Demographics and firearm deaths

A response to Pew

A recent Pew article, What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S. (3/5/2025), ignores a lot of what the data says. They are correct when they say, for example,

In 2023, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 46,728 people died from gun-related injuries, according to the CDC. That figure includes gun murders and gun suicides, along with three less common types of gun-related deaths the CDC tracks: those that involved law enforcement, those that were accidental, and those whose circumstances could not be determined.

and

About eight-in-ten U.S. murders in 2023 – 17,927 out of 22,830, or 79% – involved a firearm. That was among the highest percentages since 1968, the earliest year for which the CDC has online records.

More than half of all suicides in 2023 – 27,300 out of 49,316, or 55% – also involved a gun. That was one of the highest percentages since 2000, when 57% of suicides involved a firearm.

They also look at trends over time and by state. The problem as I see it is that they ignore the demographics. If you want the TL;DR version, the firearm death issue can largely be summarized as Black males kill each other while White males kill themselves.

I’ll note that the demographic information is found at the same CDC WISQARS source where Pew got the data in the first place, and so it isn’t as if they couldn’t know this, although maybe they weren’t curious enough. I’ve also written much of this in Child firearm deaths and other gun issues (2/20/2024) and Guns and female homicide (2/13/2024). Finally, note that in comparing counts, we want to keep in mind that if Hispanics are separated out from the other groups, the U.S. population is 58% White, 19% Hispanic, and 13% Black. For details, see The race ethnicity confusion (9/24/2024). The point here is that if homicides and suicides are in proportion to the population, we would expect about 3:1 White to Hispanic and 4.5:1 White to Black. In the analysis below, I left out Asian, AIAN, HNPI, and multiracial, as there counts were minimal compared to the other groups.

Let’s go to the data and fill in the demographic details Pew left out.

Figure 1 shows 2023 firearm homicide deaths by race/ethnicity and sex. Yes, as Pew points out, there were 17,927 of these in 2023. What Pew doesn’t note, and probably doesn’t want to, is that 10,352 of these deaths, or 57%, were Black people, which is 4.4 times higher than expected based on population proportions. White people make up 14% of the total. More telling is that Black males make up 50.4% of all firearm homicides, more than all other categories combined.

Figure 1: Data from CDC WISQARS. The Black and White groups are Black, not Hispanic, and White, not Hispanic.

I should also say that homicides stay within groups at over 90%, so the 10,352 Black homicides are almost all Black-on-Black killings. One other point about Figure 1 is that firearm homicides are a male issue. Only 16% of firearm homicides are females, and that even within females, more Black females are killed than White females when it should be 4.5 times more White female homicidees than Black female homicides if it followed population proportions. This is the first half of TL;DR; the firearm death issue can largely be summarized as Black males kill each other. What about suicides?

Figure 2 is just like Figure 1 but for firearm suicides. Of the 27,300 firearm suicides, 21,708 are White people, or 80%, well beyond their 58% of the population. White males make up 18,795, or 69%, of those 27,300 firearm suicides. Even White females make up 81% of all firearm suicides. This covers the second part of the TL;DR version; the firearm death issue can largely be summarized as Black males kill each other while White males kill themselves.

Figure 2: Data from CDC WISQARS. The Black and White groups are Black, not Hispanic, and White, not Hispanic.

Why does this matter? It is relevant for public policy. Firearms aren’t going anywhere, but maybe we can get Black firearm homicides down to the same rate as White people, which for 2023 would be 794 Black homicides. Similarly, if we could get the White firearm suicide rate to the Black rate, we would have 10,427 White firearm suicides. This scenario seems doable, while constantly pointing out firearm deaths seems more like virtue signaling without ideas on how we might reduce fatalities.

Two more graphs to look at firearm deaths as compared to the total homicide and suicide deaths. Figure 3 should total homicides and firearm homicides. Firearms do make up 82% of all homicides, and Black males make up 56% of all homicides. On a political note, the left that seems to want to ignore this or make excuses is more white supremacist than anyone. For example, defunding the police is certainly not a prescription to decrease Black people, really males, from killing each other. Meanwhile, how do you blame White people for the fact that Black people kill each other?

Figure 3: Data from CDC WISQARS. The Black and White groups are Black, not Hispanic, and White, not Hispanic.

Last graph. Figure 4 is the Figure 3 version for suicides. Firearms certainly contribute to suicides, but maybe not as much as one might expect. It accounts for 61% of male suicides and only 25% of female suicides. As noted above, suicides are largely about White people. Of the 49,316 suicides, 75% are White suicides, well above their 58% population percentage. To add a political note here too, the left talks about White privilege, but that doesn’t entirely mesh with the White suicide rate. There is clearly more nuance here, but if you are going to tell groups of people with high suicide rates how great they have it, well, that isn’t going to get you votes. It will make you seem really out of touch with that community.

Figure 4: Data from CDC WISQARS. The Black and White groups are Black, not Hispanic, and White, not Hispanic.

I’ll end by amending my TL;DR to Black males kill each other while White people kill themselves, with most of this by firearms.

Data

The data pulled from CDC WISQARS on March 9, 2025, is available on the BbD-Data GitHub, or you can go directly to the CSV file. The CSV file includes counts for the subgroups Asian, AIAN, HNPI, and multiracial.

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Please let me know if you believe I expressed something incorrectly or misinterpreted the data. I'd rather know the truth and understand the world than be correct. I welcome comments and disagreement. We should all be forced to express our opinions and change our minds, but we should also know how to respectfully disagree and move on. Send me article ideas, feedback, or other thoughts at briefedbydata@substack.com.

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I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD Math: Stochastic Processes, MS Applied Statistics, MS Math, BS Math, BS Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I’ve written the textbooks “R for College Mathematics and Statistics” and “Applied Calculus with R.” I welcome any collaborations.