Report says gun death rates in some US states are comparable to those in conflict-affected countries Gun crime

A new Commonwealth Fund report finds that gun death rates in some U.S. states are comparable to those in conflict-affected countries, and that even states with the fewest gun deaths are far higher than in other developed democracies.

For example, the rate of gun-related violence in Mississippi (28.5 per 100,000 residents) was nearly twice that in Haiti (15.1 per 100,000) in 2021, as mercenaries assassinated the country's president and a new round of triggered gang wars that plunged the country into a state of civil war.

Rhode Island, which has the lowest firearm death rate in the United States (three per 100,000), is still 23 times higher than the United Kingdom (0.13 per 100,000) and almost 1.3 times higher than France (2nd). .3 per 100,000).

The U.S. as a whole ranks in the 93rd percentile of all countries and territories for all-cause firearm mortality, with 13.5 deaths per 100,000 people, the Commonwealth report said.

“No country we compare ourselves to has the rates and absolute deaths that the United States has,” said Evan Gumas, a research fellow at the Commonwealth Fund for International Health Policy and Practice, who helped write the report. “It comes up whenever there's a shooting that makes headlines, when it should be something we should be paying attention to.”

In another example, firearm mortality rates are higher in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and New Mexico than in Mexico, where decades of violence between state forces and rival drug cartels have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and left more than 115,000 people missing.

Notably, firearm-related deaths and injuries do not equate to an increase in crime. According to the FBI, violent crime fell 15% from 2023 to 2024. According to a report from the U.S. Surgeon General, more than half of all firearm-related deaths in 2022 (56.1%) were due to suicide.

Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, declared gun violence a “public health crisis in America” ​​in a June report, citing statistics that show the number of gun injuries in the U.S. is far higher than in comparable countries wealthy countries and is increasing rapidly, particularly among children and young people.

Firearms became the leading cause of death for American children ages one to 17 in 2020, surpassing car accidents and all other causes of illness and injury, such as drowning or suffocation. By comparison, the rate of gun deaths among American children is 72 times higher in the United States than in the United Kingdom (36.4 deaths per million versus 0.5 deaths per million).

“I went to public school after Sandy Hook,” Gumas said, referring to the massacre in Connecticut in which a gunman killed six adults and 20 first-graders. “Shooting practice at school was a very big part of our everyday life. This is not normal.”

Although mass shootings involving semi-automatic rifles often make headlines, handguns cause more gun deaths, with the burden being unequally distributed across populations.

Gun deaths among Black Americans were 34.2 per 100,000, the highest among racial groups, followed by Native Americans and Alaska Natives. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), firearms are also the weapons most commonly associated with gender-based violence.

The Commonwealth Fund report relied on data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a University of Washington project that compares diseases, injuries and risk factors worldwide. The Commonwealth study included 204 U.S. states as well as other territories and countries. An overall firearm-related mortality rate was then calculated according to the World Health Organization's World Standards population database.