Topline
Around one in five Americans report having a family member who was killed with a gun, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation published on Tuesday, underscoring the far-reaching nature of the country’s gun violence epidemic as politicians struggle to tackle the issue—and as the number of mass shootings in 2023 marks the worst start to a year in a decade.
Around one in five Americans reported having a family member who was killed with a gun, KFF found.
Key Facts
Around a fifth of Americans said they have been personally threatened with a gun at some point in their lives and around one in six said they have personally witnessed someone being shot, KFF found, based on a nationwide poll of 1,271 adults conducted from March 14 to March 23.
Smaller numbers report having been personally injured in a shooting (4%) or shooting a gun themselves in self defense (4%).
Overall, the poll found more that than half of Americans (54%) claim a personal or familial connection to the U.S.’ gun violence epidemic.
Gun violence disproportionately affects people of color, the poll found, with Black adults around twice as likely as white adults to report both having had a family member killed with a gun and having witnessed a shooting, and Hispanic adults also more likely than white adults to report witnessing a shooting.
The vast majority of Americans (84%) also report taking steps to protect themselves or their families, including talking to their children or other family members about gun safety (58%), purchasing a gun (29%) or another weapon (44%) like a knife or pepper spray and avoiding large crowds (35%) or public transport (23%).
Of the four in ten adults who reported living in a house with a gun, however, three quarters said they did not follow common gun-safety practices like storing the gun unloaded, locked away and apart from ammunition.
News Peg
A recent flurry of mass shootings—including Monday’s shooting at a bank in downtown Louisville, Kentucky—has reignited the long-simmering debate over gun violence in the U.S. This year alone, mass shootings have already claimed the lives of more than 200 people in nearly 150 incidents, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The toll, which excludes the perpetrator and does not consider the injuries of hundreds of survivors, vastly undersells the scale of the country’s gun violence epidemic. The problem is growing and the last few years mark some of the deadliest on record. Guns are now the number one cause of death for children and adolescents in the U.S., overtaking motor vehicle crashes in 2020, and while mass shootings dominate public discourse the bulk of their impact comes from their use in large numbers of suicides and homicides. Political efforts to curb gun deaths are absent, stagnant or, where present, woefully ineffective and the issue is intensely partisan. The matter is so intractable that polling suggests a significant minority of Americans (just less than half), mostly Republicans, believe mass shootings are simply par for the course of living in a free society. Abundant evidence from around the world thoroughly disproves this notion. The U.S. is a noted outlier among its peers, with firearm death rates often tens of times higher than other nations like France, Australia, Japan and the U.K.
Big Number
45,222. That’s how many gun-related deaths there were in the U.S. in 2020, the most recent year for which full data is available, according to the CDC. The toll, around 124 deaths a day, marks a sharp increase from previous years. The Gun Violence Archive estimates some 11,625 deaths this year. The group estimates these are mostly due to homicide (nearly 5,000) and suicide (6,666), in line with broader trends from past years. There have been 146 mass shootings in 2023 so far, well past numbers from the same point in time from the past two years.
Further Reading
Child Gun Deaths Skyrocketed During Covid Pandemic, Study Finds (Forbes)
Over 100 Mass Shootings Have Hit U.S. So Far This Year—In Worst Start To Year In Decade (Forbes)
Why number of US mass shootings has risen sharply (BBC)
Over 200 Killed In U.S. Mass Shootings So Far This Year—A Decade-Long High (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/04/11/one-in-five-americans-have-lost-family-to-gun-violence-as-shootings-tick-up/