Study estimates burden of firearm injuries for 2019 to 2020

During 2019 to 2020, there were 252,376 total firearm injuries in the United States, resulting in 84,908 deaths, according to a study published online July 30 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Elinore J. Kaufman, M.D., from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, and colleagues combined health care data with death certificate data to estimate total firearm injuries in various racial and ethnic groups in a retrospective, cross-sectional study for 2019 to 2020.

Fatal injury data were obtained from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and data on nonfatal injuries were collected from the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample.

The researchers identified 252,376 total firearm injuries, including 84,908 deaths from firearm injuries. Overall, 37.8, 37.3, 21.0, and 1.3 percent of all firearm injuries were unintentional, assault-related, self-harm, and law enforcement-related, respectively. The highest case-fatality ratios were seen for self-harm (90.9 percent overall).

Unintentional injuries accounted for 56.4 percent of nonfatal injuries and only 1.2 percent of deaths. Rates of self-harm were highest among White and Native American persons (11.0 and 8.6, respectively, per 100,000 population in 2020). The highest rates of assault and unintentional injuries were seen among Black persons (70.1 and 56.1, respectively, per 100,000).

“Our study documents that firearm injury and death remain a major public health problem in the United States, with notable differences across race and ethnicity, gender, age, and rurality,” the authors write. “Better data to more accurately capture underlying causes of firearm injury and case fatality are needed to focus resources and interventions.”

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