Black persons fall victim to guns at 20 times the rate of White persons

Black persons fall victim to guns at 20 times the rate of White persons

The epidemic rages on as gun violence injures 1 person every 4 minutes and kills 1 person every 12 minutes in the U.S.

Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M23-2251             

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A retrospective, cross-sectional study of national data from 2019 and 2020 shows that firearm injury is still very much an epidemic in the United States, with racial and ethnic minorities bearing much of the burden. During the study period, there were 2 nonfatal injuries for every death. And while Black persons made up only 12.6% of the U.S. population in 2020, they suffered 61.5% of all firearm assaults, died of firearm homicide, and experienced a rate of nonfatal firearm assaults both at a rate 20-fold higher than White persons. The findings are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania collected fatal injury data from the CDC wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research Underlying Cause of Death database for 2019 and 2020 to calculate rates of death and injury in various racial and ethnic groups. Data on nonfatal injuries were collected from NEDS, the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample. While the data on fatal injury are well-established, nonfatal injury data is hard to come by and NEDS is the largest sample of national-level emergency care visits and incorporated race/ethnicity variables for the first time in 2019. The data showed more than 250,000 firearm-related injuries during the study timeframe, approximately a third of which resulted in death, with the highest case fatality among injuries due to self-harm. Men were disproportionately affected by firearm injury and rates of self-harm were highest among White persons. Rates of assault and unintentional injuries were highest among Black persons. Rates were alarmingly high among Black boys and men aged 15 to 34 years, with an overall rate of 291 firearm assault injuries per 100 000, making firearm assault injuries more common in this group than ED visits for sports injuries are in any age group. Native American persons accounted for just 0.7% of total firearm injuries but had the second-highest case fatality ratios for assault and law enforcement–associated injury. This could be because Native Americans are overrepresented in rural areas, and case fatalities in rural areas were higher across the board, which has been attributed to differences in weapon type and caliber, shooter skill and intentionality, and limited access to trauma care. According to the authors, better data are needed to accurately capture underlying causes of firearm injury and case fatality are needed to focus resources and interventions.

Media contacts: For an embargoed PDF, please contact Angela Collom at [email protected]. To speak with corresponding author Elinore J. Kaufman, MD, MSHP, please email Kelsey Geesler at [email protected].