Biden's startling statistic on gun deaths of school-aged children President Biden's speech on June 2 advocating for new laws to stem gun violence included several statements we have fact-checked before. But he offered a startling new statistic that cried out for an explanation: "Over the last two decades, more school-aged children have died from guns than on-duty police officers and active-duty military combined." First of all, we should note that the numbers add up. Whether they should be added up or if these are apples and oranges is another question. The figure on school-aged children comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has an interactive online database that provides information on fatal and nonfatal injuries and violent deaths. The White House told us that it defined "school-aged children" as between ages 5 and 18 and "two decades" as 2001-2020. Within those parameters, searching for death by firearm, you get 42,507 deaths. For military deaths for the same period, we turned to the Defense Casualty Analysis System. That database yields 25,527 active-duty military deaths between 2001 and 2020. Finally, the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) lists 3,583 deaths from active-duty officers in 2001-2020. Between the military and the police, that's a total of 29,110. But the number of firearm deaths for school-age children drops quite a bit when you do not include 18-year-olds. There are, of course, many students who turn 18 while they are in their senior year. But they are also adults who in most states are able to purchase firearms such as rifles. So it's a judgment call whether to include them. Removing 18-year-olds would drop the gun death number to 28,559 — just slightly fewer than the total for the military and police. There are other issues with this statistic, which we explore in the full fact check. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. Actually, lying to the ATF does not yield many prosecutions Form 4473 — the Firearm Transaction Record — is a six-page document that must be filled out whenever someone buys a firearm from a licensed firearm dealer. The form asks questions including whether the person buying the gun is a felon, whether the person is a fugitive from justice or convicted of domestic abuse, whether the person is addicted to drugs and whether the person is the actual buyer of the firearm. In September, the Houston office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms tweeted: "Lying on an ATF form 4473 is a federal violation and can lead to severe penalties and jail time. Don't lie and buy." A swarm of Twitter users asked why the bureau didn't charge Hunter Biden, the president's son, for allegedly lying about his drug use on Form 4473 when he purchased a handgun in October 2018. The controversy prompted us to request statistics from the Justice Department to determine whether someone falsely filling out the form faced much of a risk of prosecution. It took months to obtain the data. The answer, it turns out, is no. The statistics are newly relevant as Congress discusses how to strengthen gun laws in the wake of high-profile mass shootings. This is a prime illustration of how, for a variety of reasons including prosecutorial choices, existing laws are not always rigorously or consistently enforced. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP and @AdriUsero) or Facebook. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. | 
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