New Report Highlights U.S. 2023 Gun Deaths: Suicide by Firearm at Record Levels for Third Straight Year

Gun-related suicides in the U.S. reached record highs in 2023, even as gun homicides continued to decline from their pandemic-era peak, according to a new report from the Center for Gun Violence Solutions and the Center for Suicide Prevention, both based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The new report, Gun Violence in the United States 2023: Examining the Gun Suicide Epidemic, finds that guns were involved in 46,728 deaths in the U.S. in 2023—or one death every 11 minutes. For the third straight year, gun suicides reached a new high: 27,300, or 58% of all gun deaths, were suicides. And more than half of all suicides in 2023 involved a gun. The report is based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2023, the most recent year for which finalized data is available.

The report notes that suicides accounted for the majority of all firearm deaths every year since 1995. 

Total gun homicides in 2023 (17,927) fell nearly 9% from 2022 (19,651). However, gun homicides remained near-record levels in 2023, the fifth-highest total on record. 

For the fourth consecutive year, guns were the leading cause of death overall for young people ages 1–17, with 2,566 total gun deaths in 2023. The authors note that for some age groups among young people ages 1–17, gun violence is among the leading causes of death but not the top cause. 

Gun suicides among young people ages 10–19 remained relatively stable in 2023, 1,252 versus 1,238 in 2022. The report found that gun suicides have been rapidly increasing among Black and Hispanic youth ages 10–19 since 2014.

“Suicide is a growing crisis in the U.S. and guns are driving that crisis,” says study lead author Rose Kim, MPA, assistant policy advisor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. “It’s important to emphasize that rising gun deaths are preventable with appropriate resources and interventions, with a comprehensive public health approach.”

The new report draws from CDC records on causes of death for U.S. residents, based on death certificates that separate gun-related deaths into accidents, police shootings, suicides, and homicides.

Other key findings in the new report include:

• Gun suicide rates were higher in rural states compared to more urban states. The state with the highest gun suicide rate, Wyoming, had about 10 times the gun suicide rate of Massachusetts, which had the lowest.
• Males were seven times more likely than females to die of gun suicide in 2023, and the gun suicide rate among males 70 years and older was by far the highest of any age/gender subgroup.
• Gun suicide rates continued to rise rapidly among Black youth (ages 10–19)—more than tripling with a 245% increase since 2014 and increasing 81% since 2019. In contrast, the rates for white youth declined by 6% from 2019 to 2023. As a result, in 2023, gun suicide rates among Black youth were higher than that among white youth for the second year in a row.
• Gun suicide rates doubled from 2014 to 2023 among Hispanic youth ages 10–19.
• From 2019 to 2023, the gun suicide rate increased by 65% among Black females and 25% among Hispanic females.

The authors note that the rapid increases in gun suicides among some groups align with increased gun ownership rates that began in 2020. Kim says that guns have been used in a rising proportion of suicides in many groups—for example, 56% among Black youth ages 10–19 in 2023, versus 32% in 2014.

“Unfortunately, guns are much more deadly than other suicide attempt methods,” says Paul Nestadt, MD, medical director of the Bloomberg School’s Center for Suicide Prevention and a report co-author. “Strategies that put time and space between guns and those at high risk of suicide are proven to save lives.”

To accompany the annual report, researchers also released a companion piece, From Crisis to Action: Public Health Recommendations for Firearm Suicide Prevention. Recommendations include voluntary out-of-home gun storage for those at elevated risk of self-harm, assessment and counseling around gun ownership by health care providers, and programs that build on collaborations with firearms retailers to provide suicide prevention materials to customers. 

In addition to these firearm suicide-specific strategies, the Center for Gun Violence Solutions continues to recommend broader policies to curb gun violence, including stronger and wider adoption of child gun-access prevention strategies, firearm purchasing laws, and policies that make it easier to remove firearms from individuals at elevated risk for violence. 

Gun Violence in the United States 2023: Examining the Gun Suicide Epidemic was co-authored by Rose Kim, Elizabeth Wagner, Paul Nestadt, Nandita Somayaji, Josh Horwitz, and Cassandra Crifasi.

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Media contacts: Joseph McHugh joemchugh@jhu.edu or Kris Henry khenry39@jhu.edu