Gun violence is an alarming public health crisis in the United States. Its toll goes well beyond the thousands of lives lost each year. It devastates families and communities. It threatens our sense of safety and security. In this post on gun violence as a public health issue, we explain the different types of violence and who is affected.
Note: This post was updated by Those Nerdy Girls from the original written on May 24, 2023.
➡️ Types of gun violence
The CDC categorizes gun violence (defined as either death or injury) into five types:
1) intentional self-harm
2) unintentional or accidental (cleaning or playing)
3) interpersonal or intentional (homicide and assault)
4) legal intervention (law enforcement, in the line of duty)
5) undetermined intent (unknown).
Sometimes, these categories overlap. For example, we see overlap where legal intervention may be later categorized as interpersonal violence (homicide or assault)** and where interpersonal violence is not between two people who know each other, but is related to political ideas, racism, prejudice, or incidental (“being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”)
➡️ Fast Facts
According to the CDC and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:
In one year (2022), 48,000 people lost their lives to gun violence. Over 19,200 of the deaths were homicides. More than 24,000 of the deaths were due to suicide by firearm.
Gun violence touches all of our lives, but some groups are more likely to be direct victims than others.
These include:
- Children, teens, and young adults under age 34. Death by a firearm was the leading cause of death for people ages 1-19 in 2022.
- Elders. The rate of death from suicide with a firearm is highest among adults 75 years of age
- Men. 86% of all firearm deaths are suffered by men
- Black or African American people
- American Indian or Alaska Native people
- Hispanic or Latino people
- Non-Hispanic white people
➡️ The toll of gun violence
For people who survive, there are long-term individual consequences, including:
- problems with memory and thinking
- physical disability, including paralysis
- chronic pain
- chronic mental health problems such as PTSD
- lost time from work and social activities
➡️ Effects on communities
Gun violence can happen at any time in any place. Shooting incidents occur in homes, schools, houses of worship, workplaces, shopping areas on the street, at community events, etc.
They can affect the sense of safety and security for entire neighborhoods, communities, and the nation as a whole. For some, these events are impacting everyday decisions.
Gun violence is considered a public health issue because of the scale of the impact and the effects on the health of communities.
What gives this writer hope is that amazing epidemiologists are studying this from a scientific and health perspective so that we can take action. See action alert below.
🤓Nerd Alert: Public health scientists and clinicians, looking at data, have found that states with robust gun laws have lower gun-related death rates. Our nerdy friends Jeremy Faust, MD and Nini Munoz have covered this topic looking at deaths among children, finding the problem has worsened (excess deaths) since 2011 in the states with less strict gun laws. Check out Inside Medicine’s newsletter and Nini’s amazing graphic on Instagram from 8/28 to learn more.
We also know that harm reduction strategies exist.
For example, gun locks are an easy and sometimes free harm reduction measure.
At Those Nerdy Girls, we love when Nerd Alerts 🤓 can lead directly to…
❗📣Action Alerts
Here is how you can share what you learn here with your representatives
Those Nerdy Girls is here to support you and our communities to have the information we need to be informed and stay safe. Though we are not experts in gun violence, we work to make the science around the research available and understandable.
💫Click here to hear a pre-recorded LIVE discussion with Dr. Chana Davis and Dr. Sara Gorman on Gun Violence in America: Facts, Myths, and Solutions. They discuss the gun violence crisis in America. Check it out to get the facts, bust myths, and find solutions with public health and misleading information expert, Dr. Sara Gorman.
Please submit questions to the question box here.
Holding our communities in love and support,
Those Nerdy Girls &+
**The CDC classification “legal intervention” undercounts police-involved gun deaths. To address this gap, media sources like the Washington Post’s Fatal Force database have tracked police-involved shootings in recent years, reporting that 1,021 people were shot and killed by police in 2020. (From the report, A Year in Review: 2020 Gun Deaths in the U.S., A Year in Review 2020 GUN DEATHS IN THE U.S.
References:
CDC Fast Facts: Firearm Injury and Death [Web archive]
