ACROSS AMERICA — More American kids lost their lives to gun violence in 2020 than in any year before as firearms-related deaths eclipsed motor vehicle fatalities for children 1-19, putting the United States in a class of its own among wealthy, similarly sized countries, according to a pair of reports.

Most of the more than 4,350 U.S. children and young adults in that age group who died in firearms violence in 2020 — a stunning 30 percent increase from 2019 — weren’t killed in mass shootings.

Rather, research shows, most were killed in homes and neighborhoods in incidents that didn’t get the attention of the mass shootings. A firearms death is considered one that results from homicide, suicide or accidental death.

The young 2020 victims, in many cases, were kids killed by other kids in street violence, as Joliet Patch reported. They were kids like Caleb Reed, 17, of Chicago, an activist who worked to stem teen gun violence before he was accidentally shot and killed by his friend. Police said the friend was shooting at a passing car as they walked down a street, Evanston Patch previously reported.

They were kids like the 12-year-old son of Brad Hunstable, who died by suicide. His father lamented to The New Yorker that parents “can’t fathom and don’t want to fathom their kids doing it, so they underinvest in making sure it doesn’t happen.” Additionally, he said, pediatricians don’t know how to screen for suicidal ideation as they do, for example, lead poisoning.

Less often, they’re kids like a 2-year-old Pennsylvania boy who found his father’s loaded gun and accidentally shot himself in the head, Levittown Patch reported.

An analysis of that data by University of Michigan researchers showed firearm-related deaths among children ages 1-19 increased by 30 percent from 2019 to 2020, compared with a 13.5 percent increase in the older group during the same time period.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t break out firearms mortality among children by state.

Overall, researchers who analyzed the CDC data said, the increase in child firearms deaths was driven by a 33.4 percent increase in firearms homicides, which disproportionately affect young people.

Of particular note, the percentages of people who died by suicide and violent assault are almost evenly flipped in comparisons between children and adults.

Most of the 2020 firearms deaths among children (65 percent) were due to violent assault, but 30 percent of them were ruled suicides.

Among adults, 55 percent of adult firearm deaths in 2020 were ruled suicides, compared to 30 percent that resulted from violent assaults.

Firearm deaths among children aren’t a uniquely American problem, but the United States far outpaces other similarly large wealthy countries in this category, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Kaiser’s research shows firearms are the 15th leading cause of death among children in the United Kingdom and Japan. It ranks 13th in the Netherlands and Germany; 11th in Australia; ninth in Sweden, Austria and Belgium; eighth in France; sixth in Switzerland; and fifth in Canada.

The United States accounts for 97 percent of gun-related child deaths among the 12 nations, despite having only 45 percent of the population of the cluster, according to Kaiser.

Notably, the other 11 countries combined accounted for only 153 of the 4,510 firearms deaths in children ages 1-19; in other words, 4,357 of these deaths occurred in the United States.

One reason for the increase in firearms deaths: easy access to guns, researchers say.

Americans bought 23 million guns in 2020, a 64 percent increase over 2019 sales that shattered previous records, The Washington Post reported in an analysis of federal data on gun check backgrounds. About a fifth of 2020 gun purchases were by first-time gun buyers, according to the analysis.

The analysis also shows that many states that saw an increase in gun deaths also saw an increase in gun sales.

That kids die in gun violence is no longer unthinkable, but politicization of guns has taken priority over public health, Drs. Eric W. Fleegar and Lois K. Lee, researchers and emergency room pediatricians who study firearms injuries, wrote in Scientific American.

No one knows exactly how many guns there are in the United States because states don’t track gun sales or require registration, but estimates are around 400 million.

Fleegar and Lee pointed out that 20 years ago, a majority of gun owners used the firearms for hunting and sports, but now 88 percent say they have them for self-protection, and 40 percent of them keep an “easily accessible” loaded gun at all times.

Their research and analysis of federal data shows that last year, 30 million U.S. children lived in households with at least one gun. In households with children, 73 percent of guns were stored unlocked and/or loaded, putting children at risk of accidentally shooting themselves or others.

“If you keep a gun in your home, storing it unloaded and keeping the gun and ammunition locked away separately can decrease the risk,” they wrote.

From 2015-2021, there were 2,446 unintentional child shootings, resulting in 923 deaths and 1,603 injuries, the researchers said.

They also pointed out that although cars and virtually every other product sold in the United States are subject to safety regulations under the Consumer Product Safety Act, firearms are exempt.

“Thus, while pill bottle makers, hair dryer producers and motor vehicle companies constantly work to improve their products’ safety, the U.S. government has decreed gun manufactures do not need to consider whether a two-year-old should be able to pull the trigger on a gun or whether a teenager should be able to fire a gun they don’t own,” they wrote.

Two decades ago, the CDC proclaimed a reduction in deaths due to motor vehicle crashes was one of the substantial public health victories of the 20th century. That accomplishment, Lee and others wrote in a study published in April in the New England Journal of Medicine, wouldn’t have happened without the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and a regulatory culture that demanded continuous improvement.

The toll of gun violence on America’s youth has reached a reckoning point, Fleegar and Lee said in their opinion piece in Scientific American.

“With thousands of children killed each year in the U.S. by firearms, we must, as a country, ultimately reckon with the essential question of what is most important: Is it the narrow focus on individuals’ rights or the broader vision of societal responsibility?” they wrote.

The common denominator in gun violence is that it happens in towns and neighborhoods across the country to people we know. It touches our communities in multiple ways, from children who pick up their parents’ handguns and accidentally shoot themselves to adolescents who end their lives with handguns to mass shootings. In this reporting project, Patch explores those and other ways gun violence impacts our lives, and what is being done to make our communities safer.

Do you have a story idea for this series? Email beth.dalbey@patch.com.

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