Gun Deaths Hit Record High of Nearly 49,000 in 2021

New research based on the latest publicly available data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention finds that 2021 was a record year for gun deaths in the U.S., with deaths hitting a record high for the second year in a row.

The report by Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions finds that 48,830 people died due to firearm-related causes in 2021, the highest number on record. This is just over 3,600 more gun deaths than in 2020, and works out to one gun death every 11 minutes.

Gun-related homicides and suicides both reached record highs in 2021, the report found. The rate of gun-related suicides jumped by over 8 percent — the largest increase in one year in 40 years — while more than half of all firearm deaths were suicides.

And, even though 2021 was the deadliest year in U.S. history due to the COVID-19 pandemic, gun deaths among young people still outnumbered COVID deaths. Gun violence was the leading cause of death for those aged between 1 and 19, accounting for 20 percent of deaths among that group.

Gun violence disproportionately affects Black Americans, as the report demonstrated. Black people were 14 times more likely to die from gun-related homicide than white people, according to the data, while 51 percent of deaths of Black teens in 2021 were caused by guns.

The data also showed a correlation between gun violence and state laws, with more gun violence occurring in places with looser gun laws. People in Mississippi, the state with the highest rate of gun violence (as well as the highest rate of poverty in the U.S.), were 10 times more likely to die due to gun violence than someone in Massachusetts, which has the lowest rate of gun violence in the U.S. Anti-gun violence group Everytown for Gun Safety has ranked Massachusetts as having among the strongest gun laws, while Mississippi is ranked the worst for gun regulation.

“Our country is breaking records for all the wrong reasons — record gun sales combined with increasingly permissive gun laws are making gun violence a pervasive part of life in our country, leading to a sharp increase in gun deaths,” Ari Davis, the lead author of the report, said in a statement. “Perhaps most troubling is these spikes in homicides and suicides are almost entirely connected to guns.”

Davis further linked the violence with gun purchasing in an interview with NPR, saying that the increase in gun violence is likely related to increases in gun purchases and bills passed by Republicans to weaken gun regulations in recent years.

“Guns are driving this increase,” Davis said. He added that CDC’s provisional data for the first nine months of 2022 is showing about the same rate of gun deaths as 2021.

The data corroborates other research finding that gun violence is on the rise. According to a report by The Washington Post in February, 2022 was the worst year for school shootings on record, with 46 shootings at K-12 schools. And an analysis from Pew Research Center this April found that, between 2019 and 2021, the number of children under 19 dying from gun-related causes increased by nearly 50 percent, the largest increase in child gun deaths since 1999, when the CDC first began collecting such data.

The research demonstrates the extent to which the gun violence crisis is worsening while Republicans are doubling down on efforts to increase gun ownership, ignoring polls finding that the majority of the public wants action to curb, rather than expand, the gun violence epidemic.

By a longshot, the U.S. is a global outlier on gun violence. Among wealthy countries, the U.S. has by far the highest rate of deaths by assault, as well as high rates of suicide, due in large part to gun violence, a report by the Commonwealth Fund found earlier this year.