Study finds gun death rates in some US states are higher than in conflict zones

The latest report illustrates “how serious gun violence has become in the U.S. and that we should be talking about it much more than we are,” said Evan Goumas, a fellow at the Commonwealth Fund and co-author of the report. .

“The fact that the US is among the countries involved in some form of conflict (be it civil war, civil unrest, drug/weapon trafficking, etc.) is truly astounding, and even more so when we look at it what US states compare to globally,” he said in an email Washington Post. “I think many Americans would be surprised at how similar our rates are to those in conflict zones around the world.”

The report is based on data from the 2021 Global Burden of Disease study, which provides an in-depth analysis of mortality and disability across countries, as well as the latest 2022 mortality data provided by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In their study, the researchers defined gun mortality as a composite of physical gun violence, gun-related self-harm, and unintentional gunshot injuries.

There have been 24 mass killings by guns in the United States this year, according to a tracker published by Washington Postwhich defines “mass murder” as an event in which four or more people, not including the perpetrators, are killed.

Globally, the report says, the United States ranks in the 93rd percentile for overall gun deaths, 92nd percentile for gun deaths among children and adolescents, and 96th percentile for gun deaths among women.

US states have higher gun death rates than most other countries in the world. The rate of self-harm is also much higher.

Blacks, American Indians and Alaska Natives have the highest rates of any racial or ethnic group.

Previous studies have compared gun deaths in the United States with other high-income countries and have found consistently higher death rates in the United States.

The purpose of the latest report, Goumas said, was to highlight how the United States compares to countries outside it is the usual wealthy cohort – such as Belize, which suffers from bouts of civil unrest and has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world.

“I think Americans understand that we certainly can’t compare to many of the high-income countries that we typically compare ourselves to,” Goumas said.

“But I don’t think they expect us to be compared to a lot of the countries we compare to, like the Dominican Republic or Belize or Haiti.”