Letter: Gun death fact check

In a Sept. 23 letter, it was stated, “The second-leading cause of death of children ages 1 to 19 is gunfire.” While this was a good lead to the argument of the letter, it was false.

According to the National Safety Council “Top Causes of Death by Age Group” for 2021, the top five causes of death for this age group are:

Motor vehicles
Drowning
Fire/burn
Suffocation
Natural/environmental

Firearms only appears in one place in the top five data, which covers the causes of death of all persons from “Younger than 1″ to “Adults 65 and older” broken down into 10-year cohorts. Where is the only place firearms appear in the data? For the cohort “Young Adults (age) 15-24″ firearms is the fifth-leading cause of death.

When one uses data in an argument in lieu of opinion one should confirm that data.

Patrick Donlea

Crystal Lake