Guns overtake cars as the biggest killer of young Americans

Guns have overtaken car accidents as the biggest killer of children and teenagers in the US, new figures show.

Data released by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed an alarming spike in firearms deaths, especially among young Americans in 2020.

Some 45,222 people died as a result of gun violence that year, the highest number on record.

However, it is the surge in those under 19 killed by guns which is particularly stark, increasing by 29.5 per cent from the previous year to 4,300.

The increase was twice as high as that recorded among the population as a whole.

Over the same period, 3,900 young Americans died as a result of road accidents. It was the first time in 21 years that weapons claimed more young American lives than cars.

America has a notoriously bad road safety record with an estimated 38,680 fatalities in 2020 among a population of 331 million. By comparison, the UK, which has a population of 67 million recorded 1,390 road deaths in the 12 months ending in June last year.

However, a slow reduction in road fatalities has coincided with an alarming rise in gun homicides which, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, rose by 33.4 per cent in 2020.

The 19,384 gun murders that year represented the highest number since 1968.

This sharp increase in gun deaths has coincided with a surge in gun ownership in the US with 7.5 million Americans – nearly three per cent of the population – buying weapons for the first time during the pandemic between January and April 2021.

It meant that five million children became exposed to household firearms.

CDC researchers said the figures showed that gun violence had risen during the pandemic.

"It cannot be assumed that firearm-related mortality will later revert to pre-pandemic levels," they concluded.

"The increasing firearm-related mortality reflects a longer-term trend and shows that we continue to fail to protect our youth from a preventable cause of death shows that we continue to fail to protect our youth from a preventable cause of death."