Facts and Figures
Data from CDC WISQARS and Mother Jones Mass Shooting Database, 1982-2019
The human toll
There were 39,740 deaths from firearms in the U.S. in 2018. Sixty-one percent of deaths from firearms in the U.S. are suicides. In 2018, 24,432 people in the U.S. died by firearm suicide.1 Firearms are the means in approximately half of suicides nationwide.
In 2018, 13,958 people in the U.S. died from firearm homicide, accounting for 35.1% of total deaths from firearms. Firearms were the means for about 74% of homicides in 2018.
The other 3.6% of firearm deaths are unintentional, undetermined, from legal intervention, or from public mass shootings (0.2% of total firearm deaths).
There are approximately 115,000 non-fatal firearm injuries in the U.S. each year.
Leonard S. Feinman
Deduct the suicides and then give me those numbers again, please. Suicide is a manifestation of mental illness, not criminal behavior. Then remove those individuals who had “justifiable” deaths, such as criminals shot during crimes.
Why not look where the crimes are committed, and by who, and you can see why the rest of us prefer to be armed.
Another couple of statistics include 393,000,000 guns in America, in 47% of American homes. That is a lot of guns in the hands of a lot of people. How does that compare, proportionately, to the number of deaths from guns?
Also, the Violent Crime Rate has been dropping over the last few years, but the sale of guns has also gone way up, starting under OBAMA.