Protect Children, Not Guns 2009
Release Date: September 16, 2009
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The latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 3,184 children and teens died from gunfire in the United States in 2006—a 6 percent increase from 2005. This means one young life lost every two hours and 45 minutes, almost nine every day, 61 every week.
Of these deaths, 2,225 were homicides, 763 were suicides and 196 were due to an accident or undetermined circumstances. Boys accounted for 2,815 of the deaths; girls for 369 deaths. More than five times as many children and teens―17,451―suffered non-fatal gun injuries.
- The number of children and teens in America killed by guns in 2006 would fill more than 127 public school classrooms of 25 students each.
- More preschoolers (63) were killed by firearms than law enforcement officers (48) killed in the line of duty.
- Black males ages 15 to 19 are almost five times as likely as their White peers and more than twice as likely as their Hispanic peers to be killed by firearms.
- Between 1979 and 2006, the yearly number of firearm deaths of White children and teens decreased by about 40 percent, but deaths of Black children and teens increased by 55 percent.
- Since 1979, gun violence has ended the lives of 107,603 children and teens in America.
- Sixty percent of them were White; 37 percent were Black.
- The number of Black children and teens killed by gunfire since 1979 (39,957) is more than 10 times the number of Black citizens of all ages lynched throughout American history (3,437).
