Vaqueirinho, Serra da Lousã, Portugal, Vaqueirinho Republic! : My 12th page... This is how it is: America is a man with a gun

This is how it is:

America is a man with a gun

It doesn’t have to be this way, but it is. This is how it is. A grandmother at a grocery store. A son praying in church. A teacher reading a book to a classroom of little kids. A man with a gun.

Another day, another massacre. A morgue truck filled with dead bodies. A community gutting. A television crew reporting the same news on a loop: “a man with a gun went…

This Is How It Is...

Gun violence is a public health epidemic in the United States

Gun violence is a public health epidemic in the United States. Every year nearly 40,000 Americans are killed by guns, including more than 23,000 who die by firearm suicide, 14,000 who die by firearm homicide, more than 500 who die by legal intervention,1 nearly 500 who die by unintentional firearm injuries, and more than 300 who die by undetermined intent.2 This equates to more than 100 gun deaths every single day. In addition, every day nearly 200 Americans visit the emergency department for nonfatal firearm injuries.3

In 2019, the most recent year of data available, there were 39,707 gun deaths – 109 every single day.4 Three in every five gun deaths are suicides and more than one-third are homicides, while the remainder are unintentional, of unknown intent, or law enforcement intervention.

Among high-income countries, the United States is an outlier in terms of gun violence. It has been well-documented that firearm ownership rates* are associated with increased firearm-related death rates. The U.S. has the highest firearm ownership and highest firearm death rates of 27 high-income countries.5 The firearm homicide rate in the U.S. is nearly 25 times higher than other high-income countries and the firearm suicide rate is nearly 10 times that of other high-income countries.6

It is a common misconception that individuals living with mental illness are responsible for gun violence. When compared to other countries, the United States has similar rates of mental illness, yet we have much higher rates of gun violence.7,8 To be clear, mental illness does not cause gun violence – the problem is access to firearms.

While gun death data are the most reliable type of gun violence data currently available, it is important to recognize that gun deaths are only the tip of the iceberg of the gun violence epidemic. In addition to gun deaths, many more people are shot and survive their injuries, are shot at but not hit, or witness gun violence. Many experience gun violence in other ways, for example by living in impacted communities, losing loved ones to gun violence, or being threatened with a gun.