Explainer
Firearms are the leading cause of death for young people ages 18 to 25, beyond drug addiction and other causes.
by
Released on April 25, 2025
Advocacy groups posted about firearms-related deaths after a Florida State gunman killed two people last week and injured at least six people.
“Gun violence is the leading killer of American college-age people,” Moms Demand Action, part of Everytown, a gun violence prevention organization for gun safety, posted on the thread on April 17th. “Our young people are worth more.”
According to health experts and latest data, the statement is accurate for firearm-related deaths in this class of youth.
Everytown for Gun Safety has released a 2023 report showing 2023 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data showing firearms, showing death mechanisms for people aged 18 to 25 years old.
Politifact queried CDC’s web-based injury statistics query and reporting system for data on the latest injuries deaths between the ages of 18 and 25. At ages 24 and 25, drug addiction was the biggest cause.
CDC data are the leading cause of death among people aged 18 to 25, showing accidents that resulted in succession of suicides and murder and subsequent accidents. All of these categories include firearm-related deaths. CDC spokesman Brian Tsai told Politifact that while the government does not rank firearm death as the main cause of death as the government occurs across categories, it “indicating that firearms are the main mechanism of injury and death.”
“The categories of ranking causes must be mutually exclusive, and ranking categories of murder, suicide and unintended injuries has been a longstanding policy of the CDC,” Tsai said in an email. “The CDC is classified as a mechanism of death rather than classifying firearms as a cause of death (although it is the same in car accidents).
The CDC considers an unintended firearm injury to be “a fatal or non-fatal firearm injury that occurs when you play without evidence of intentional harm in a firearm or other accidental firearm or other incidental firearm.”
In 2023, CDC data showed that unintended injuries (14,238) were the main cause of death among people aged 18-25, followed by suicide (5,632) and murder (5,060). Most were murders (4,651) and suicides (3,158) before the deaths of firearms.
Gun rights question whether suicide should be included in the term “gun violence.” Countries such as Canada and Australia have included firearm suicides in their semester. The investigation into gun violence uses a range of language and criteria that include suicide deaths.
Daniel Webster, a well-known scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, told Politifact that Mom’s demand action statement was accurate.
Veronica Pier, a social epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of California, Davis University School of Medicine, said the statistics were accurate based on 2023 mortality data, saying “gun violence” includes suicide and murder.
Wertheimer featured Politifact in a 2024 article by KFF, a health information nonprofit organization that includes KFF Health News.
Shooting at school and university premises appears to account for a portion of firearms-related deaths among people ages 18 to 25. Due to gun safety, 463 people have been killed from a shootout on the school grounds since 2013, according to Everytown.
Our arbitration
“Gun violence is the leading killer of American college-age people,” Moms Demand Action said.
According to the CDC, accidental deaths of people aged 18 to 25 in 2023 were number one, with firearms being the “major mechanism.”
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