Accidental suffocation deaths are ten times higher among children than are accidental gun deaths, numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show.
This is another blow to President Biden, Vice President Harris, and numerous left-leaning celebrities who have spent the last year claiming guns are the number one cause of death for children.
Biden, in particular, has claimed numerous times that guns are the “leading killer of children.” However, Breitbart News showed that the CDC figures used by Biden count 18 and 19-year-olds–i.e., people of voting age–as children. When the CDC figures are adjusted to count only ages 0-17 it is immediately evident that motor vehicle deaths surpass gun deaths.
And Crime Prevention Research Center’s John Lott used a recent Real Clear Politics column to draw attention to the fact that children age 0-17 also die more frequently from accidental suffocation than from accidental gun deaths.
Lott, who points out the problem that 17-year-olds pose via their prime age for gang affiliation, noted, “Even if we are counting 17-year-old gang members as ‘children,’ the White House’s claim is incorrect. In 2019 and 2020, more minors died from suffocation.”
Lott arrived at his findings through a combination of data from the CDC and the FBI.
Breitbart News followed up on Lott’s findings by isolating our search to CDC data. We found there were 121 accidental firearm deaths in 2020 for children age 0-17 versus 1,236 accidental suffocations. This means accidental suffocations among children were ten times higher than accidental gun deaths among children in 2020.
Moreover, on May 26, 2022, Breitbart News noted that even with the broader age range–ages 0-19-years of age–CDC figures show accidental car deaths are 27 times more likely than accidental gun deaths for children.
CDC figures show 149 unintentional gun deaths among children ages 0-19 in 2020. The figures show 4,036 unintentional car deaths for children during the same year.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
