Black History Month 2023: Key Research Stats

Gun Violence Survivors

The trauma of gun violence does not end when the experience of gun violence stops. Experiencing gun violence has lasting impacts on survivors, their families, and their communities.

• 71 percent of Black adults or someone they know or care about has experienced gun violence in their lifetimes.
• 31 percent of Black people know or care about someone that was shot and wounded.
• 1 in 3 Black people know or care about someone who was killed with a gun.
• 57 percent of Black survivors experienced trauma from the incident.
• Despite reporting high levels of trauma, Black communities reported less access to these services. In the first six months after the incident, 50 percent of Black survivors did not have access to these services, and access to services to cope with the long-term impact of trauma remained the same.

The Disproportionate Impact of Guns on the Black Community

The underinvestment in Black and Latinx communities has created areas of concentrated disadvantages, housing instability, and poverty, where the public health crisis of gun violence continues to impact.

• Black communities are disproportionately impacted by gun violence. Each day on average, 30 Black people are killed with guns,¹Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A yearly average was developed using five years of the most recent available data: 2016 to 2020. Everytown For Gun Safety Support Fund, “A More Complete Picture: The Contours of Gun Injury in the United States,” December 2020. and more than 110 experience non-fatal injuries.²Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A yearly average was developed using five years of the most recent available data: 2016 to 2020. Everytown For Gun Safety Support Fund, “A More Complete Picture: The Contours of Gun Injury in the United States,” December 2020.
• Black Americans are 10 times more likely than white Americans to die by gun homicide.³Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A yearly average was developed using five years of the most recent available data: 2016 to 2020. Analysis includes: all ages, non-Hispanic or Latinx only, and homicide including legal intervention.
• 58% of all people killed in firearm homicides are Black.⁴Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A yearly average was developed using five years of the most recent available data: 2016 to 2020.
• Every year, police in America shoot and kill more than 1,000 people,⁵Everytown analysis of 2017 to 2021 Mapping Police Violence data (accessed January 3, 2022). and Black Americans are the victims at a disproportionate rate.
• Black people are nearly three times more likely to be shot and killed by police than white Americans.⁶Everytown analysis of 2013 to 2019 Mapping Police Violence (accessed June 4, 2020) and population data from the US Census. This may underestimate the true rate as race was unknown for approximately 10% of the reported deaths. National Violent Death Reporting System 2009-2012 (17 states participating) and also shows Black Americans killed by police at a rate 2.8 times higher than white Americans, see DeGue et al., 2016. CDC’s data on 2010-2014 deaths categorized as legal intervention shows a rate of police killing of Black males aged 10+ 2.8 times higher than white males 10+ years old, see Buehler, 2017. Curbing this gun violence requires interrogation of America’s history of racism, reimagining the role of police, and implementing policies that reduce police gun violence.⁷Everytown for Gun Safety, “Gun Violence by Police,” November 18, 2022, https://www.everytown.org/issues/gun-violence-by-police/.
• 68 percent of Black adults believe that police shootings are a major problem.

Black Children and Teens and Gun Violence

• Black children and teens are 14 times more likely than white children and teens of the same age to die by gun homicide.⁸Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A yearly average was developed using five years of the most recent available data: 2016 to 2020. Analysis includes children and teens aged 0 to 19, Black and white defined as non-Hispanic or Latinx only, and homicide, including legal intervention.
• Every seven hours, a black boy or teenager dies by gun homicide in the United States.⁹Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death. A yearly average was developed using five years of the most recent available data: 2016 to 2020. Analysis includes children and teens aged 0 to 19, non-Hispanic/Latinx Black, and homicide includes legal intervention.
• Black children and teens are 13 times more likely than white children and teens of the same age to be hospitalized for a gun injury.¹⁰Everytown For Gun Safety Support Fund, “A More Complete Picture.” Analysis includes children and teens aged 0 to 19, Black and white defined as non-Hispanic only.

Black LGBTQ+ Community and Gun Violence

• In 2021 alone, there were 56 homicides of transgender or gender-nonconforming people. Black trans women face the bulk of this violence: in 2021, 61% of gun homicides were of Black trans women.¹¹Everytown for Gun Safety, Transgender Homicide Tracker, five-year count: 2017–2021.
• There was a 93% increase in incidents of tracked transgender homicides from 2017 to 2021 (from 29 incidents in 2017 to 56 incidents in 2021). During this time period, 73% of people were killed with a gun.¹²Everytown for Gun Safety, Transgender Homicide Tracker, five-year count: 2017–2021. From 2017 to 2021, the majority of these gun homicides (73%) were of Black trans Women.

Firearm Suicide

• Among youth aged 10-24, firearm suicide rates have increased 53 percent over the past ten years. Black youth saw a 115 percent increase in firearm suicide over the past decade.
• “Research has shown an alarming increase in suicide deaths and attempts among young Black people over the past decade. Studies on Black teens have shown that depression; traumatic experiences such as exposure to racism, discrimination, and neighborhood violence; and poor familial support are risk factors for suicide among this group. Young Black people are less likely than their white peers to receive care for mental health-related traumas, as they face a variety of barriers to accessing services. With schools serving as a primary provider of mental health services in many communities, policies that have created the school-to-prison pipeline prevent many Black youths from accessing the services they need. Young Black students who show symptoms of mental illness are disciplined and arrested more often than students of other racial/ethnic groups, rather than being given access to help.”¹³Everytown Report https://everytownresearch.org/report/the-rise-of-firearm-suicide-among-young-americans/

Intimate Partner Violence and Gun Violence

• Black women are three times as likely as white women to be fatally shot by an intimate partner.¹⁴Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), 2019. Analysis includes homicides involving an intimate partner and a firearm, and compares the crude death rates for non-Latinx Black women (1.57 per 100,000) versus non-Latinx white women (0.53 per 100,000) (18 years and older).
• Black women and girls and young women (10-24 year-olds) are disproportionately impacted by pregnancy-associated homicides.¹⁵Wallace, Maeve E. “Trends in pregnancy-associated homicide, United States, 2020.” American journal of public health 112, no. 9 (2022): 1333-1336.Wallace, Maeve, Veronica Gillispie-Bell, Kiara Cruz, Kelly Davis, and Dovile Vilda. “Homicide During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period in the United States, 2018–2019.” Obstetrics and gynecology 138, no. 5 (2021): 762.

COVID-19, Community Violence, and Guns

The disproportionate impact of the pandemic and firearm homicide on Black communities reflect the United State’s long-standing racial inequities. Black people in the US are two times more likely to die from COVID-19 and ten times more likely to die by gun homicide than white people.¹⁶Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization and Death by Race/Ethnicity,” February 18, 2021, https://bit.ly/3bbmB8N; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. WONDER Online Database, Underlying Cause of Death, 1999–2019, https://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10.html. A yearly average was developed using five years of the most recent available data: 2015 to 2019. Analysis includes: all ages, non-Hispanic or Latinx only, and homicide including legal intervention.