Firearm injury deaths among children and adolescents are often the result of the shooter playing with the gun or showing it off, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

What You Need To Know

  • Unintentional firearm injuries are a leading cause of death among children in the U.S., according to a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control

  • The deaths are often the result of the shooter playing with the gun or showing it off

  • Boys account for 83% of unintentional firearm injury deaths

  • The majority of deaths were from handguns and took place in the victim's own home

The firearms are frequently stored loaded and unlocked, the report found.

Unintentional injury is the top cause of death among children between the ages of 1 and 17. Firearms are one of the leading injury methods. An unintentional firearm injury death is one that results “from a penetrating injury or gunshot wound from a weapon that uses a powder charge to fire a projectile when there was a preponderance of evidence that the shooting was not intentionally directed at the victim,” according to the National Violent Death Reporting System.

For its report, the CDC looked at data from the NVDRS from 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico between 2003 and 2021. Over that time frame, the NVDRS identified 1,262 unintentional firearm injury deaths among children aged 0 to 17. The majority (33%) were among children 11 to 15 years old, followed by children aged 0 to 5 (29%), 16 and 17 (24%) and 6 to 10 (14%).

Boys made up the largest proportion of unintentional firearm injury deaths (83%). Most of the fatal injuries occurred inside the victims' own homes (56%).

About half of the fatal injuries were inflicted by others, with 6- to 10-year-olds accounting for the greatest percentage of victims, followed by 11- to 15-year-olds and 16- to 17-year-olds.

Almost 42% of the victims were shot by a friend or acquaintance, 32% were shot by a sibling, 12% were shot by another relative, and 7% were shot by a parent.

Almost 38% of firearm injury deaths were self-inflicted, with children 5 years old and younger accounting for the greatest proportion of such victims (58%).

Children aged 0 to 5 who were victims of unintentional firearm injury deaths were most likely to have mistaken the firearm for a toy, the study found.

Handguns accounted for 74% of the weapons used in children’s unintentional firearm injury deaths, the analysis found.

Two-thirds of the unintentional firearm injury deaths were the result of the shooter playing with or showing off the firearm to another person when it was discharged. Three-quarters of the firearms that caused the unintentional deaths were stored loaded and unlocked and were usually accessed from a nightstand, under a mattress or bed pillow or on top of a bed.

About 30 million children in the U.S. lived in homes with firearms in 2021, the CDC said, including 4.6 million households that reported storing firearms that were unlocked and loaded.

Unintentional firearm injury deaths of children are preventable, the CDC said in its report.

According to the gun advocacy group the National Rifle Association, a gun should always be kept unloaded until it’s ready to be used. Guns should also be stored “so they are not accessible to unauthorized persons,” according to the group’s website.