Black Americans 20 times more likely to have gun injuries than White Americans

Black Americans, especially young Black men, face 20 times the odds of gun injury compared to White Americans, new data shows.

"Black persons made up only 12.6% of the U.S. population in 2020, but suffered 61.5% of all firearm assaults," noted researchers led by Dr. Elinore Kaufman , of Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia.

Her team published its findings Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine .

"Firearm injury is an epidemic in the United States, but current data sources are flawed and incomplete," Kaufman's group noted. To help remedy that knowledge gap, they looked at 2019-2020 data from the federal Nationwide Emergency Department Sample.

That database includes information on both fatal and nonfatal gun injuries cared for in the nation's emergency departments. In 2019, information on each victim's race/ethnicity was included in the data for the first time.

Overall, more than 250,000 gun injuries occurred over the two-year timeframe, about a third of which proved fatal.

That's the equivalent of one American being hurt by a firearm every four minutes and one person being killed every 12 minutes, the research team said.

Overall, gun-related deaths affected just under 13 per every 100,000 Americans, while nonfatal gun injuries affected 25.5 per 100,000.

Among those injured or killed 37.3% were due to assaults, 37.8% were deemed accidents, 21% were suicides or attempted suicides (90% of which proved fatal), and 1.3% were tied to law enforcement, Kaufman's group reported.

However, the gulf between the various groups of Americans affected was wide.

Some of the grim statistics from the report:

When it came to gun-related injuries and deaths linked to assaults, "rates are alarmingly high among Black boys and men aged 15 to 34 years, with an overall rate of 291 firearm assault injuries per 100,000," the researchers found. That's compared to 8.9 gun assault injuries per 100,000 among Whites of the same age group, a huge difference, researchers said.

Native Americans and Hispanics ages 15 to 34 also sustained assault-related gun injuries at significantly higher rates than young Whites, at 25.6 and 29.2 per 100,000, respectively.

Among boys and young men, accidental gun deaths and injuries were 10 times higher for Black Americans compared to Whites.

Rates for gun-related suicides were highest among older White males (ages 35-54), at 18.9 per 100,000 people. Black American men of similar age used a gun for suicide at about half that rate, the data showed.

Native American men ages 35 to 54 had a gun-related suicide rate that was closer to that of Whites, at 13.5 such deaths per 100,000, the data showed.

What can and should be done to reduce gun injuries, and shrink wide disparities in who gets harmed?

According to the authors of a journal editorial published with the study, politicians have faltered in tightening gun laws over the past decade, and the situation has only gotten worse.

"In 2022, more than 48,000 persons in the United States died by firearms, and guns were a leading cause of death for children, teens and young Black men," noted Dr. Sue Bornstein , of the Texas Medical Home Initiative in Dallas and co-author Dr. Christine Laine , the Annals' editor-in-chief.

"A sharp increase in gun ownership began before and escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic," they added. "Between January 2019 and April 2021, an estimated 5.7 million U.S. adults became new gun owners. Most lived in homes that previously were without guns."

From a legislative standpoint, the outlook looks bleak.

"In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen that any restrictions on gun ownership had to conform to the 'history and tradition' of firearm regulations stretching back to the 18th century," Bornstein and Laine wrote. "This ruling essentially allows handguns to be carried in most public settings, so the United States now has more guns than ever being carried in more places than ever."

Still, there are glimmers of hope.

The two experts point to laws passed recently by 21 states, restricting the access to guns by people deemed "to be at high risk for harming themselves or others."

Gun violence is "a public health issue that requires a multipronged public health approach," that focuses "on making it harder rather than easier for persons at risk for harming themselves or others to get their hands on a gun," the editorialists said.

More information

The Prevention Institute has more on what you can do to help prevent gun deaths.

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