Damage from gun violence extends beyond the victims to whole communities, "Children Under Fire" author says.

A child is shot in America every hour on average, John Woodrow Cox,  author of "Children Under Fire: An American Crisis," told a National Press Club virtual audience at the Headliners event Monday.

Gun fire has killed about 30,000 children and teenagers over the last decade, Cox told NPC President Lisa Nicole Matthews. According to the medical journal Pediatrics, firearm-related injuries take more childhood lives annually than all children’s cancers combined, making it the second highest cause of death for children ages 17 and under.

The number of guns owned by Americans -- nearly 400 million by one estimate -- and uneven regulation explains the nation's uniquely violent status among the world's highest income countries, Cox said. 

Gun violence, Cox said, “is a plague by any measure for both for adults and children.” 

In his book, Cox, a reporter for The Washington Post, explores the physical and psychological impact of gun violence through stories of two children, Ava Olsen and Tyshaun McPhatter, and the bullets that changed their lives. Cox said he realized the damage from gun violence extends beyond the victims themselves to whole communities.

That realization came to Cox as he interviewed people in Townville, S.C., where a teenager shot and killed Ava’s best friend, Jacob, a first grader, in the schoolyard. A pastor told Cox he counseled a terrified fifth grader who neither saw the shooter nor the schoolyard, yet believed the killer intended to kill him.

The second child in the book, Tyshaun, lived part-time with his father, Andrew, whom he called his best friend, in southeast Washington. More than half of homicides in the city occur in his neighborhood, 15 miles from the U.S. Capitol. The boy had escaped gunfire twice and knew three people who died from it. When he was in second grade, the violence took his father.

On the morning of his Dad’s funeral, Tyshaun put on his suit. “Whoever invented guns needs to stop,” he said. Holding his clip-on tie in his hand, he turned to Cox who spent time with him for a story in The Washington Post. Cox said he knew instantly he must help the child, as Tyshaun’s father would have done. “It’s one of those moments, as a reporter, I’ll never forget,” he said.

The two children would become friends after Tyshaun's story in the Post brought Ava's mother, Mary, to tears, and Ava decided to write him a letter.