During the past 40 years, firearm injury deaths in the United States (from homicides, suicides, and/or accidents)peaked in the early to mid-1990s, but then declined precipitously over the next decade and remained relatively low for nearly 15 years.

During the same period, firearm suicide rates reached their lowest point in the mid-2000s and have been increasing almost every year since that time. Firearm homicide rates reached their lowest point in 2014, but have since increased rapidly and, in 2023, these rates were near their peak levels, like the data from the early 1990s.

Many U.S. states have seen a pattern of gun violence similar to the pattern in the country as a whole during this period. Other states have seen firearm violence rates increase relative to the national rate. Among these states are Wisconsin, Delaware, and Minnesota for firearm homicides and Alaska, North Dakota, and Montana for firearm suicides. In contrast, some states have recorded decreases in violence relative to national averages during this period, such as Wyoming, Idaho, and New York for firearm homicides and Hawaii, California, and the District of Columbia for firearm suicides.

Many factors influence firearms violence trends in each state, such as changing economic conditions, state population demographics, and national trends. Changes in state firearms policies have also been shown to affect mortality rates. The tool that studies the effects of the firearms law illustrates the estimates of many of them.

As part of the Gun Policy in America project of RAND Corporation, this study provides users with information on the distribution of firearm deaths among the different U.S. states.  For more details on the methodology and data sources, please refer to the study documentation.

All mortality estimates are constructed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER). CDC WONDER is a website that publishes public data from its national vital statistics surveillance system.

Some subpopulations may be too small in a single state and year to provide a reliable estimate. In addition, CDC privacy protections prohibit disclosure of mortality rates based on fewer than ten deaths.

The study’s estimates are designed to address these challenges by using data from multiple years when estimation using the most recent year of data would be unreliable or would compromise privacy.

Data on state laws are extracted from RAND’s State Firearms Laws database. Law data are current through 1 January, 2024, but these data do not capture the most recent legal changes.

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