Skip to main content

Black Americans 20 Times More Prone to Gun Injuries Than Whites

By Ernie Mundell HealthDay Reporter

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on July 30, 2024.

via HealthDay

TUESDAY, July 30, 2024 -- Black Americans, especially young Black men, face 20 times the odds of gun injury compared to whites, 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 July 29 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:

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.

Sources

  • Annals of Internal Medicine, July 29, 2024

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Read this next

Could Dairy Be Causing Your Bad Dreams?

WEDNESDAY, July 2, 2025 — Having bad dreams after eating ice cream or cheese? Your stomach may be trying to tell you something. New research shows that people with worse...

Judge Blocks Layoffs at U.S. Health Department

WEDNESDAY, July 2, 2025 — A federal judge has stopped the Trump administration from implementing more layoffs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)...

Tattoos Don't Convey Accurate Impressions Of People, Study Says

WEDNESDAY, July 2, 2025 — Tattoos have become a form of self-expression, a means of telling the world something about yourself. Unfortunately, observers mostly misread...

More news resources

Subscribe to our newsletter

Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.