Fact Check: Alyssa Milano Falsely Claims ‘Firearms Are the Leading Cause of Death for American Children’

CLAIM: Actress and gun control advocate Alyssa Milano claimed that guns are the number one killer of children Tuesday, one day after a transgender shooter killed three students and three staffers at a Nashville Christian school.

VERDICT: False.

FIREARMS ARE THE LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH FOR AMERICAN CHILDREN.

Just waking up in this country puts our children at risk of a violent death.

Our one job as parents is to protect them. We are failing at our one job.

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) March 28, 2023

Milano is the latest in a long line of leftists and non-fact-checking moderates to make this claim. She was preceded by FOX News and President Joe Biden, both of which made the claim in the summer of 2022 after a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was widely reported in late May that year.

Most recently, the claim was made by actor Billy Porter and former President Barack Obama.

The claim rests on the CDC numbers reporting 18 and 19-year-olds as children. If so adjusted, the CDC numbers show firearm-related deaths of children ages 0-19 totaled 4,368 in 2020, while motor vehicle deaths for the same age range totaled 4,036.

However, Breitbart News found a completely different result by going on the CDC website and adjusting the numbers to remove 18 and 19-year-olds, i.e., people of voting and military age, from the “children” category.

With the age range set at 0-17, the number of firearm-related deaths for children was 2,281 in 2020, while the number of motor vehicle deaths for the same ages was 2,503.

Another important point: Even if the category for children is kept at 0-19 years of age, those categorized as children are 27 times more likely to die in an accidental car death than from an accidental gun death.

Furthermore, the CDC also reports a cause of death for children that astronomically exceeds both guns and cars: abortion. In 2020, 49 states recorded over 600,000 abortion procedures. That figure does not include any abortions performed in California — which advertises itself as an abortion “sanctuary” state. The CDC obscures this fact by not classifying human fetuses as human children.

Milano’s claim is false.