Gun Proliferation Fuels Homicide Rates in the Americas

Poor and middle-income nations of Latin America and the Caribbean are the most homicide-prone countries in the world, according to an analysis of a new United Nations report on violence. And because of lax gun laws, it found, far more homicides are committed with firearms in the Americas than in any other part of the world.

The analysis of the Global Status Report on Violence Prevention 2014, published last week by the Pan American Health Organization, reported that the highest homicide rates were in Honduras, Venezuela, Jamaica and Belize, with the Honduran rate — 104 killings per 100,000 population — nearly double that of the next deadliest countries. By contrast, the lowest homicide rates in the Americas were in Canada, Antigua and Barbuda, and Chile. Canada’s was less than two per 100,000 population, while others were below five. The homicide rate in the United States was 5.3 per 100,000.

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Gun Deaths Outpaced Motor Vehicle Deaths in 12 States

May 29 - Gun deaths outpaced motor vehicle deaths in 12 states and the District of Columbia in 2010, the most recent year for which comprehensive state-level data is available, a new analysis from the Violence Policy Center (VPC) shows. Nationwide, improved safety standards have steadily reduced traffic fatalities over the past decade, while firearm deaths (homicides, suicides, and fatal unintentional shootings) continue unabated.

Nationally in 2010, there were 31,672 firearm deaths and 35,498 motor vehicle deaths, compared to 28,874 firearm deaths and 42,624 motor vehicle deaths in 1999. More than 90 percent of American households own a car while little more than a third of American households contain a gun.

In 2010, gun deaths (including gun suicides, homicides, and fatal unintentional shootings) outpaced motor vehicle deaths in: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, and Washington (see below for the mortality figures for each jurisdiction). Data is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

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How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?

Since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, we at Slate have been wondering how many people are dying from guns in America every day.

That information is surprisingly hard to come by. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, for example, has a tally atop its website of “people shot in America.” That number, though, is an estimate, based on the number of gun injuries and deaths recorded by the CDC in 2008 and 2009, the most recent years for which statistics are available. It seems shocking that when guns are in the headlines every day, there’s no one attempting to create a real-time chronicle of the deaths attributable to guns in the United States.

Well, someone is. Since this summer, the anonymous creator of the Twitter feed @GunDeaths has been doing his best to compile those statistics, tweeting every reported death he can find. He was inspired, he told us in a phone interview, by the Aurora, Colo., shootings and simply wanted to call daily attention to the toll that guns take. Now Slate is partnering with @GunDeaths to create this interactive feature, “Gun Deaths in America Since Newtown.”

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