GUN DEATHS SURGED IN 2020, CDC REPORTS

Gun deaths reached the highest level ever recorded in the United States in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, as gun-related homicides surged by 35 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Tuesday.

“This is a historic increase, with the rate having reached the highest level in over 25 years,” Dr. Debra E. Houry, acting principal deputy director of the CDC and the director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, said at a briefing.

More than 45,000 Americans died in gun-related incidents as the pandemic spread in the United States, the highest number on record, federal data show. The violence exacted an unprecedented toll in Black communities, and early data suggest the trend continued through last year.

But more than half of gun deaths were suicides, and that number did not substantially increase from 2019 to 2020. The overall rise in gun deaths was 15 percent in 2020, lower than the percentage increase in gun homicides, the CDC said.

The rise in gun killings was the largest one-year increase seen in modern history, according to Ari Davis, a policy adviser at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which recently released its own analysis of CDC data.

Homicides involving firearms were generally highest, and showed the largest increases, in poor communities, federal researchers said.

Federal officials and outside experts are uncertain what caused the surge in gun deaths overall. “One possible explanation is stressors associated with the COVID pandemic that could have played a role, including changes and disruption to services and education, social isolation, housing instability and difficulty covering daily expenses,” said Thomas R. Simon, associate director for science at the CDC’s division of violence prevention.

The rise also corresponded to accelerated sales of firearms as the pandemic spread and lockdowns became the norm, the CDC noted. Americans began a gun-buying spree in 2020 that continued into 2021, when in a single week the FBI reported a record 1.2 million background checks.

Black Americans remained disproportionately affected by gun violence in 2020. Firearm homicide rates increased by 39.5 percent among Black people from 2019 to 2020, to 11,904. The victims were overwhelmingly young men.

The Johns Hopkins analysis found that Black men ages 15 to 34 accounted for 38 percent of all gun homicide victims in 2020, though they represented just 2 percent of the U.S. population.

Black men ages 15 to 34 were more than 20 times more likely to be killed with a gun than White men of the same age. The number of Black women killed by guns also increased by almost 50 percent in 2020, compared with 2019, Davis said.