CLAIM: During his Thursday night presser, President Joe Biden claimed that “more children are killed by a bullet than any other cause of death.”
VERDICT: False, This is a regurgitation of an ongoing, false, leftist claim that guns are the number-one killer of children. Via fact checks, Breitbart News has shown again and again that in making this claim, the left counts people of voting age — ages 18 and 19 — as children.
Biden first made this claim on June 2, 2022, when he said, “Guns are the number one killer of children.”
Breitbart News noted that a FOX News report pointed to CDC figures that showed firearm-related deaths of people ages 0-19 totaled 4,368 in 2020, while motor vehicle deaths for the same age range totaled 4,036.
Breitbart showed that if a custom search is done on the CDC numbers so that you are limiting the category of “children” to those 0-17 (i.e. those below voting age) then the data completely flips.
The number of firearm-related deaths for children aged 0-17 was 2,281 in 2020, while the number of motor vehicle deaths for the same ages was 2,503.
Moreover, CDC data that the left omits shows that even if we keep the age range of 0-19, unintentional car deaths in 2020 among those individuals were 27 times higher than unintentional gun deaths in that age range.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News 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, a member of Gun Owners of America, and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and has a Ph.D. in Military History. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.