The Real Risk Of Being Gunned Down In America

The United States is often portrayed as a violent place by the media. After all, almost nowhere else in the world are firearms so readily available to adults (and sometimes even children) from all walks of life, and nowhere else in the developed world do more people die from gunshot wounds than the US.  Despite all this, an individual's risk of dying as the result of the discharge of a firearm in the USA, however, is actually quite low.

In fact, there is not even a one in a million chance of being killed by a stray bullet in any given year when you are simply minding your own business.

Innocent Victims of Gun Violence

Researchers at the University of California at Sacramento analyzed 1.996 news reports filed between February 1, 2008 and February 1, 2009 for information on 284 shootings involving stray bullets, that is bullets that hit people who were not the intended targets.

In these 284 shootings, 317 people (nationwide) were injured, and 65 died. Over 95% of shooters were male, but over 88% of victims were female. Over 60% of shooters were between the ages of 15 and 34, but almost all the victims were girls under the age of 15 or women over the age of 34 — mothers and daughters. Victims of stray bullets seldom die on the spot, but about 85% of those who decease die in a hospital a few hours later.

The hard evidence is that an American has only about a 1 in 5,000,000 chance of being killed by a bullet as an innocent bystander, but that the bystanders who are killed by stray bullets are by most measures especially innocent. Mothers, grandmothers, and daughters are the disproportionate victims of street violence. Deaths by accident, however, are actually very rare. However, deaths by intentional gunshot wound are are a completely different matter.

Intentional Victims of Gun Violence

Even though evidence points to the fact that every death by a stray bullet is tragic, only a few dozen people died of accidental gunshot wounds in the United States every year.  The Deaths of those by intentional gun violence are quite another matter.

In the most recent 11 years for which data has been completely and thoroughly analyzed (1989 through 1999), there were in total a shocking 367,695 deaths by intentional firearm injury. Of these deaths, 200,027 (54.4%) were suicides and 167,668 (45.4%) were homicides. 

These figures translate to an approximately 1 in 24,000 risk of dying from a gunshot wound at the hands of another in the USA in any given year, and approximately a 1 in 7 million chance of dying from a gunshot wound at the hands of another on any given day. While it's not particularly high, it's a lot higher than the unintentional deaths. Where you might see the highest risk of death by a gunshot wound, however, is not at all where most people would expect it to be.