DID YOU KNOW?  In one year on average, more than 100,000 people in America are shot or killed with a gun.

• In one year, 31,224 people died from gun violence and 78,622 people survived gun injuries (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC)). That includes:
  
  
  • 12,632 people murdered and 56,626 people shot in an attack.
    
    
  • 17,352 people who killed themselves and 3,797 people who survived a suicide attempt with a gun.
    
    
  • 613 people who were killed accidentally and 17,215 who were shot accidentally but survived.
    
    
  • You can see tables on gun deaths here: 1) annual gun deaths and gun death rates by age and intent and by race/ethnicity and 2) trends in gun deaths and gun death rates by intent.
    
    
  • Often, we recall the horrific mass shootings where an unstable or perturbed individual opens fire and kills or injures people using powerful semiautomatic weapons. We have kept track of these all-too-common incidents in an interactive map and chronological lists: mass shootings, school shootings, and assault weapon shootings.
    
    
• Over a million people have been killed with guns in the United States since 1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated (Childrens’ Defense Fund, p. 20).
  
  
• In 2006, the U.S. firearm homicide rate was:
  
  • 6 times that of Canada
  • 13 times that of Germany
  • 15 times that of Austria
  • 26 times that of Australia and Spain
  • 31 times that of England and Wales (Brady Campaign, 2009)
    
    
• Gun violence impacts society in countless ways: medical costs, costs of the criminal justice system, security precautions such as metal detectors, and reductions in quality of life because of fear of gun violence.  These impacts are estimated to cost U.S. citizens $100 billion annually (Cook, 2000). 

• An estimated 41% of gun-related homicides and 94% of gun-related suicides would not occur under the same circumstances had no guns been present (Wiebe, p. 780).

• Higher household gun ownership correlates with higher rates of homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings (Harvard Injury Control Center).

• Keeping a firearm in the home increases the risk of suicide by a factor of 3 to 5 and increases the risk of suicide with a firearm by a factor of 17 (Kellermann, 1992, p. 467;  Wiebe, p. 771).

• Keeping a firearm in the home increases the risk of homicide by a factor of 3 (Kellermann, 1993, p. 1084).

• A gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a completed or attempted suicide, criminal assault or homicide, or unintentional shooting death or injury than to be used in a self-defense shooting. (Kellermann, 1998, p. 263).

• Guns are used to intimidate and threaten 4 to 6 times more often than they are used to thwart crime (Hemenway, p. 269).

• Every year there are only about 200 legally justified self-defense homicides by private citizens (FBI, Expanded Homicide Data, Table 15) compared with over 30,000 gun deaths (NCIPC).

• A 2009 study found that people in possession of a gun are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault (Branas).

• There are five times as many deaths from gun assaults as from knife assaults, where the rates of assault with knives and with guns are similar (Zimring, p. 199).

• More than 90 percent of suicide attempts with a gun are fatal (Miller, 2004, p. 626).  In comparison, only 3 percent of attempts with drugs or cutting are fatal (Miller, 2004, p. 626).

• It is estimated that over forty percent of gun acquisitions occur in the secondary market. That means that they happen without a Brady background check at a federally licensed dealer (Cook, p. 26).

• Sales from federal firearm licensees (FFLs) require a background check.  Sales between individuals, under federal law, do not require a background check.  This means that felons can “lie and buy” at gun shows and other places where guns are readily available.

SOLUTION:  We need to make it harder for convicted felons, the dangerously mentally ill, and other prohibited persons to obtain guns by implementing strong gun laws and policies that will protect our families and communities from gun violence. 

Sources

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Rates of Homicide, Suicide, and Firearm-Related Death Among Children -- 26 Industrialized Countries," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 1997, 46(5): 101-105; United Nations Tenth Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, 2005-2006; Australian Institute of Criminology. National Homicide Monitoring Program Annual Report 2006-2007; Home Office Statistical Bulletin, “England / Wales: Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2006/07”; Population References (except England and Wales): Population Reference Bureau, 2006 World Population Data Sheet; Population estimates for England and Wales

Branas et al, “Investigating the Link Between Gun Possession and Gun Assault,” American Journal of Public Health, 99(11)(2009), published online ahead of print, Sep 17, 2009

Children's Defense Fund, Protect Children Not Guns 2009, September 2009

Cook, Philip J, and Jens Ludwig, Gun Violence: The Real Costs, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000

Cook, PJ and J Ludwig, Guns in America: Results of a Comprehensive National Survey on Firearms Ownership and Use,  (Washington, DC: Police Foundation, 1996).  Although a handful of states require background checks at gun shows, in most states, private sales are completely unregulated.

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States, 2008, Expanded Homicide Data Table 15 and Table 15

Harvard School of Public Health: Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Homicide – Suicide – Accidents – Children and Women, Boston: Harvard School of Public Health, 2009, http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html

Hemenway, David and Deborah Azrael., “The Relative Frequency of Offensive and Defensive Gun Uses: Results From a National Survey,” Violence and Victims, 15(3) (2000): 257-272

Kellermann, Arthur L. et al., “Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home,” Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, 45(2) (1998): 263-267

Kellermann, Arthur L. MD, MPH, et al., “Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home,” New England Journal of Medicine, 329(15) (1993): 1084-1091

Kellermann, Arthur L. et al., “Suicide in the Home in Relation to Gun Ownership,” New England Journal of Medicine, 327(7) (1992): 467-472

Miller, Matthew, David Hemenway, Deborah Azrael, "Firearms and Suicide in the Northeast," Journal of Trauma 57 (2004):626-632.  (See also: E. D. Shenassa, S. N. Catlin, S. L Buka, "Lethality of Firearms Relative to Other Suicide Methods: A Population Based Study," Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 57 (2003): 120-124.

National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (2006 (deaths) and 2008 (injuries), .  Calculations by Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence

Wiebe, Douglas J. PhD. “Homicide and Suicide Risks Associated With Firearms in the Home: A National Case-Control Study,” Annals of Emergency Medicine 41 (2003): 771-82.

Zimring, Franklin, and Gordon Hawkins, Crime is not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997