The only problem is that Stewart was wrong, and Posobiec has the receipts to prove it.
Stewart claimed that the leading cause of death among children was firearms. "That's what it is," Stewart said with authority. "It's firearms, more than cancer more than car accidents."
But it isn't. And Posobiec, who is likely the only conservative to whom Stewart has ever apologized, pointed that out. In fact, the very things that Stewart said were not the leading cause of death—car accidents, cancer—are in the top five. As Posobiec said, abortion is the number one cause of death among children in the US. But among the born children of this nation, drowning tops the list for the age group 1-4. For ages 5-14, cancer and vehicle accidents are the leading cause of mortality.
"The number one and number two killers have children aged five to 14 is exactly what Jon Stewart said it wasn't. He said it wasn't cancer and car crashes. But in fact, that is exactly what the number one and number two causes of child death are in this country. And yet he lied," Posobiec said.
Posobiec looked into the stats cited by Stewart, which "most likely from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which last summer put out a huge headline, firearms are the leading cause of death for children in the United States," he said. That study from Kaiser showed that firearm mortality rates among children in the US are way ahead of similar countries like Canada, France, and Switzerland, among others.
"But just like anything else," Posobiec said, "when you're reading statistics from the left, you have to go a step further and question definitions. How does the Kaiser Family Foundation define a child in this study? I'll tell you how they define children, one through 19 years old."
"They're including teenagers as children in this, Posobiec said.
"Now, let me let me just play a little game with you, you know, little little question game," Posobiec said. "What do you think the leading cause of teenagers is in places like I don't know, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans? I do think that that might be a slightly different dataset than the one that he's talking about here."
Overdoses among teens are up across the country. He also noted that included in those firearms stats for teens are gun deaths by suicide. None of these were stats that Stewart brought up on his show.
"Suicides account for the majority of deaths by firearms in the United States at almost 60 percent in some studies," Posobiec said, "so of course, this is included in that. Even if I were to include homicides, and accidental deaths, which is of course what he's talking about, you still have to deal with the fact that it's teenagers involved here, not children."
