Unintentional firearm deaths in the United States 2005\u20132015

Sara J Solnick,David Hemenway

doi:10.1186/s40621-019-0220-0

Sara J Solnick, David Hemenway

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40621-019-0220-0

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Journal: Injury Epidemiology	Publication Date: Oct 14, 2019
Citations: 12	License type: open-access

Affiliation: University of Vermont, Harvard University

Abstract

BackgroundUnintentional gun death occurs four times more often in the United States than other high-income countries. Research on these deaths typically has a narrow scope. We believe this is the first study describing the circumstances of these deaths in the United States that covers more than a single state or municipality.MethodsWe use data on all unintentional firearm fatalities in the sixteen states reporting to the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) for all years 2005–2015. Our final count of unintentional firearm deaths in these states and years is 1260. The detailed nature of the data allows us to categorize and compare the circumstances of the incident.ResultsWe estimate 430 unintentional firearm fatalities in the United States per year. The rate is highest for older children to young adults, ages 10 to 29, and the vast majority of the victims are male. Common circumstances include playing with the gun (28.3% of incidents), thinking the gun was unloaded (17.2%), and hunting (13.8%). The victim is suspected to have consumed alcohol in nearly a quarter of the deaths and in 46.8% of deaths among those aged 20–29.ConclusionsCertain circumstances, such as consuming alcohol, playing with the gun, and hunting, are common settings for unintentional firearm deaths. Firearm safety instructors, firearm manufacturers, and firearm owners can all contribute to preventing these deaths.

Highlights

Unintentional gun death occurs four times more often in the United States than other high-income countries
We examine all unintentional firearm fatalities in states reporting to the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) for all years 2005–2015
The sixteen states that reported for all years in our time period are Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin. These states had 26.6% of the United States population during that time. These states had 26.8% of all firearm deaths in the United States in that time period, based on Vital Statistics data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Summary

Introduction

Unintentional gun death occurs four times more often in the United States than other high-income countries. Despite the scale of the problem, there has been little attention to establishing basic information about victims, Few prior studies have examined the circumstances of unintentional firearm injuries, and the characteristics of the sample population; key findings of this literature are summarized in Table 1 (Copeland 1984; Morrow and Hudson 1986; Ornehult and Eriksson 1987; Martin et al 1991; Harruff 1991; Cherry et al 2001; Karger et al 2002; Junuzovic and Eriksson 2012; Junuzovic et al 2016).

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