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Child Gun Deaths Rose in States With Weaker Laws After U.S. Supreme Court Decision

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on June 10, 2025.

By I. Edwards HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, June 10, 2025 — A 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling may have led to more gun deaths of children and teens in states that enacted more lenient gun laws afterward, new research suggests.

The study — published June 9 in JAMA Pediatrics — looked at firearm deaths in the 13 years after the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment limits how much state and local governments can regulate gun ownership.

The team used data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to track firearm deaths before and after the 2010 ruling. From 2010 to 2023, about 23,000 children and teens died from gun injuries nationwide — 7,400 more than expected based on earlier trends, The New York Times reported.

The study grouped states into three categories: strict, permissive and most permissive gun laws.

In nine states with the strictest laws, youth firearm deaths did not rise. In four — California, Maryland, New York and Rhode Island — deaths went down. The average age of children who died was 14, The Times said.

“It’s surprising how few of these are accidents,” said lead author Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency room doctor at Massachusetts General Brigham in Boston.

“I always thought that a lot of pediatric mortality from guns is that somebody got into the wrong place, and I still think safe storage is important, but it’s mostly homicides and suicides,” he added.

The deaths hit Black youth especially hard. They had the highest gun death rates before 2010 — and saw the largest increases in states that loosened gun laws. But in states with strict laws, gun deaths among Black children stayed flat, The Times said in a new report.

Gun safety advocates said the findings support the idea that strong laws save lives.

“We have shown in the past that states that have the strongest laws when it comes to gun policy have a gun violence rate that’s 2.5 times less than the states with the weakest,” Nick Suplina of the organization Everytown for Gun Safety, told The Times.

“Lawmakers that refuse to take action or further loosen laws are putting kids’ lives at risk," he added.

Suplina also noted that these safety laws led to a drop in accidental shootings, while also preventing school shootings and suicides among kids.

“Three of four school shootings are committed with a weapon taken from the home of the family or a close relative,” he said.

John Commerford, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, called the study “political propaganda masquerading as scientific research.”

Researchers said the legal changes that have followed the high court's ruling offered a clear picture of what happens when laws change.

“It was like a natural experiment,” Faust said. “You’ve got an epidemic that’s really getting worse.”

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted June 2025

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