Firearms have replaced car accidents as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States.

According to official data from the health authority CDC from 2020, a total of 4368 children and adolescents up to the age of 19 died from firearms.

In comparison, there were 4,036 motor vehicle-related deaths, the leading cause of death in this age group to date.

The number of children and young people killed by firearms corresponds to a rate of 5.4 per 100,000.

Almost two-thirds of these deaths were homicides.

The fact that deaths were replaced by vehicles at the top is probably also due to the fact that road safety measures have improved over the decades.

Meanwhile, gun laws have been relaxed.

The trend lines cross in 2020, more recent data are not yet available.

The figures were published in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine. Just this week, 19 children were killed in a school massacre in Texas.

Most gun-related deaths are suicides.

School shootings, such as in Uvalde, Texas, account for only a small proportion of childhood gun deaths.

Boys were six times more likely to die from a gun than girls.

The deaths disproportionately affect black children and youth, who are more than four times as likely to die as white children.

For these, vehicles still pose a greater threat. By region, the death rate from guns was highest in the capital, Washington, followed by the states of Louisiana and Alaska.