A report by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions analyzed gun death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which revealed that more than 48,000 people across the U.S. died from gun violence in 2022.
Among those deaths, more than 2,500 children (ages one through nine) and teens (10 through 17) died by a firearm — an average of seven deaths every day. That year, the report found that firearms accounted for 30 percent of all the deaths that occurred among young people ages 15 to 17. Guns were also the leading cause of death among children and teens, accounting for more deaths than car crashes, overdoses, or cancers, per the report.
Notably, a distinction was made for this year’s data, with young people ages 18 to 19 categorized as “emerging adults” due to some states allowing 18 year olds to legally purchase certain firearms. “Since 2013, the gun death rate among children and teens (1–17) has increased 106 percent,” the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions report stated. The report found that while the gun homicide rate dropped 7.
5 percent in 2022, 19,651 people were killed by a gun that year — the second-highest number of gun homicide deaths recorded. The report also spotlighted how gun violence disproportionally affected Black and Hispanic/Latino young people. In 2022, Black children and teens suffered a gun homicide rate 18 times higher compared with white children and teens.
That year, the gun homicide rate among H.