Gun deaths in the U.S. reached a record-high in 2021, with an average of one person dying every 11 minutes each day — a total of nearly 49,000 deaths from gun violence throughout the year, according to a new study.
A new Johns Hopkins study, using the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control, found gun deaths reached the highest number ever recorded for the second straight year in a row.
Gun suicides rose by 8.3 percent from the previous year, totaling more than 26,328 deaths and amounting to the largest one-year increase in more than four decades, according to the study. Gun homicides rose by 7.6 percent from the previous year, amounting to 20,958 deaths.
“In 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. experienced an unprecedented spike in gun homicides. Many believed that this spike would be short-lived; levels of gun violence would subside as institutions effectively responded to the pandemic and people returned to their daily routines. This, unfortunately, was not the case,” the authors of the study wrote.
Over the course of the pandemic, measured as all of 2020 and all of 2021, guns played a large role in the spike in violence. From 2019 to 2021, the CDC recorded the largest two-year increase in homicides ever – the gun-related homicide rate rose by 45 percent, while the non-gun homicide rate rose by 7 percent.
The study highlighted the impact of gun deaths on children and teens. Gun violence is the leading cause of death for people ages 1-19, accounting for 20 percent of deaths in that age group — 4,733 deaths in 2021.
Gun deaths among young people are more likely to be homicides than suicides, with homicides making up 64 percent of gun deaths in that age group and suicides accounting for 30 percent. Homicides are more likely to affect young people, while suoicides are more likely to affect older people, in general, according to the study.
The study also highlighted the disproportionate effect gun deaths have on Black people and Latino people. Overall, according to the report, Black people were nearly 14 times as likely to die from gun violence than white people. Latino/Hispanic males were 2.8 times as likely to die from gun violence as white males, and Latino/Hispanic females were 1.3 times as likely.
The study also revealed a correlation between gun deaths and gun sales, as well as a correlation between gun deaths and states with stricter gun laws. During the pandemic, gun sales reached record highs, according to the study, which showed this trend prevailed among Black and Latino people, and women of all ethnicities and races.
