NBC News: 3,143 ‘Children’ 19-Years-Old and Younger Died of Firearm Related Deaths in 2017

NBC News reports that 3,143 “children” aged 19 and under died firearm-related deaths in 2016.

Two quick points. First, gun control reporters and/or researchers often include 15 to 18-year-old individuals as “children,” and that raises the number of gun deaths by including ages when individuals are apt to be involved in street crime or gang violence. When studies are isolated to actual children–individuals aged 10 and below–the number of individuals killed by water and fire far outnumbers the numbers killed by firearms.

In the case at hand, the researchers published in the New England Journal of Medicine focused their study on “children and adolescents,” aged “1 to 19 years of age,” but NBC News reported them all as “children,” only mentioning adolescents twice and returning to the language of “children” and “kids” after each usage.

In other words, people who could legally vote for two years were counted as “children” dying from firearm-related deaths by NBC News. But the study makes clear that for actual children–individuals aged 1 to 4–drowning was the predominate cause of death, “followed by congenital abnormalities and motor vehicle crashes.”

Secondly, NBC News reports that the rate of firearm deaths “in the United States was 36.5 times as high as the overall rate observed in 12 other high-income countries.” The study published in NEJM found of the firearm deaths, “59 percent were homicides, 35 percent were suicides, and 4 percent were unintentional injuries.” The homicides are quite easy to understand when one remembers that NBC News is including prime gang age individuals as “children.” The suicides, though heartbreaking, are not novel either. In fact, suicides make up 66 percent of the overall firearm-related deaths reported as “gun violence” deaths each year in the U.S.

Because of this, the Chicago Tribune reported that gun control is not the solution for suicides, and that is because some nations with far more stringent gun controls have far higher rates of suicide.

For example, Japan has some of the most stringent gun control laws on the planet but also has a suicide rate much higher than the rate in the U.S. The go-to method of suicide in Japan is hanging.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.