By German Lopez

Good morning. The U.S. is a global outlier for gun deaths among children.

The lives they lived

LaVonte'e Williams couldn't read yet, but he loved the Bible. His grandfather even called him Preacher. In August, a day after his baptism, he accidentally shot himself at a park and died at just 5 years old.

Juan Carlos Robles-Corona Jr. had mastered viral TikTok dances. He would perform them at an Auntie Anne's, where he and his mother worked. In April, he was shot to death near his school in an unsolved killing. He was 15 years old.

Angellyh Yambo prided herself on befriending people considered "annoying or strange." She drew elaborate sketches on her iPad and liked watching horror movies. In April, a few months after her Sweet 16 birthday, she was killed by a stray bullet while walking outside after school.

LaVonte'e, Juan Carlos and Angellyh were just three of the thousands of children killed or injured by gun violence this year in the U.S. The New York Times Magazine devoted its upcoming issue, published online today, to their stories and those of nine others for its annual The Lives They Lived feature.

The stories are devastating, and I hope you'll take some time to read them today. They are also representative of a uniquely American problem.

An enduring tragedy

Many Americans are so accustomed to the daily toll of gun violence that they may not realize how much of an outlier the U.S. is for anything related to firearms. Outside of mass shootings like the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School (which happened 10 years ago yesterday), killings of children rarely get much attention. So I want to explain how different the U.S. is when it comes to gun deaths among teenagers and younger children.

Guns are now the No. 1 cause of deaths among American children and teens, ahead of car crashes, other injuries and congenital disease.

In other rich countries, gun deaths are not even among the top four causes of death, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report found. The U.S. accounts for 97 percent of gun-related child deaths among similarly large and wealthy countries, despite making up just 46 percent of this group's overall population.

If the U.S. had gun death rates similar to Canada's, about 26,000 fewer children would have died since 2010, according to Kaiser. But the trend has been going in the opposite direction: Gun deaths among teens and younger kids have gone up in the U.S., while they have declined elsewhere. The victims are disproportionately people of color, most often Black boys.

Why is America such an outlier? Because it has many more guns, as I explained here. The U.S. has more guns than people. This abundance of guns makes it much easier for anyone to carry out an act of violence with a firearm in America than in any other wealthy country.

This is not to say that other countries don't have violence. Obviously, they do. But when a gun is involved, as is more likely in the U.S., death is a much more likely result.

That outcome is reflected in the statistics, but also in the tragic stories of the children whose lives were cut short.

Related: Explore the data revealing how gun violence became the top killer of American children.

THE LATEST NEWS

• President Biden hosted nearly 50 African leaders at the first U.S.-Africa summit since 2014, pledging billions in investments for the continent.
• The House passed a bill to temporarily avert a government shutdown and push back to next week the deadline for a longer-term spending bill.
• Georgia's top official in charge of voting called for an end to the state's runoff election system.

• The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by half a percentage point, a smaller increase than previous ones, but said that it would keep raising rates to fight inflation.
• "Winter of discontent": Around 100,000 nurses are striking in Britain, joining postal and rail workers in nationwide walkouts for higher wages.
• Sam Bankman-Fried's arrest may finally make tech founders' schlubby T-shirts and shorts uncool, the critic Vanessa Friedman writes.

• Peru declared a state of emergency to quell deadly protests that began after the president was removed from power last week.
• The World Health Organization's leader said that Eritrean forces had killed his uncle and 50 others in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, despite a recent cease-fire.
• New Zealand banned cigarette sales to everyone born after 2008.‌

• A Ukrainian Army surveillance team is using infrared technology to try to locate and strike Russian positions.
• Moscow's propagandists are broadcasting clips from American cable news and Chinese officials to spin a narrative that Russia is winning.

• Tornadoes killed three people in Louisiana as violent storms swept the South.
• Grant Wahl, the journalist who died suddenly at the World Cup, had a rupture in a blood vessel leading from the heart, according to an autopsy.
• Some colleges are cutting their tuition by half to fill classes and acknowledging that few pay the list price.
• One of America's largest health systems spent years cutting jobs to maximize profits, setting the system up for staff shortages during the pandemic.
• The U.S. will offer free at-home Covid tests this winter. (You can order them here.)
• Stephen Boss, a dancer and D.J. known as tWitch who was a regular on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," died at 40.

ChatGPT and other A.I. tools could improve education, but they risk increasing inequality, Zeynep Tufekci writes.

Lifting the military's Covid vaccine mandate will damage our national security, says Max Rose, a former congressman.

Enjoy the complete Times experience today.

The New York Times All Access subscription brings you full digital access to news and analysis, plus Cooking, Games, Wirecutter and The Athletic. Subscribe today at this special rate.

MORNING READS

"Avatar: The Way of Water": The movie offers dazzling effects and a bit of nostalgia.

Royal drama: "Harry & Meghan," part 2, addresses the couple's family relationships.

Lawn and order: A couple wanting to keep their yard overgrown ended up changing state law.

A morning listen: On the Modern Love podcast, weird date stories.

Advice from Wirecutter: Build a robot.

Lives Lived: The Black feminist Dorothy Pitman Hughes raised her fist alongside Gloria Steinem in a 1971 photo, and helped inject issues of race, class and motherhood into the women's liberation movement. Pitman Hughes died at 84.

SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC

Conference switch: A California board approved U.C.L.A.'s move to the Big Ten in 2024.

Steph Curry: The defending N.B.A. champ Golden State Warriors lost another road game. Curry had to leave the game with an injured shoulder.

W.N.B.A. expansion: The league won't add a new team before the end of the year, but is considering 10 interested owners, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said.

WORLD CUP

Final showdown: The tournament will culminate on Sunday when Kylian Mbappé's France faces Lionel Messi's Argentina after France beat Morocco, 2-0, in a semifinal yesterday.

Multiple firsts: Even though the team lost, on some level this will always be Morocco's World Cup, the one that made it a trailblazer, a record-breaker, a watermark that will not fade, The Times's Rory Smith writes.

National team coaches: There are no rules that require a team to be managed by someone born, raised or connected to that country. Should it matter?

ARTS AND IDEAS

The show goes on

A cyberattack has hobbled the Metropolitan Opera, the country's largest performing arts organization, for more than a week. It has shuttered a box office that typically handles about $200,000 in sales each day at this time of year. Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, said the attack appeared to be the work of an organized criminal gang.

But there is one positive aspect: As the Met's digital systems remain incapacitated, it has offered general admission seats at a deep discount, allowing opera fans to take in performances they might otherwise not have been able to afford. Mike Figliulo, a technology director on Broadway, paid $50 for orchestra seats to "Aida" on Tuesday night. Still, he told a Times reporter, "It's frightening that a cyberattack can happen at a place like the Met."

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

Use pantry staples for this roasted salmon with miso rice and ginger-scallion vinaigrette.

Be a Secret Santa star with these 35 ideas.

A one-woman take on "Great Expectations," playing Off Broadway, is "pure storytelling."

Jimmy Kimmel joked about Elon Musk not paying Twitter's bills.

The pangrams from yesterday's Spelling Bee were defogging and offending. Here is today's puzzle.

Here's today's Mini Crossword and a clue: Space between (three letters).

And here's today's Wordle.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

P.S. Sam Stejskal of The Athletic, the sports website owned by The Times, joined CNN to debate who's the greatest soccer player ever.

Here's today's front page.

"The Daily" is about Russia's draft.

Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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