A new study found that deaths from firearms in the United States reached a record in 2021. It explains that the main victims were children and young adults.
Nearly 50,000 Americans have died
Published by Johns Hopkins University, the annual study draws on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and reported that 48,830 Americans were killed by firearms in 2021.
It was counted that, according to US Gun Violence, there was a death by firearm every 11 minutes in 2021. The study found that there were “26,328 suicides with firearms and 20,958 homicides. The gun suicide rate represented an 8.3% increase since 2020, the largest annual increase in more than four decades. npr.org.
Homicides by firearm between 2019 and 2021
Between 2019 and 2021, gun homicides increased 45 percent, and the homicide rate rose as much as 7 percent. Likewise, at the same time that suicides by firearms increased by 10%, suicides by other means also decreased to eight percent.
“Guns are driving this increase,” says Ari Davis, lead author of the study. “I think in some ways that’s not surprising, because we’ve seen huge increases in gun purchases. We’ve seen a lot of states make it much easier to carry a gun in public, to carry a gun concealed, and to buy a gun without going through some of the vetting processes that other states have.”
On the other hand, there are other data that are truly alarming. From 2019 to 2021, it increased 49% for African Americans and 44% for Hispanics/Latinos killed by firearms in shootings.