Narrative Alert: States With Strictest Gun Control Have More Adolescent Firearm Fatalities Than ‘Permissive’ States

By Salam Fatohi

Skepticism and statistics go hand-in-hand when reading breaking news from the medical community about firearm regulations. Like the mainstream media, the medical community typically leans far left on guns.

One example of this problematic partnership was on display when a study was released in 2022 suggesting that firearms had taken over as the “leading cause of death among children” in the United States. Not only did NSSF take the flawed study apart, even The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler deconstructed and fact-checked how the data had been cut and manipulated in order to arrive at the conclusion, often repeated by former President Joe Biden, Biden administration officials, gun control activists and media across the country.

Jumping back to the present, a more recent article published in June, 2025 in JAMA Pediatrics, Firearm Laws and Pediatric Mortality in the US, examined adolescent firearm mortality after the 2010 McDonald v. Chicago case, which challenged Chicago’s handgun ban. The study investigated the data and trends to arrive at the claim that restricting legal firearm access had resulted in less adolescent firearm fatalities.

Needless to say, at face value the findings are troubling. A closer look at the data underlying the study, however, reveals it’s just more gun control propaganda masquerading as public health literature.

Leading Cause and Questionable Statistics

The study opens with the often repeated and misleading claim that firearms are the leading cause of death for children in the United States. As mentioned, this false claim was debunked by The Washington Post which showed that firearms were not the leading cause of death for American children. Older teens, 15-17 years old, are the most susceptible, predominantly for black teens. That population is at high risk for violence-related disparities.

The authors of this JAMA study came up with a bold and striking claim: “That permissive firearm laws contributed to thousands of excess firearm deaths among children living in states with permissive policies; future work should focus on determining which types of laws conferred the most harm and which offered the most protection.”

The study’s authors categorized the states, where there was enough data, by three legal groupings of “Strict,” “Permissive” and “Most Permissive,” related to their firearm laws. Predictably, they “found” that states with “Strict” firearm regulations post-McDonald v Chicago were associated with less adolescent firearm fatalities.

For the media, their gun control allies and politicians, the conclusion was clear: states that respect Second Amendment rights are bad, and states with strict gun control are better. The New York Times ran with the story. So too did CNN, never questioning the manipulation of the data, even blindly repeating the original debunked claim ABC News published the story, as did others. It was syndicated and published all across the country countless times.

But why do the study’s authors manipulate the data by using estimated, predicted and crude-rate adjusted figures instead of analyzing the real incidents?

The answer is obvious. They did so because the raw figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tell a very different story.

Raw Data, Real Results

Rebuilding the data set using the same time, population, and mechanism parameters established by the authors using the CDC’s data tells a different story entirely. The eight states the authors rated as “Strict” and having the most restrictive gun control laws – California, New York, Maryland, Rhode Island, Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey – on average saw more unadjusted adolescent firearm mortality than the 11 “Permissive” and 30 “Most Permissive” states.

Only when adjusting this limited population by the crude rate does the narrative flip. California (“Strict”) and Texas (“Most Permissive”), two states with similarly high populations and diametrically opposing firearm regulations show California as having more adolescent firearm fatalities for the pre- and post-McDonald study period.

More Transparency, Better Solutions

Sadly, gun control advocates in public health lab coats have for years manipulated data to fit preconceived narratives to tug on emotional heartstrings in order to advance an anti-Second Amendment political agenda. And what better heartstring to pluck than “children.”

The firearm industry isn’t deterred or distracted by biased studies that push political narratives. For decades, the firearm industry has brought forward effective and proven firearm safety initiatives to keep firearms beyond the reach of those who should never have them. That includes unsupervised children.

The firearm industry’s Real Solutions. Safer Communities. initiatives are prime examples of this holistic effort to reduce tragedies while protecting rights. Particularly, Project ChildSafe is the largest and most comprehensive firearm safety education program in the United States, created for gun owners, by the firearm industry. Since its launch in 1999, Project ChildSafe has distributed more than 41 million firearm safety kits that include a locking device and partnered with more than 15,000 law enforcement agencies across the country and five U.S. territories to promote secure firearm storage practices. As the program celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, NSSF and Project ChildSafe remain committed to educating and providing resources to gun owners and non-gun owners alike.

NSSF will continue the hard work of educating Americans and working to reduce unauthorized access to firearms.

 

Salam Fatohi is the Director of Research for the National Shooting Sports Foundation.