U.S. gun deaths reached highest level in 2020

Gun deaths reached the highest level ever recorded in the United States in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday. Gun-related homicides in particular rose by 35%, a surge that exacted an unprecedented toll on Black men, agency researchers said.

“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 news briefing Tuesday.

“We need to be vigilant in addressing the conditions that contribute to homicides and suicides and the disparities observed,” she added.

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. 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% in 2020, lower than the percentage increase in gun homicides, the CDC said.

The rise in gun murders 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.

He said preliminary figures suggest that gun deaths remained persistently high in 2021.

Federal officials and outside experts are not certain what caused the surge in gun deaths. The rise corresponded to accelerated sales of firearms as the pandemic spread and lockdowns became the norm, the CDC noted.

But federal researchers also cited increased social, economic and psychological stressors; disruptions in routine health care; tension between police and community members following George Floyd’s murder; a rise in domestic violence; inequitable access to health care; and long-standing systemic racism that contributes to poor housing conditions, limited educational opportunities and high poverty rates.

Murders involving firearms were generally highest, and showed the largest increases, in impoverished communities.

“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 agency’s division of violence prevention.

Black Americans remained disproportionately affected by gun violence in 2020. Firearm homicide rates increased by 39.5% 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% of all gun murder victims in 2020, though they represented just 2% of the U.S. population.