Firearms kill 22 black men for every white man in the US

In 2021, for every white man killed with a firearm in the United States, more than 22 black men were killed under the same circumstances.

Data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and compiled into a study by researchers from universities such as Harvard, Brown and Emory show a record number of deaths caused by gun violence. There were 48,953, between homicides and suicides, last year – the highest rate since 1981, when the CDC began analyzing the data.

The record equals 134 deaths a day — or nearly one American killed by guns every 20 minutes. At the same time, it exposes the disparity in the effects of violence on different social groups.

“An enormous number of people die from firearms in the US each year, but not everyone is exposed to the same risk,” says Eric Fleegler, one of the study’s authors and a member of Harvard’s Department of Emergency Medicine. “By studying differences in death rates by sex, skin color, ethnicity and location, we can understand who is most at risk, how death rates are changing over time, and target interventions to specific groups.”

The causes behind the numbers are not addressed in the study, which seeks to treat violence linked to firearms in the US as an epidemic, similar to what other specialists and President Joe Biden himself have done. But Fleegler lists as some of the factors for the higher murder rate among blacks their poverty rate (more than double that of whites) and the fact that areas with the highest concentration of poverty have firearm death rates up to three times bigger.

The coronavirus pandemic has also had an effect on the overall gun death rate — a 40% increase in homicides and a 17% increase in suicides from 2019 to 2021.

“We know that there has been an increase in economic instability and insecurity, a major mental health crisis that has escalated, and an increase in firearms being purchased in the US. But how all of this relates to deaths remains to be seen.” , analyzes Fleegler.

Suicides involving weapons also have a different impact on racial groups, but in the opposite direction to the trend of homicides. On average, for every black man who used a gun to take his own life in 2021 in the US, two white men did the same.

What drives white men to commit more suicide than black men is another question with no definite answer. There are studies that present some hypotheses, such as that deaths of black people tend to be less investigated and, therefore, the number of suicides within this group would be underreported.

“Our hope is that these findings will help policymakers develop programs that target communities and populations most at risk of firearm-related deaths,” said study co-author Chris Rees of the Division of Emergency Medicine at the Emory University.

Although they rule out direct relationships between the US and Brazilian scenarios in terms of access to guns, both researchers reinforce what scientific knowledge has already proven: where there are more guns, there are more deaths from firearms.

“Our study cannot be designed to explain what other countries like Brazil should learn from the US, but we hope that they see how these rates are alarming and create programs and interventions to prevent the same thing from happening in their territory”, says Rees.

In June, a survey by the Brazilian Yearbook of Public Security pointed out that the number of people with firearms licenses in Brazil grew 473% in the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL). Last month, a study based on the Racial Equilibrium Index (IER), which mapped intentional violent deaths in Brazil, pointed out that the risk of black people being killed in Brazil is three times greater than among non-blacks; for gun murders, the risk is 3.6 times higher for blacks.