Gun deaths in America are constantly discussed as though they are all the same thing. They are not. Suicide, homicide, accidental shootings, legal-intervention deaths, and public mass shootings are different problems. Combining them into one large number without explaining the categories may make for a dramatic headline, but it does not give the public an honest picture of what is happening.
In 2024, there were 44,447 firearm deaths in the United States. Of those, 27,593 were suicides and 15,364 were homicides. That means approximately 62.1 percent were suicides and 34.6 percent were homicides. All remaining categories combined, including unintentional deaths, legal intervention, and undetermined cases, accounted for about 3.4 percent of the total.
That means the most common firearm death in America is not a public mass shooting or a police shooting. It is someone taking their own life.
The same disconnect appears when the type of firearm used in murders is discussed. In the FBI’s detailed 2019 homicide data, 6,368 murder victims were killed with handguns, compared with 364 killed with rifles and 200 killed with shotguns. Another 3,281 firearm murders were recorded without the firearm type being identified. Even with that limitation, the overall pattern is clear: handguns were involved far more often than identified rifles or shotguns.
That does not mean rifles are harmless or that public mass shootings do not matter. They are horrific and deserve attention. But they are highly visible events, which means they often dominate news coverage and political debate far more than the categories responsible for most firearm deaths.
Public mass-shooting deaths are also not a separate CDC manner-of-death category. They are generally included within the broader homicide total. That matters because they should not be confused with the approximately 3.4 percent made up of accidents, legal intervention, undetermined deaths, and other remaining categories.
The point of this article is not to tell people which gun laws they should support. It is to get the numbers straight. Most firearm deaths are suicides. Most firearm murders with an identified firearm type involve handguns. Rifles, accidents, and legal-intervention deaths account for much smaller portions of the overall total.
People can disagree about policy all they want. They should at least begin with the facts instead of whichever headline they saw last.
A Note to the Media
The mainstream media needs to stop presenting one giant firearm-death number without explaining what is actually inside it. Suicide, homicide, accidents, legal intervention, and public mass shootings are not interchangeable categories.
Reporting the total without clearly separating those categories gives people an incomplete picture. Focusing heavily on the most dramatic shootings while barely discussing the categories that make up most firearm deaths leaves the public less informed.
The total number may be real. The way it is presented can still be misleading.
This subject is serious enough that it should not be reduced to fear, politics, or whichever headline attracts the most attention that day. Report the full numbers, explain the categories, and provide the proper context. People can form their own opinions, but they should at least be given the truth first.
Sources
- CDC National Center for Health Statistics, Injuries — FastStats, 2024 all-firearm mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System via CDC WONDER.
- CDC National Center for Health Statistics, Suicide and Self-Harm Injury — FastStats, 2024 firearm-suicide data.
- CDC National Center for Health Statistics, Assault or Homicide — FastStats, 2024 firearm-homicide data.
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States 2019, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8, Murder Victims by Weapon.
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, Expanded Homicide, 2019.