U.S. Gun Violence 101
Gun violence in the U.S. is a public health crisis. It has been for some time — well before the Surgeon General declared it so in June. This primer gives an overview of the staggering numbers and provides a summary of several key topics that many Americans might not know.
By the numbers
45,000+
The number of gun deaths in both 2021 and 2022.
50%+
The portion of those deaths that were suicides.
#1
Cause of death among children and teens.
2.6x
Black gun death rate compared to the white rate.
In charts
Gun deaths have been on a steady upward trend over the last ten years. Both homicides and suicides are up, with the 2020 pandemic marking an especially sharp rise and the years since a decline.
The race gap only widened during the pandemic. Gun violence continues to impact Black Americans the most, despite their being a relatively small percentage of the overall population.
Gun sales have also steadily risen over the past decade. No events caused such a spike as the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and the racial justice protests that followed shortly after — not the elementary school shooting at Sandy Hook, not President Obama’s election, and not the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The NRA’s financial and political might has waned in recent years. Member revenue hit a 15-year-low of $97 million in 2021 amid the deposition of ex-NRA executive Wayne LaPierre for corruption. As the gun rights movement has splintered, smaller interest groups have attempted to fill the void left by the NRA.
Other gun rights lobbying groups include the National Shooting Sports Foundation, and Gun Owners of America.
When it comes to dollars for political influence, the gun rights lobby has outspent gun control advocates by orders of magnitude for well over a decade. It wasn’t until after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that gun control proponents spent any serious money in Washington, D.C.
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Red Flag Laws
Extreme risk protection order laws, or red flag laws, are meant to keep firearms away from people deemed a risk to themselves or others — measures adopted in nearly two dozen states.
Assault Weapons Ban
In 1994, Congress – including over 50 Republican lawmakers – voted to halt production of new assault weapons. The legislation expired in 2004, but Democrats have long called for its revival. The efficacy of the law is unclear.
Serializing ‘Ghost Guns’
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has tried to curb the use of “ghost guns,” homemade guns favored by criminals because they are difficult to trace. In 2022, the ATF required sellers of “ready to build” kits to add serial numbers to some parts. The agency also instructed kit sellers to conduct background checks on prospective buyers. The rule is currently facing a legal challenge from gun control opponents being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The overemphasis on “mass shootings”
Mass shootings make up a small fraction of American gun violence but an outsized share of the media coverage. Most gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides or the daily tragedy of homicides involving primarily Black and brown people. In 2021, nearly 50,000 Americans died of gunshot wounds. Roughly 1 percent were from mass shootings.
The most notorious, school shootings, happen even less often. But school-adjacent shootings much more frequently — again impacting people of color disproportionately.
There is no consensus on the definition of “mass shooting,” making research on the subject fractured.
Racial disparities in gun deaths
Black people are the most disproportionately impacted by U.S. gun violence, with a death rate nearly 2.6 times the rate of white Americans. For Black children, the disparity is even greater.
In 2020, roughly half of all mass shootings took place in majority-Black areas.
Black Americans are also disproportionately affected by police violence, shot and killed at more than twice the rate of white Americans, according to a Washington Post analysis. Hispanic Americans are also significantly more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts.
Pandemic surge
Looking at longer trends, remember that firearm-related deaths, both suicides and homicides, saw record-breaking totals coincide with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gun violence has since slowed. According to provisional data from the CDC, US gun deaths fell in 2023 for every group except one: children. But that decrease can mislead if not contextualized by the pandemic surge: pundits and politicians claiming a downturn will often fail to mention even lower pre-pandemic levels.
Children and teens
Gun deaths declined following a historic peak in 2020, except among American children. The US saw an increase in child gunshot deaths in 2023, according to provisional data from the CDC.
Gun deaths in 2023 among children under 18 averaged seven per day. Between 2014 and 2023, a daily average 57 shootings happened within 500 yards of a K-12 school.
Between 2019 and 2020 the firearm suicide rate more than doubled among Black, Latino, and Asian teenagers, a Trace analysis found, while it increased by 88 percent for Native Americans and 35 percent for white teens.
State by state
Gun deaths are generally more prevalent in Republican-leaning states — especially in the South — compared to their Democratic counterparts.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive, or the ATF, is a federal law enforcement agency within the Department of Justice tasked with regulating the manufacture and sale of guns in the US.
The ATF is a longtime target of gun rights lobbyists and their congressional allies. Budget cuts, inconsistent leadership, and legal limits have significantly limited the agency’s power to enforce laws. For example, the agency’s efforts to trace firearms used in crimes is legally limited to a non-searchable system.
ATF inspectors routinely allow lawbreaking gun retailers to remain in business, a 2021 investigation by The Trace and USA TODAY found. However, 2024 saw the most license revocations in a two-decade period.
Crime guns
What the ATF can (and can’t) do to help
A gun used in a crime is difficult to track back to its origin. In theory, a law enforcement official submits a gun trace request to the ATF. The ATF uses the serial number, model, caliber, and manufacturer of the recovered gun to trace its history.
The reality of a gun trace is complicated by the second-hand firearms market. A firearm purchased from a federally licensed gun dealer can be legally resold without a paper trail. This second-hand market even includes guns that were previously owned by law enforcement officers.
Only 15 states require any documentation of private gun sales be kept by a dealer or sent to the government.
Over the past decade, the number of gun trace requests has exploded, with the ATF processing more than 623,654 in fiscal year 2022.
Gun Trafficking
An April ATF report revealed about 40 percent of firearm trafficking cases involved unlicensed dealers. About another 40 percent of the cases analyzed centered on “straw purchasing,” a federal crime in which a person buys on behalf of someone else.
The other main artery of illicit firearms is gun theft. Police recovered more than 23,000 stolen firearms between 2010 and 2016, an investigation by The Trace and NBC found.