Gun murders surged in 2020 amid pandemic
Gun-related murders in the United States jumped 35 percent in the first year of the pandemic to the highest level in more than 25 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, said on Tuesday.
A firearm was involved in more than 19,000 homicides in 2020, an increase of nearly 5,000 from 2019, the CDC said.
More than 45,000 people died in gun-related incidents as the pandemic spread in the US, and 53 percent of the deaths resulted from suicides, which didn’t substantially increase from 2019 to 2020, the CDC said. The overall rise in gun deaths was 15 percent in 2020, lower than the percentage increase in gun homicides.
A report released late last month from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions analyzing the federal agency’s data described the surge in gun murders as “the largest one-year increase in modern history”, said Ari Davis, a policy adviser at the center. Preliminary figures suggest that gun deaths remained persistently high in 2021, Davis said.
Even as the number of gun homicides rose dramatically, most deaths caused by guns in the US remained suicides, researchers said. The rate of suicides involving the use of a firearm — about 8 per 100,000 people — stayed roughly steady in 2020, a trend that has held for several years.
The biggest increases in gun homicides were among black people and Native Americans, the CDC said.
The report found that no group was affected more than black people, who died by firearm homicides at a rate far higher than any other racial or ethnic group. Black men and boys aged 10 to 24 died from gun homicide at rates more than 21 times as often as white males in the same age group.
“We’re losing too many of our nation’s children and young people — specifically black boys and young black men,” said Debra Houry, acting principal deputy director of the CDC and director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
Social pressures
The CDC report suggests that the rise in violence could be attributed to social and economic pressures like unemployment, housing insecurity and child care stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic that reinforced long-standing inequities between communities.
Federal researchers also cited disruptions in routine healthcare, the tension between police and community members following the murder of George Floyd, a rise in domestic violence, inequitable access to healthcare, and systemic racism that contributes to poor housing conditions, limited educational opportunities and high poverty rates.
Gun-related suicides have long been more common among older white men. But in 2020, rates rose most sharply among Native American and Alaska Native groups.
Guns were available for purchase throughout the pandemic due to exemptions designating firearm retailers (and shooting ranges) as “essential businesses” in all but four states.
A study in December found that 7.5 million people in the US became new gun owners during the pandemic, 5 million of whom lived in a household that previously hadn’t had guns.