Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Gun Facts 2022

In 2022 there were 45222 total gun related deaths, which means with a population of 328m, that represents .0138%


of that 45,222, 54% were suicides, leaving 19,445


Of that 19,445, 1097 were shot by law enforcement. Another 492 were accidental shootings (the majority of which were under the age of 24)

Leaving 17,856

In those remaining shootings, 3% were made up of assault rifles , with what I expect is a very liberal interpretation of what an assault rifle is, along with 1% being shotguns. 54% were handguns, the remaining instances were not specifically stated. The number of people that die by assault rifles in this country are about the same as those who die of carbon monoxide. more than twice as many people die from hypothermia, 9x as many people die from dehydration, 11x as many people die from malnutrition

While admittedly this is a meaningless stat, if you were divide the 17,856 number by 50 , representing the total number of states, that gives you 357, or an average of less than 1 fatal shooting per day in each state

Looking at 10 traditionally gun violent city total numbers (some numbers were from 2021 but there shouldn't be a significant difference in totals)

St. Louis, MO - 196
Chicago, IL - 556
Detroit, MI - 293
Indianapolis, IN - 293
New Orleans, LA - 280
Washington, DC - 203
Baltimore, MD - 333
Columbus, OH - 173
Los Angeles, CA - 382
New York, NY - 246

for a total of 2955, or about 17% of all gun fatalities after removing suicide, law enforcement and accidental death in the United States.

While these numbers are concerning, based on these numbers, there doesn't appear to be an epidemic of gun violence in this country, and for the overwhelming majority, the reality of facing gun violence should be a much smaller concern than many Americans believe.

If you remove additional risk factors such as not living in the 60 counties that produce a high % of gun violence, do not interact with known felons and of course do not engage in criminal activities, gun violence in the daily life of an American is statistically meaningless. That's pretty cavalier to say to a country indoctrinated in the evils of guns, but even with increases in gun violence , its hard to argue fear of gun violence is a realistic concern for Americans avoiding those 3 factors.

It’s always been that way.

Btw- By comparison, A 2018 John Hopkins study found that over 250,000 people die from medical malpractice in the United States each year which represents .08% of the population. I also won’t get into the deaths just from fentanyl.

Very interesting post. Thanks for passing this information along.
Unfortunately that’s one of the problems with this board, is that eye opening stuff like this often sinks to the bottom without being read or commented on.
By the way, can you link a source for this?
7mm

Just went to my CCW renewal class and the instructor had basically that same article represented as a bunch of maps and graphs on his power point slides and said they were from published FBI statistics.

Do you have a link? would like to save that for posterity...

I was wondering the same thing...

492 "accidental shootings" I wonder what that means, and by who?

Add the numbers of defence shootings by Ccw holders and the number goes lower

Adds hunting accidents

Interesting take on why gun violence is higher in Red States:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/23/surprising-geography-of-gun-violence-00092413