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The annual report on the public health crisis that is guns was released by researchers at Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. The report updates the organization’s 2020 report with additional 2021 data from the CDC, which shows that during the pandemic, gun-related death rates in the United States reached record highs for two years in a row. Even during the deadliest year of the pandemic (2021), gun-related deaths outpaced COVID-19, automobile accidents, and cancer as the leading cause of death among children and teens.
According to the study, gun homicide rates increased 7.6% over the previous year, while gun suicide rates increased by 8.3%—the “largest one-year increase recorded in over four decades.” The correlation (and speculative connection) to record increases in gun sales is hard not to see, and those correlations are made more clear when considering the communities seeing the biggest increases in gun sales are also the communities seeing the record increases in gun-related deaths.
According to the research, 48,830 people died as a result of guns in 2021. This marked an increase of more than 3,600 deaths compared to 2020, which held the previous “record high.” Ari Davis, a co-author of the study, tells NPR, “Guns are driving this increase.”
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