Childhood deaths caused by a firearm in 2016 were exceeded only by those caused by motor vehicle crashes (4,074). Although there’s been a worrisome rise in such fatalities since 2013, safety improvements and drunken driving initiatives have steadily driven the pediatric toll of vehicle accidents to roughly half their 1999 rate.

At 4.02 per 100,000 children, the 2016 rate of childhood firearms deaths stands at half the rate of pediatric gun deaths (8.12 per 100,000) seen at their most recent peak, in 1993.

But the decline has since stalled: The 2016 rate represents a reduction of less than 10 percent from rates seen in 1999.

Between 2013 and 2016, the rate of gun-related deaths among kids in the U.S. grew 28 percent. That upward trend in firearm mortality reflected a 32 percent increase in the rates of firearm homicide and a 26 percent increase in the rate of youth suicides carried out with a gun.

The relatively steady toll of firearms stands in contrast, too, to trends in children’s cancer deaths: By 2016, improved detection and treatment of pediatric cancer had helped drive down such deaths by almost one-third since 1999. Over four decades, a child diagnosed with cancer has seen her odds of surviving rise from 10 percent to nearly 90 percent.