Vice President Kamala Harris recently stated that gun violence is the leading cause of death among children, a claim that has been deemed incorrect. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data for 2020 indicated that there were 2,281 firearm-related deaths among children aged 0-17, while motor vehicle deaths were higher at 2,503. Furthermore, the statistics highlight that children are 27 times more likely to die in an accidental car accident than a gun accident, and accidental suffocation deaths are 10 times more common than accidental gun deaths.
The vice president tweeted:
Congress must have the courage to step up and pass commonsense gun safety laws. pic.twitter.com/J0Naa8WHW8
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 16, 2023
Despite these figures, Harris continued to promote the need for universal background checks and a ban on “assault weapons”. It’s worth noting that California, Harris’s home state, already implements these measures, yet it still led the nation in homicides in 2021, as per CDC data.
