The American non-profit organization Gun Violence Archive (GVA) keeps records of deaths and injuries from firearms in near real time. On January 1 this year, the GVA published data on such cases for the entire 2020.
The figures show that there were 19,223 murders with pistols and rifles and 39,325 people were wounded from the same weapon. Among the victims were not only adults, but also children: almost a thousand children aged 0 to 12 suffered from injuries, and at the age of 12 to 17 there were significantly more of them – 4109 teenagers. True, as the data show, not all of the shots were fired with the intent to kill or harm, 2249 of them were unintentional, and sometimes just accidental. And finally, the data on the number of suicides with the use of firearms is given – 24,156 (these statistics were provided by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention). All of these indicators are the highest in the history of the GVA.
Newspaper headline:
Thousands of murders and injuries