In 2010, The US Made Guns Easier To Get. The Result? Thousands Of Dead Kids

Guns, according to many a Second Amendment advocate, don’t kill people – people kill people. It’s a catchy turn of phrase, and it spawned a fun Welsh bop that one time, but it ignores one very important variable: that it’s a whole lot easier for people to kill people when they have easy access to guns.

Don’t believe us? Well… that’s honestly baffling, it’s just common sense. But you don’t actually have to take our word for it: this month sees yet more scientific evidence demonstrating the fact that lax gun laws lead to more deaths. And extra tragically, this time, it’s kids.

“We saw over 7,400 more pediatric deaths due to firearms than would have been expected” in the years between 2011 and 2023, said Jeremy Faust, MD, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in a statement. Faust is the first author of a new study investigating the link between permissive firearm laws and mortality rates in children during that period. 

It’s not a random timespan by any means – rather, it’s the 13 years immediately following McDonald v Chicago, the 2010 US Supreme Court case that radically reduced the ability of state and local governments to institute the strictest gun control laws. In the time since, the US has seen a long-term general trend towards laxer and laxer firearm laws. More than half of the 50 states now have unrestricted concealed carry laws – a tenfold increase since 2010 – and many states have removed “impediments” to gun ownership like, you know, training requirements or any kind of permit system.

And apparently, all those changes have had an effect. The researchers split the states into three groups: those with the most permissive gun laws, those with “permissive” laws, and those with strict laws. “During the post–McDonald v Chicago period (2011-2023), there were 6029 excess firearm deaths […] in the most permissive group,” the paper reports. “In the permissive group, there were 1424 excess firearm deaths.”

In states with strict gun laws, by contrast, “there were −55 excess firearm deaths.” 

It’s not hard to draw a conclusion from such figures, is it? “Permissive firearm laws contributed to thousands of excess firearm deaths among children living in states with permissive policies,” the paper states. Dig a little deeper into the data, and the picture grows even more distressing: the researchers found that black kids, already more likely to die at the end of a firearm for reasons, are now more more likely than they used to be in states with permissive laws.

And no – it’s not just that kids are dying more in general: “When [we] checked against other causes of death, including homicides and suicides not involving firearms, there were not similar changes,” Faust pointed out. “This shows that differences in firearm laws matters.”

Exactly which differences matter most is something the team plans to study next – which laws were most dangerous, and which saved the most lives. Getting those findings into the ears of lawmakers, however – well, that’ll be a whole project in its own right, most likely.

Still, let’s hope it works out. “Addressing the epidemic of pediatric firearm mortality requires collective action and policy change,” said Onyeka Otugo, MD, MPH, an author on the study and an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Gun laws truly make a difference for the collective safety of children.”

The study is published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.