Guns are the leading cause of death of kids and teens, and state laws matter

"We know that the leading cause of death in children is firearm injuries," says Dr. Maya Haasz, an emergency medicine doctor and researcher at the University of Colorado, who wasn't involved in the new study. In a policy brief from 2021, she and her colleagues found that a child or teen is killed in the U.S. every 2 hours and 48 minutes.