Gun deaths fell again in the United States in 2023, according to provisional data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in July – except among children.
Gun deaths among children under 18 years old rose from 2,542 in 2022 to 2,581 in 2023. Even though that’s slightly lower than the record set in 2021, it’s still an average of seven kids killed each day, and more than double the death toll endured in 2013, when 1,249 children died from gunshots. Sixty-three percent of the child gun deaths last year were homicides, while 29 percent were suicides and 5 percent were unintentional shootings.
The figures come from the CDC’s WONDER database, which collects mortality information from death certificates at the state level. The estimates are provisional and are likely to change slightly before final figures are released in December. While the data is not yet final, it provides the most comprehensive and accurate accounting of gun deaths in America.
Shootings claimed 46,728 lives last year, according to the CDC data, marking the second year in a row that gun deaths fell after reaching an all-time high in 2021. The 2023 total represents a 3 percent decrease from 2022, when 48,204 people died from gunshots, and a 4.3 percent decrease from 2021, when 48,830 people were killed.
“It’s a good sign, and there are those out there that will take credit for this drop, but any real celebration is premature,” said Charles Branas, who chairs the epidemiology department at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “Every gun death is a tragedy, especially if it’s your family member or friend, and there are clearly not reductions in especially heartbreaking losses, like among kids.”
Even though overall gun deaths fell last year, gun suicides hit an all-time high, and firearm injury was the 14th-leading cause of death in the country, eclipsing car crashes for the seventh year in a row.
Firearm homicides post significant drop
The fall in overall gun deaths last year was largely driven by a decrease in firearm homicides, the CDC data shows. There were 17,927 gun homicides in 2023, an 8.7 percent decrease from 2022, when there were 19,651. The total number of gun homicides in 2023 was lower than any year since 2019, when 14,414 people were killed.
Guns kill more homicide victims than all other methods combined. Of the 22,829 total homicides in 2023, 79 percent were perpetrated with guns. Other methods — like knives, suffocation, and poisoning — accounted for the remaining 21 percent. A decade earlier, in 2013, 70 percent of homicides were perpetrated with guns.
Until 2020, the United States had never recorded more than 40,000 gun deaths in a single year. But gun deaths jumped 14 percent between 2019 and 2020, the highest annual increase on record, soaring past 45,000. The spike was driven by a 34.5 percent increase in homicides.
Also in 2020, firearms became the leading cause of death from injury among children under 18.
Gun suicides hit all-time high
While firearm homicides declined in 2023, gun suicides rose to a record high of 27,300. That represents a 29 percent increase from a decade earlier, when 21,175 people died from gun suicide.
Suicides accounted for 58 percent of all gun deaths last year.
“Following an unprecedented surge in firearm purchasing in recent years, and with levels of personal and social stress remaining high, we may not see a decrease in suicide anytime soon,” Garen Wintemute, head of the California Firearm Violence Research Center at the University of California, Davis, told The Trace.
The South endures highest gun death rates
Gun death rates in 2023 varied considerably between regions and states.
The South, a region with high gun ownership and permissive gun laws, had the highest number of gun deaths (22,654) and gun death rate (17.4 per 100,000), according to the CDC data. Meanwhile, the Northeast — where fewer people own guns and gun access laws are comparatively strong — had the lowest number of gun deaths (4,159) and the lowest rate (7.1 per 100,000).
Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, New Mexico, and Alaska recorded more than 23 gun deaths per 100,000 residents — the highest gun death rates in the country. The states with the lowest rates were Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Hawaii. Each of those states recorded fewer than five gun deaths per 100,000 residents.
Seventeen states — including Maine, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Alaska — saw gun deaths increase between 2022 and 2023.
“It’s certainly good news that homicide is decreasing overall,” Wintemute said. “This decrease isn’t occurring everywhere, unfortunately.”
