A new report by the Commonwealth Fund finds some US states have firearm death rates comparable to countries in conflict, and even states with the fewest firearms deaths are far higher than peer developed democracies.
For instance, Mississippi’s rate of firearm-related violence (28.5 per 100,000 people) was nearly double that of Haiti (15.1 per 100,000) in 2021, when mercenaries assassinated the country’s president, unleashing a fresh round of gang warfare which pushed the country into a state of civil war.
The US overall is in the 93rd percentile of all countries and territories for overall firearm mortality, at 13.5 deaths per 100,000 people, the Commonwealth report found.
“No country we compare ourselves to has the rates and absolute deaths like we do in the US,” said Evan Gumas, a research associate at the Commonwealth Fund in international health policy and practice who helped author the report. “It comes up anytime there’s a shooting that makes the news, when it should be something we’re paying attention to.”
In another example, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and New Mexico all have higher firearm mortality rates than Mexico, where decades of violence between state forces and rival drug cartels has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and left more than 115,000 people missing.
Sundance
Article URL : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/30/states-firearm-death-rates