LOST TO GUN VIOLENCE
In just more than 10 years, 2,056 people died from gunshot wounds in Connecticut, touching every age, race, gender, and socioeconomic group. The toll has been devastating, the solutions difficult.
Connecticut’s gun deaths have remained relatively steady in the years since high-profile legislation was passed after the Sandy Hook school shooting, with the state’s big cities still hot spots for slayings and suicides among older people revealing a troublesome trend.
The overall number of people killed by guns declined slightly over the last 10 years, from 216 in 2010 to 188 in 2019, a Hearst Connecticut Media Group review of state medical examiner data shows. Gun deaths have been slightly below 200 in the years since laws were passed to limit the use of some guns after the 2012 shooting at the New-
town school in which 26 students and adults were killed.
In total, 2,056 people died as a result of a gunshot.
Suicides account for 58 percent of those deaths and 41 percent were the result of homicide. Suicide became more prevalent as residents aged — more than 90 percent of those in their 70s and 80s died by suicide, the data shows.
Homicides occur more often in the big cities — Bridgeport, Hartford and New Haven — and murder overall impacts younger people far more than older residents.
State Rep. Stephen Meskers, D-Greenwich and a member of the Legislature’s aging committee, said he’s surprised and concerned about the number of older residents who died by suicide over the last decade.
“It’s certainly worrisome,” Meskers said. “This is something we should be investigating.”
Jeremy Stein, executive director of CT Against Gun Violence, said Connecticut traditionally has had one of the lowest gun death rates in the nation, in part because of gun control laws over the last several decades.
That includes reforms following the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shootings in 2012 that banned assault weapons and high capacity magazines. There have been no mass shootings in Connecticut since Sandy Hook.
The medical examiner data does not record what type of gun was used in each death — an assault weapon, a handgun or long guns traditionally used for hunting.
Still, Stein said the state faces a gun violence crisis.
“In some communities, sons and daughters are being shot in the street,” Stein said. “It’s hard to tell them that gun deaths are down. On average in Connecticut, someone is shot every day. That’s a problem and we need to find solutions.”
Stein added, “We do a good job legislating guns. But we have to stop the demand for these guns and create better opportunities for these communities.”
Inner city deaths
The statewide data examined by Hearst shows that Black and Hispanic residents are disproportionately affected by deadly gun violence, which is in line with national trends.
For example, 61 percent of the gun deaths involved white people; 27 percent Blacks; and 10 percent Hispanics. By comparison, 80 percent of the state is white; 17 percent Hispanic and 12 percent Black, according to the U.S. Census.
The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in San Francisco noted in a recent report that Connecticut Black men make up less than 6 percent of the state’s population but account for more than 53 percent of the state’s gun homicides.
Connecticut Black men ages 18 to 35 are nearly 39 times more likely than white men the same age to be murdered with a gun, the Giffords Center said.
The medical examiner data shows that 81 percent of the 18and 19-years-olds who died from a gunshot were homicide victims, and 74 percent were in their 20s.
The state’s three largest cities also continued to be hot spots for gun deaths over the last decade: 204 in Hartford; 165 in Bridgeport; and 162 in New Haven, the data shows.
In all, 1,850 males died of gun shots statewide compared to 205 females. There were 1,183 suicides, 850 homicides, 14 undetermined deaths and 6 accidental deaths. For two deaths, causes were still pending.
Connecticut is consistently ranked fifth or sixth lowest in terms of gun deaths per 100,000 residents, according to statistics compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control.
In 2018, Connecticut had a firearm mortality rate of 4.9 deaths per 100,000 residents, the sixth lowest in the nation. Mississippi had the nation’s worst gun death rate, 22.9 deaths per 100,000 residents.
Rhode Island in 2018 had the nation’s lowest rate: 3.3 gun deaths per 100,000 residents.
Mike Lawlor, a criminal justice professor at the University of New Haven and a former state undersecretary for criminal justice policy, said murder is rare in Connecticut — at least outside of the state’s large cities.
“Most [victims] are young, typically African American men, shooting at each other… in cities for stupid reasons,” Lawlor said.
“If you take that out, there are very few murders in our state,” Lawlor said. “Unless you travel in those circles, odds of getting killed are less than they have ever been.”
Nationally, the killing of suspects by police, either through gunfire or other means, sparked massive protests earlier this year.
The high profile cases included Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Atlanta resident shot and killed by police, and Breonna Taylor, an emergency medical technician killed in her apartment by Louisville, Kentucky, police during a raid gone wrong.
In Connecticut, between 2017 and January 2020, there were more than a dozen officer-involved shootings, stemming from various incidents.
A Hearst review of dozens of state’s attorney reports in which officers were cleared for killing a suspect showed that since 2001, 69 suspects in Connecticut have been killed by police who deployed deadly force.
Only one of those cases — a deadly shooting by a Hartford cop — was deemed not justified by the State’s Attorney Office, which reviews each case of deadly force by a Connecticut officer. The officer was later acquitted in state Superior Court.
Gun control
Connecticut has enacted various gun controls, beginning in the 1990s when state laws mirrored a federal assault weapon ban that expired in 2004.
More gun control was enacted after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
The Sandy Hook legislation updated and modernized the previous ban, prohibiting assault weapons based on specifications rather than brands. Gun manufacturers had been changing brand names and making minor changes to gun specifications to get around previous laws, Lawlor said.
The state’s new regulations also required permits for all guns, including traditional hunting weapons such as shotguns, banned high capacity magazines and placed controls on ammunition purchases.
“Connecticut has made important progress in strengthening its gun laws in recent years, yet too many residents lose their lives to gun violence,” the Giffords Center said.
Lawlor said Connecticut’s low gun death rate can be attributed to its gun laws.
“In Iowa, you can buy a gun in a matter of a couple of hours,” Lawlor said. “Here, you have to get a permit and that can take months. You can sell a gun in Pennsylvania out of a trunk of a car if you are not a licensed gun dealer.”
Larry Keane, senior vice president for government relations for the National Shooting Sports Foundation based in Newtown, disputed the notion that gun control laws are reducing gun deaths.
“We are glad to see the number of deaths are going down but you can’t ascribe it to laws passed in Hartford,” said Keane, who attributed the decrease to better law enforcement and an improved economy.
“The gun laws are a hindrance to law abiding citizens,” Keane said. “But we have seen a general decline in homicides and crime nationwide and in states with restrictive gun laws and less restrictive gun law.”
Still, Keane noted that in New York City and Chicago — places with restrictive gun controls — there has been a “tremendous increase” in violent crime and shootings.
“New York passed very restrictive gun control laws so those laws are not having the impact proponents said they would,” Keane said. “Criminals don’t obey the law.”
Keane said federal data shows the national assault weapon ban, in place from 1994 to 2004, had no impact on crime in the U.S.
“The rifles that were targeted were rarely used in crime in the U.S.,” Keane said. “While they are used in large profile tragedies, like Sandy Hook, they are rarely used in crime.”
Too many suicides
In the U.S., nearly two-thirds of all gun deaths are suicides, averaging about 63 a day, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, which promotes gun control and advocates against gun violence.
The state data shows that suicide represents 58 percent of the gun deaths. Nationally, 65 percent of all gun deaths are suicides, compared to 35 percent attributed to homicide.
Among the state residents who died from gunfire over the last decade, 73 percent of those in their 40s died by suicide; 82 percent of those in their 50s; 90
A Hearst review of dozens of state’s attorney reports in which officers were cleared for killing a suspect showed that since 2001, 69 suspects in Connecticut have been killed by police who deployed deadly force.
percent of those in their 60s and 70s; and 95 percent of those in their 80s.
According to the CDC, suicide is increasing nationally. The agency noted that between 1999 and 2018, the age-adjusted suicide rate increased 35 percent — from 10.5 per 100,000 residents to 14.2 in 2018.
Among males, suicide rates are highest for those aged 75 and over and lowest for those aged 10 to 14, the CDC said.
The females suicide rates between 1999 and 2018 were highest for those aged 45 to 64 and lowest for those aged 10 to 14.
Stein, the director of CT Against Gun Violence, said gun ownership is a major factor in suicide.
He said experts point out that certain populations have less resources and mobility, greater occurrences of depression, more psychiatric illness and feel less in control or lack an ability to get help.
“Those are all contributing factors to suicide,” Stein said. “Certain risk factors increase with age.”
But the gun is the biggest contributing factor in gun suicides, Stein said.
“If you have a gun and you’re suicidal and you use that gun, you are almost always going to succeed,” Stein said.
“Just having a gun in the home increases the chance you are going to die.”
Keane, the shooting sports foundation spokesman, acknowledged suicides are rising, notably among people 50 years old and older.
“Most of the time the firearms are already owned and in the home,” Keane said.
“Safe storage is important and holding guns for people who are suicidal is important. There needs to be more resources in mental health to get them the help they need.”
The Harvard School of Public Health found that “the correlation between guns and suicide is strong but inexact, since both are influenced by poverty, population density and crime.”
According to Harvard, nine states that rank lowest in gun ownership also rank lowest for suicide rates.
“Similarly, the three states top-ranked for gun prevalence can be found among the four states ranking highest for suicide rates,” Harvard noted.