers. Here we go, starting with 0-14:
Ages 0-14, homicides by firearm , 206:
0-14, firearm suicides, 61:
And 0-14 accidents, 62:
Okay, in ages 15-19, homicides: 1554
Ages 15-19, Suicide: 668
And ages 15-19 accidents, 72.
Those are the numbers, or at least one set of them. Do as you will. — JL
