Gun violence

"Shootings" redirects here. For other uses, see Shooting (disambiguation).

Rates of gun-related homicide (red) and suicide (blue) in high-income OECD countries, 2010. Countries in graph are ordered by total death rates (homicide plus suicide plus other gun-related deaths).[1]

Gun-related violence is violence against a person committed with the use of a firearm to inflict a gunshot wound. Gun violence may or may not be considered criminal. Criminal violence includes homicide (except when and where ruled justifiable) and assault with a deadly weapon. Depending on the jurisdiction, suicide or attempted suicide may also be considered a crime. Non-criminal violence includes accidental or unintentional injury and death (except in cases of criminal negligence). Also generally included in gun violence statistics are military or para-military activities.

According to GunPolicy.org, 75 percent of the world's 875 million guns are civilian controlled.[2][better source needed] Roughly half of these guns (48 percent) are in the United States, which has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world.[3] Globally, millions are wounded or killed by the use of guns.[2] Assault by firearm resulted in 180,000 deaths in 2013, up from 128,000 deaths in 1990.[4] There were additionally 47,000 unintentional firearm-related deaths in 2013.[4]

Levels of gun-related violence vary greatly among geographical regions, countries, and even sub-nationally.[5] Rates of violent deaths by firearm range from as low as 0.03 and 0.04 per 100,000 population in Singapore and Japan, to 59 and 67 per 100,000 in Honduras and Venezuela.[6] The highest rates of violent deaths by firearm in the world occur in low-income South and Central American countries such as Honduras, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil and Jamaica.[6]

The United States has the 11th highest rate of gun violence in the world and a gun homicide rate which is 25 times higher than the average respective rates of other high income nations.[7][8] The United States has a total rate of firearms death which is many times higher than that of similarly developed nations with strict gun control laws, such as Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and South Korea.[8] Nearly all studies have found a positive correlation between gun ownership and gun-related homicide and suicide rates.[9][10]: 29 [11]

According to the United Nations, small arms account for roughly half of the weapons used to kill people,[12] and more people die each year from gun-related violence than did in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.[13] The global death toll from use of guns may be as high as 1,000 dead each day.[13]

  1. ^ Grinshteyn, Erin; Hemenway, David (March 2016). "Violent Death Rates: The US Compared with Other High-income OECD Countries, 2010". The American Journal of Medicine. 129 (3): 266–273. doi:10.1016/j.amjmed.2015.10.025. PMID 26551975. (Table 4). (PDF).
  2. ^ a b Alpers, Philip; Wilson, Marcus (2013). "Global Impact of Gun Violence". gunpolicy.org. Sydney School of Public Health, The University of Sydney. Archived from the original on 2023-02-16. Retrieved 2014-02-25.
  3. ^ Fox, Kara. "America's gun culture vs. the world". CNN Graphics by Henrik Pettersson. CNN.
  4. ^ a b GBD 2013 Mortality and Causes of Death Collaborators (December 17, 2014). "Global, regional, and national age-sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013". Lancet. 385 (9963): 117–71. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61682-2. PMC 4340604. PMID 25530442.
  5. ^ "Global Study on Homicide 2011". United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Retrieved 2012-12-18.
  6. ^ a b "Countries with the Highest Rates of Firearm Related Deaths". WorldAtlas. April 25, 2017.
  7. ^ Grinshteyn, Erin; Hemenway, David (March 1, 2016). "Violent Death Rates: The US Compared with Other High-income OECD Countries, 2010". The American Journal of Medicine. 129 (3): 266–273. doi:10.1016/j.amjmed.2015.10.025. PMID 26551975 – via amjmed.com.
  8. ^ a b "Gun Violence: Comparing The U.S. With Other Countries". NPR.
  9. ^ Wintemute, Garen J. (March 18, 2015). "The Epidemiology of Firearm Violence in the Twenty-First Century United States". Annual Review of Public Health. 36 (1): 5–19. doi:10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031914-122535. PMID 25533263.
  10. ^ Cook, Philip J.; Ludwig, Jens (2000). Gun Violence: The Real Costs. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-513793-4. OCLC 45580985.
  11. ^ Morris, Hugh (October 22, 2016). "Mapped: The countries with the most guns (no prizes for guessing #1)". The Telegraph.
  12. ^ "Half of all violent deaths involve small arms and light weapons". UN News. February 5, 2020.
  13. ^ a b "Global Impact of Gun Violence: Firearms, public health and safety". gunpolicy.org. Archived from the original on 2023-02-16. Retrieved 2019-12-12.