Does America love guns more than it loves its children?

It sure appears so.

Let’s stop pretending otherwise.

America’s obsession with guns isn’t just embarrassing—it’s deadly. And the bodies piling up aren’t just adults in crime-ridden neighborhoods or people in the “wrong place at the wrong time.” Increasingly, they’re children.

In 2020, firearms overtook car crashes as the leading cause of death for American children and teens. Read that again. The biggest threat to a child in this country isn’t disease, or accidents, or natural disasters—it’s firearms. That’s not freedom. That’s failure.

That’s according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Before that awful man in the Oval started twisting data.). This category includes deaths from assault, suicide, and unintentional injuries involving a firearm. 

In 2023, the homicide rate for kids aged 11 and under was 1.28 per 100,000, with nearly 36% of those deaths caused by guns—a staggering increase in just a decade. Gun-related child murders have nearly doubled since 2018. This isn’t some abstract “crime statistic.” It’s kindergarteners, it’s middle schoolers, it’s kids who never got to live long enough to even form their first opinion about the Second Amendment.

Meanwhile, other developed countries—Japan, the UK, Canada, Australia—barely register child gun deaths. Their children grow up without practicing active shooter drills, without wondering if going to school means gambling with their lives. Our kids don’t get that luxury. They’re sacrificial lambs to America’s gun fetish.

And let’s call it what it is: a fetish. Guns have become idols, propped up by toxic masculinity, political cowardice, and corporate greed. The industry profits, the politicians cower, and children die. Over and over again.

We are told that guns equal “freedom.” But what kind of freedom is it when children can’t safely sit in a classroom, walk down the street, or play in a park? What kind of freedom comes with a death toll that climbs higher every year? This isn’t freedom. It’s violence masquerading as liberty.

If America truly loved its children, we’d lock up guns the way we lock up cleaning supplies. We’d make background checks as routine as buying a driver’s license. We’d treat gun violence as the national emergency it is. But we don’t.

Because, at the end of the day, people in this country love their guns more than they love their kids.

And until we admit that ugly truth, nothing will change.