A new study published on Monday reveals that U.S. states with relaxed gun laws have experienced thousands more child deaths, particularly from homicides and suicides, than would have been expected under normal circumstances.
While the right to bear arms is constitutionally protected in the U.S. under the Second Amendment to the Constitution, individual states can regulate this right with varying degrees of strictness.
When the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that the Second Amendment applied to states and local governments, most states opted to relax access to firearms.
Motor vehicle-related deaths have decreased dramatically, yet firearm deaths have increased, becoming the leading cause of death for children over the age of one, according to Jeremy Faust, who led the study published in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, highlighted that this trend is unique among countries comparable to the United States.
For this study, his team conducted an “excess mortality analysis,” comparing actual deaths from 2011 to 2023 with projections based on trends from 1999 to 2010, while accounting for population growth.
The findings are striking: US states that have loosened gun legislation saw over 7,400 additional child gun deaths, 6,000 of them in the most lenient states.
In contrast, the eight strictest states generally did not experience excess mortality.
Although the study cannot definitively prove a causal link between the deaths and relaxed gun laws, it provides significant and illuminating data.
Researchers found no notable increase in homicides and suicides when firearms were not involved.
Furthermore, black children experienced the largest increase, with the study suggesting a potential social disparity in how securely firearms are stored in homes.
The research also noted exceptions: child deaths rose in Illinois and Connecticut despite stricter laws, but the latter’s increase mainly attributed to a 2012 mass school shooting.
