ILLINOIS — More American kids lost their lives to gun violence in 2020 than in any year before as firearms-related deaths eclipsed motor vehicle fatalities for children 1-19, putting the United States in a class of its own among wealthy, similarly sized countries, according to a pair of reports.

Most of the more than 4,350 U.S. children and young adults in that age group who died in firearms violence in 2020 — a stunning 30 percent increase from 2019 — weren’t killed in mass shootings.

Rather, research shows, most were killed in homes and neighborhoods in incidents that didn’t get the attention of the mass shootings. A firearms death is considered one that results from homicide, suicide or accidental death.

The young victims, in many cases, were kids killed by other kids in street violence, as Joliet Patch reported. They were kids like Caleb Reed, 17, of Chicago, an activist who worked to stem teen gun violence before he was accidentally shot and killed by his friend. Police said the friend was shooting at a passing car as they walked down a street, Evanston Patch previously reported.

They were kids like 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams, who was shot to death in a McDonald's drive-thru on Chicago's West Side, Patch reported. Her father was also shot but survived.

Or children like 9-year-old Jeremiah Ellis, who was fatally shot through the wall while watching TV at his grandmother's house. His 5-year-old relative was also wounded, Skokie Patch reported.

Less often, they’re kids like a 2-year-old Joliet boy who found his father’s loaded gun and accidentally shot himself in the head, Joliet Patch reported. His father was convicted of unlawful storage of a firearm earlier this summer.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t break out firearms mortality among children by state. Overall, Illinois saw a 27 percent increase in firearms deaths between 2019 and 2020.

Between 2019 and 2020, the firearm death rate went from 10.8 deaths per 100,000 people to 14.1 deaths in Illinois — or from 1,367 gun deaths in 2019 to 1,745 in 2020. That's an additional 378 deaths in 2020 compared with the year before.

An analysis of that data by University of Michigan researchers showed firearm-related deaths among children ages 1-19 increased by 30 percent from 2019 to 2020, compared with a 13.5 percent increase in the older group during the same time period.

Overall, researchers who analyzed the CDC data said, the increase in child firearms deaths was driven by a 33.4 percent increase in firearms homicides, which disproportionately affect young people.

Of particular note, the percentages of people who died by suicide and violent assault are almost evenly flipped in comparisons between children and adults.

Most of the 2020 firearms deaths among children (65 percent) were due to violent assault, but 30 percent of them were ruled suicides.

Among adults, 55 percent of adult firearm deaths in 2020 were ruled suicides, compared to 30 percent that resulted from violent assaults.

Firearm deaths among children aren’t a uniquely American problem, but the United States far outpaces other similarly large wealthy countries in this category, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Kaiser’s research shows firearms are the 15th leading cause of death among children in the United Kingdom and Japan. It ranks 13th in the Netherlands and Germany; 11th in Australia; ninth in Sweden, Austria and Belgium; eighth in France; sixth in Switzerland; and fifth in Canada.

The United States accounts for 97 percent of gun-related child deaths among the 12 nations, despite having only 45 percent of the population of the cluster, according to Kaiser.

Notably, the other 11 countries combined accounted for only 153 of the 4,510 firearms deaths in children ages 1-19; in other words, 4,357 of these deaths occurred in the United States.

One reason for the increase in firearms deaths: easy access to guns, researchers say.

Americans bought 23 million guns in 2020, a 64 percent increase over 2019 sales that shattered previous records, The Washington Post reported in an analysis of federal data on gun check backgrounds. About a fifth of 2020 gun purchases were by first-time gun buyers, according to the analysis.

The analysis also shows that many states that saw an increase in gun deaths also saw an increase in gun sales.

However, Illinois saw a decrease in gun sales early this year — a dip gun rights advocates say is seasonal.

There were a total of 2,064,400 FBI firearm background checks in the state in the first half of 2022, compared to 6,050,704 in the first six months of 2021 — a 65.9 percent reduction and the largest decline among states.

That kids die in gun violence is no longer unthinkable, but politicization of guns has taken priority over public health, Drs. Eric W. Fleegar and Lois K. Lee, researchers and emergency room pediatricians who study firearms injuries, wrote in Scientific American.

No one knows exactly how many guns there are in the United States because states don’t track gun sales or require registration, but estimates are around 400 million.

Fleegar and Lee pointed out that 20 years ago, a majority of gun owners used the firearms for hunting and sports, but now 88 percent say they have them for self-protection, and 40 percent of them keep an “easily accessible” loaded gun at all times.

In Illinois, the Illinois State Police conducted a 46-day "firearm enforcement blitz" this summer, working with local police agencies to take guns out of the hands of more than 1,000 people who possessed them illegally. The effort led to state police confiscating weapons from 223 Northern Illinois residents alone. Statewide, a total of 1,017 people had guns confiscated during the enforcement.

In November, Gov. J.B. Pritzker declared gun violence a public health crisis in Illinois and pledged $250 million in resources to help community organizations fight gun violence as part of his Reimagine Public Safety Act.

Some towns in Illinois — including Highland Park, where a gunman killed seven people and wounded dozens of others this year at a July 4 parade — also have an assault weapons ban. A ban on certain types of assault weapons was also recently passed in an 8-1 vote in Naperville.

The Highland Park July 4 parade shooting critically wounded 8-year-old Cooper Roberts, leaving him paralyzed, and injured his mother and brother. The tragedy has some officials demanding state and federal bans on assault weapons like the one used by the 21-year-old who stands accused of killing seven people and wounding nearly 50 more.

Read more about the recovery of Cooper Roberts and the parade shooting on Highland Park Patch.

Their research and analysis of federal data shows that last year, 30 million U.S. children lived in households with at least one gun. In households with children, 73 percent of guns were stored unlocked and/or loaded, putting children at risk of accidentally shooting themselves or others.

“If you keep a gun in your home, storing it unloaded and keeping the gun and ammunition locked away separately can decrease the risk,” they wrote.

From 2015-2021, there were 2,446 unintentional child shootings, resulting in 923 deaths and 1,603 injuries, the researchers said.

They also pointed out that although cars and virtually every other product sold in the United States are subject to safety regulations under the Consumer Product Safety Act, firearms are exempt.

“Thus, while pill bottle makers, hair dryer producers and motor vehicle companies constantly work to improve their products’ safety, the U.S. government has decreed gun manufactures do not need to consider whether a two-year-old should be able to pull the trigger on a gun or whether a teenager should be able to fire a gun they don’t own,” they wrote.

Two decades ago, the CDC proclaimed a reduction in deaths due to motor vehicle crashes was one of the substantial public health victories of the 20th century. That accomplishment, Lee and others wrote in a study published in April in the New England Journal of Medicine, wouldn’t have happened without the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and a regulatory culture that demanded continuous improvement.

The toll of gun violence on America’s youth has reached a reckoning point, Fleegar and Lee said in their opinion piece in Scientific American.

“With thousands of children killed each year in the U.S. by firearms, we must, as a country, ultimately reckon with the essential question of what is most important: Is it the narrow focus on individuals’ rights or the broader vision of societal responsibility?” they wrote.

The common denominator in gun violence is that it happens in towns and neighborhoods across the country to people we know. It touches our communities in multiple ways, from children who pick up their parents’ handguns and accidentally shoot themselves to adolescents who end their lives with handguns to mass shootings. In this reporting project, Patch explores those and other ways gun violence impacts our lives, and what is being done to make our communities safer.

Do you have a story idea for this series? Email beth.dalbey@patch.com.

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