Firearm-Involved Homicide of Children Age 11 or Younger, 2014–2023

This report presents statistics on child homicides and compares it with statistics on child homicides involving firearms. Child homicide includes murder or nonnegligent manslaughter of a victim age 11 or younger. Data on homicides involving children are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics' and FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Estimation Program, as well as the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports.

Key Findings

• In 2023, the child homicide rate was 1.28 per 100,000 persons (figure 1).
• The rate of child homicide involving a firearm remained steady between 2014 (0.30 per 100,000) and 2018 (0.28 per 100,000). From 2018 to 2022, this rate nearly doubled to 0.55 per 100,000 children. The rate was 0.46 per 100,000 children in 2023, which was not statistically different from the 2022 rate.
• From 2014 to 2023, the average annual percentage change in the child homicide rate was a decrease of 1.5%. For the rate of child homicide involving a firearm, however, the average annual percentage change was an increase of 4.2% (appendix table 1).
• In 2023, 36% of child homicides involved firearms compared to 20% in 2014.

Note: See appendix table 1 for estimates and confidence intervals. 
*Not shown; estimate did not meet statistical reliability criteria.
Source: FBI, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Supplementary Homicide Reports Program, 2014–2020; Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Easy Access to Juvenile Populations: 1990–2022; Bureau of Justice Statistics and FBI, National Incident-Based Reporting System Estimation Program, 2021–2023.

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About the Data

Homicide data in this report come from the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) for 2014 to 2020. For 2021 to 2023, the data are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) and FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Estimation Program. Relying upon NIBRS data to generate national estimates of homicide was not possible until 2021; as such, the SHR data are the source of national homicide estimates from 2014 to 2020. NIBRS and SHR use the same definition for homicide, making these two data sources comparable. Population data from Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP), Easy Access to Juvenile Populations (EZAPOP) were used to generate national estimates of child homicide rates for the 2014 to 2020 data years.

NIBRS is a data collection system designed and maintained by the FBI through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. NIBRS compiles data on crimes recorded by participating state and local law enforcement agencies. It captures detailed information on 52 different offenses that can occur within a crime incident and collects arrest-only information for an additional 10 offenses.¹ Beginning with the 2021 data year, the FBI began publishing national estimates of crime known to law enforcement based on NIBRS data. To calculate national estimates using NIBRS data, BJS and the FBI, in partnership with RTI International, established a new set of statistical procedures to incorporate the NIBRS data structure and account for agencies that did not report data to the system. In 2023, national estimates of crime were based on data received from about 13,740 of the 19,160 law enforcement agencies in the United States, representing approximately 83% of the U.S. population. For more information about the NIBRS data structure and details about the data elements included in the collection, see BJS’s NIBRS webpage and the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer. For details on the national estimation procedures, see Methodology in Crimes Involving Juveniles, 1993–2022 (NCJ 308554, BJS, April 2024).

Like the NIBRS data, the SHR captures detailed information specifically about homicide incidents. BJS analyses of the SHR data incorporate statistical weights to compensate for the average annual 10% of homicides that were not reported to the SHR from 2014 to 2020. The annual weights were calculated using a three-step process. For details on the weighting process, see Methodology in Homicide in the U.S. Known to Law Enforcement, 2011 (NCJ 243035, BJS, December 2013).

EZAPOP is a data source published by the OJJDP. EZAPOP provides national-, state-, and county-level U.S. resident population data by age, race, and sex. The data come from population data originally collected by the U.S. Census Bureau and modified by the National Center for Health Statistics. For more information on the data, see the EZAPOP webpage. Homicide rates for this report were calculated by dividing the estimated number of homicide victims, based on data from the SHR or NIBRS, by estimates of the U.S. resident population for the appropriate age group, generated by EZAPOP data tool. Rates were per 100,000 U.S. residents age 11 or younger.

Homicide consists of two violent crimes: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter. Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter are defined as “the willful (nonnegligent) killing of one human being by another” (NIBRS User Manual (version 2023.0), page 29). Attempted murder is categorized as aggravated assault by the FBI's UCR Program and is not included in the definition of homicide. Other fatalities, such as accidental deaths, suicides, and traffic-related deaths, are not included. Instances of “felony murder,” which are situations where a victim dies of another cause (e.g., a heart attack) because of a crime being committed against them, are not classified as murder as they are not willful killings and are therefore not included. This definition applies to data collected in the SHR and in NIBRS.
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¹Federal agencies submitting data to NIBRS may report an additional 19 offense types and 3 arrest-only offense types that are exclusive to federal crime incidents.