I'm no good at this sort of thing because I tend to argue from principle rather than statistics.
I suppose the following is supposed to convince me what a menace guns are and why they should be banned. However, aren't a lot of these suicides? Also, anyone know how many defensive gun usages I should subtract from these stats?
5,740 Children and Teens were Killed by Guns in 2008 and 2009
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2008 and 2009 for children and teens ages 0-19.1
Gun Deaths
In 2008, 2,947 children and teens died from guns in the United States and 2,793 died in 2009
for a total of 5,740—one child or teen every three hours, eight every day, 55 every week for two years.
n The 5,740 children and teens killed by guns in 2008 and 2009:
• Would fill more than 229 public school classrooms of 25 students each;
• Was greater than the number of U.S. military personnel killed in action in Iraq and
Afghanistan (5,013).2
n The number of preschoolers killed by guns in 2008 (88) and in 2009 (85) was nearly double the
number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in 2008 (41) and 2009 (48).
n Black children and teens accounted for 45 percent of all child and teen gun deaths in 2008
and 2009 but were only 15 percent of the total child population.
n Black males 15-19 were eight times as likely as White males of the same age and
two-and-a-half times as likely as their Hispanic peers to be killed in a gun homicide in 2009.
n The leading cause of death among Black teens ages 15 to 19 in 2008 and 2009 was gun
homicide. For White teens 15 to 19 it was motor vehicle accidents followed by gun homicide
in 2008 and gun suicide in 2009.
n The most recent analysis of data from 23 industrialized nations shows that 87 percent of the
children under age 15 killed by guns in these nations lived in the United States. The gun
homicide rate in the United States for teens and young adults ages 15 to 24 was 42.7 times
higher than the combined rate for the other nations.
n Of the 116,385 children and teens killed by a gun since 1979, when gun data by age were first
collected, 44,038 were Black—nearly 13 times more than the number of recorded lynchings
of Black people of all ages in the 86 years from 1882 to 1968. Even so, more White than
Black children and teens have died from gun violence.
2008
2,947 total firearm fatalities
2,037 homicide
748 suicide
162 accidental or undetermined
2,577 boys
370 girls
2,571 between ages 15-19
408 under age 15
148 under age 10
88 under age 5
1,488 White
1,371 Black
563 Hispanic*
46 American Indian or Alaska Native
42 Asian or Pacific Islander
2009
2,793 total firearm fatalities
1,855 homicide
800 suicide
138 accidental or undetermined
2,434 boys
359 girls
2,439 between ages15-19
354 under age 15
151 under age 10
85 under age 5
1,515 White
1,211 Black
566 Hispanic*
40 American Indian or Alaska Native
27 Asian or Pacific Islander
* Persons of Hispanic origin can be of any race; the 563 deaths in 2008 and the 566 deaths in 2009 are included in the
four race categories.
