Guns and Gun Deaths

In case you are feeling like gun violence has become more frequent in recent years, you are not imagining it. It’s real.

In 2019, the year prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States recorded 14,414 firearm homicides, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number increased in 2020 by 34% to 19,384, and by another 8% in 2021, to 20,966. Firearm homicides decreased slightly in 2022.

Over the same period, the number of gun purchases was tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation through the National Instant Check System (NICS). The annual figures for gun purchases were 13.5 million in 2019, 22 million in 2020, 20 million in 2021, and 16.4 million in 2022. In 2018 there were an estimated 120.5 guns per 100 people. Gun sales would suggest that number has increased since 2018.

As of 2018, the U.S. had a rate of 4.46 firearm deaths per 100,000 people. That is nearly seven times higher than the second highest death rate (Israel) among the world’s major democracies, and twenty-one times the average of  the world’s major democracies. Comparable firearm death rates for some Central and South American countries are three to four times the U.S. rate.

Figure 1 graphs countries’ firearm death rates per 100,000 people on the vertical axis, and their number of guns per hundred population on the horizontal axis. The relationship between the number of guns in a country and the firearm death rate varies among the world’s major democracies. (Click to enlarge figure.)

The U.S. does not appear on Figure 1. The scale of the horizontal and vertical axes must be increased to display the U.S. data. Figure 2 makes that adjustment. The U.S. had 4.46 homicide deaths per 100,000 people and 120.5 guns per 100 people. All the data points from Figure 1 fit in the rectangle in the lower left corner of Figure 2. (Click to enlarge figure.) The time period for each country’s data varied between 2015 and 2019, and firearm death rates can vary widely from year to year. The U.S. firearm death rate peaked at 6.32 in 2021, falling to 6.04 in 2022. Comparable figures for each country for more recent years would change the figures somewhat but the pattern would be the same.

Shocking as these statistics are, they do not suggest that gun violence will be reduced simply by decreasing the number and availability of guns. Better gun violence data, stronger gun safety laws, violence intervention programs, and police training are among recommendations proposed by activist organizations such as the Giffords Law Center. Until such recommendations are enacted at state and national levels, these numbers will not come down.