Gun Violence Tops Car Crashes As Number 1 Cause Of Child Death

The gun violence epidemic in America has become so severe that it now claims the lives of more young people every year than car crashes. The rise in deaths has been steady over the years, while the number of young people killed in car accidents has been on the decline. This isn't an accident - cars have become safer while guns remain deadlier than ever. But it doesn't have to be this way, all we have to do is enact popular regulations. Farron Cousins discusses the options.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

For the latest years for which data is available. Gun violence in the United States. The year by the way is 2020 gun violence in the United States is now responsible for more child deaths than automobile accidents. In fact, guns are the number one cause of death for Americans under the age of 18, the most common way for a teenager preteen adolescent child, infant toddler to die is by being shot in the United States. A country that clearly does not have a war happening on our soil. Yet gunfire is more likely to kill your child than anything else. Now here's the thing. These new numbers that have come out, the reports that have come along with them also show that over the years, gun violence, gun deaths among children have been increasing while automobile deaths formally, the number one calls have been steadily decreasing. And there's a reason for that.

A very simple reason. We put stricter safety standards on vehicles, right? Seat belts, airbags, child safety seats. We changed child safety seat laws. In most areas of the country. It's actually illegal. You can get a ticket for letting a kid under the age of 12 or 13, right in the front seat of a vehicle. We have enacted all kinds of laws. Most of them, of course, at the state level, put all these new safety regulations in place because we looked at it and we saw that too many kids, too many people really were dying in automobile accidents. So we made it safer. We didn't outlaw cars. We didn't say that nobody's allowed to have a car, but we made it safer for those that are behind the wheel.

That's what we have to do with guns. We are never gonna be able to go around and take everybody's guns away. Even the thought of that is gonna turn off. Even people who don't own guns. And let's, let's not forget that at the moment. Of course, that is unconstitutional as well. You can't do it nor should we, but we shouldn't even be in a position where we have to think about that. The position we're in right now is a very unique one as a country, the country, but it also provides us an opportunity to do what we did with the automobile industry to renovate it, to regulate it, to innovate it. Why are we not doing that with guns? That's what should be happening here. You want to have a car, you have to have car insurance. Why do we not have liability insurance for gun

Owners? That's a thing that could happen. That is absolutely a thing that could happen. You get too many points on your license. You lose your ability to drive. How about we put points on owning a gun, right? We restrict other constitutional rights that way too. So let's not think that that's out of the realm of possibility, but if you get in a domestic violence incident, there's a strike against you. You lose your guns, red flag laws, by the way, is what that's called. If you get in any kind of physical altercation on the street, there's a point against you happens too many times. You're a known fighter. You're a known aggressor, too many points. We take it away for a while till you cool down. There are very simple, common sense. Things that we can do that are not being talked about right now, you know?

Yes. We're talking about raising the age of buying an AR 15. That's a great idea. I support it. Expanded background checks. Great idea. I support it as does more than 80% of the population, but some of these other measures too, you know, putting the liability onto the gun owner, putting the liability onto the gun seller, making people maybe think twice before they either purchase or sell a gun. Those are things we can easily do. Things that individual states could do. Things that insurance companies, by the way could do. They could say, oh, you own a gun. You can't have homeowner's insurance. Same way. As you know, some areas, if you own a trampoline, sorry, you can't have homeowner's insurance. You own a pit bull. You can't have homeowner's insurance. Why is it no different with a gun? Or why is it different with a gun? I should say you're more likely to get shot. If there was a gun in your household, that's a liability.