Dear Americans: What's the leading cause of death among the young?

[Chas]

And yet it happens:

That case was originally ruled as a suicide, and was only overturned because the parents forced the death to be further investigated, which ultimately showed that the victim died by the gun spontaneously going off on its own (possibly because it was knocked, bumped or dropped) without a trigger pull. How many other cases of accidental death where a gun has gone off on its own have been ruled as suicide and never re-investigated? We can't know, but as shown above it certainly happens.

Because it had a faulty safety mechanism - that is, it was broken. It remains very, very unlikely, so while we may never know how many, we can be quite sure that the number is very, very small.