Gun Violence Statistics and Studies

CHILDREN & GUNS: A LETHAL COMBINATION

• In 2005, 1,972 children and teenagers were murdered with guns, 822 committed suicide with guns, and 173 died in unintentional shootings.  Twenty-one were killed in a police intervention, and another 39 died, but the intent was not known.  A total of 3,027 young people were killed by firearms in the U.S.³
• In 2005, 81% of murder victims aged 12 to 24 years old were killed with a firearm.⁴
• Firearms are the second-leading cause of death (after motor vehicle accidents) for young people ages 1-19 in the U.S.⁵
• The rate of firearm death of under 14-years-old is nearly 12 times higher in the U.S. than in 25 other industrialized countries combined.⁶
• In one year, for every child and teenager killed by a gun, nearly six were estimated to be non-fatally wounded.⁷
• In 2005, firearms were responsible for 17% of injury deaths for Caucasian teens ages 13-19 in the United States, 52% of deaths for African-American teens, 22% of Native American/Alaska Native teens, and 19% of Asian/Pacific Islander teens.⁸
• In a study of inner-city 7-year-olds and their exposure to violence, 75% of them reported hearing gun shots.⁹
• "The firearm injury epidemic, due largely to handgun injuries, is 10 times larger than the polio epidemic of the first half of this century."¹⁰

Updated April 2008

Endnotes:

1. WISQARS, Injury Mortality Reports, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control, 2005 data, http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html (hereafter Injury Mortality Reports)
2. WISQARS, Nonfatal Injury Reports, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control, 2006 data, http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/nfirates2001.html (hereafter Nonfatal Injury Reports).
3. WISQARS, Injury Mortality Reports.
4. Snyder, H., Finnegan, T., and Kang, W. (2007). Easy Access to the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports: 1980-2005. Online. Available: http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/
5. WISQARS, Leading Causes of Death Reports, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control, 2005 data, http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10.html
6.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  "Firearm-Related Death in 26 Industrialized Countries," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 1997, 46(5): 101-105.
7. WISQARS, Injury Mortality Reports.
8. WISQARS, Injury Mortality Reports. Numbers may not add up to 100 because of rounding.
9. Hallam Hurt, MD; Elsa Malmud, PhD; Nancy L. Brodsky, PhD; Joan Giannetta, BA, "Exposure to Violence: Psychological and Academic Correlates in Child Witnesses," Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, December 2001, Vol. 55, No. 12, pp. 1351-1356.
10. Katherine Kaufer Christoffel, "Handguns and the Environments of Children," Children's Environments, 12(1), 1995, p. 42.