Bloomberg abandons claim that guns are top killer of kids | Opinion
Because columnists mostly hop and skip from topic to topic, and because there are so many opinionated voices out in the media, we rarely get to see our work have an impact. The best of us can do it, like my former colleague Melinda Henneberger, but for most of us it is a rare treat. Today I wanted to share with you a small achievement that I think will make the national debate about guns a little more honest.
Last June, I wrote a column about the claim that the No. 1 killer of “children and teens” is gunfire. Here’s how the most influential report on the subject put it on Page 1: “Since 2013, the gun death rate among children and teens (1–17) has increased 106%. Guns were the leading cause of death among children and teens accounting for more deaths than car crashes, overdoses, or cancers.”
That’s true for teens but not for children, if you break down the numbers. This distortion of reality from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health had made it into most of the nation’s media and to the halls of Congress and state legislatures around the country.
Since my column on Bloomberg’s falsehood, the new version of the school’s annual gun violence report came out. Here’s what it says now on page one: “Overall, firearms remained the leading cause of death for young people 1 to 17 for the past four years, accounting for more deaths than car crashes, overdoses, or cancers. In 2023, there were 2,566 gun deaths among young people including 118 from ages 1–4, 116 from ages 5–9, 530 from ages 10–14, and 1,802 from ages 15–17. While firearms are the leading cause of death overall for young people ages 1 to 17, they are among the leading causes, but not always the top cause, for some individual youth age groups.”
They have dropped the “children and teens” language that misled people into thinking the statistic was true of children and changed it to young people, which is true. Moreover, they clearly admit the numbers that I had to drag out of them earlier this year: The vast majority of gun deaths are among teens, not children.
I am a gun rights supporter, but that doesn’t keep me from being horrified by the death toll that freedom brings with it. I think we need to find constitutional ideas to lower that number. Even 118 deaths for kids ages 1 to 4 is way, way too many. But I think the best route to solutions can be found through an honest accounting of what is actually happening, not twisting statistics to make reality look like more of a tragedy.
David Mastio is a national columnist for The Kansas City Star and McClatchy.
