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Crime · United States · Updated 2026-10-26

How many Americans die from guns each year, and how?

In 2024, the latest year of final CDC death data, 44,447 people in the United States died from firearm injuries: 27,593 were suicides (62.1% of all gun deaths) and 15,364 were homicides; the total was below the 2021 peak of 48,830 but above the 33,594 of 2014.

Every figure in this summary is calculated from the sources listed on this page.

All firearm deaths in the United States, 2024

Deaths from firearm injuries of any intent: suicide, homicide, unintentional, legal intervention and undetermined. United States (50 states and DC), US residents for CDC, Calendar year 2024. Unit: deaths.

44,447deaths, 2024

71Trust scoreModerate certainty

Only one source – not confirmed by others. Agreement can't be measured, so the score can't reach High.

Score breakdown

Quality40 / 40

How well the sources are made

Agreement15 / 30

Unknown with one source, so set to half

Independence6 / 20

How many separate ways the number was measured

Freshness10 / 10

How recent the newest data is

How much each source counts

  • CDC100%

Shown but not counted: GVA (measures something else).

Sources

SourceValueDefinitionQualityWeight
CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States)Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Health Statistics · Death and health registersRetrieved 2026-10-2644,4472024
Deaths of US residents whose underlying cause is a firearm injury of any intent: suicide (X72-X74), homicide (*U01.4, X93-X95), unintentional (W32-W34), undetermined (Y22-Y24) and legal intervention (Y35.0).

Sum of the 50 states and DC by state of residence. 2024 is final data.

NCHS "Stats of the States" firearm mortality table (data file behind https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/state-stats/deaths/firearms.html), which cites CDC WONDER final 2024 data. The same totals for every year 2014-2024 come out of the CDC tables used for suicides and homicides. 2014-2016 from the NCHS Injury Mortality dataset (https://data.cdc.gov/d/nt65-c7a7); 2017-2018 from NCHS "Deaths: Final Data" reports, Table 6 (values in scripts/us-gun-deaths.manual.json); 2019-2024 from CDC's Mapping Injury, Overdose, and Violence data (https://data.cdc.gov/d/t6u2-f84c, analysis date 06/22/2026). The NVSR tables for 2016 and 2019 match the datasets exactly, and the three intents' source totals match the NCHS state table for every year.

5 of 5 checks
  • Yes: Method and definitions published. NCHS publishes its coding rules: ICD-10 underlying cause of death, firearm codes listed in its reports.
  • Yes: Official statistics or peer-reviewed. Official statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics (National Vital Statistics System).
  • Yes: Full count or representative sample. Counts every death certificate filed for a US resident in the 50 states and DC; not a sample.
  • Yes: Raw data downloadable. Yearly counts are downloadable as CSV from data.cdc.gov; NCHS also releases the record-level files.
  • Yes: No known break or quality problem. Same ICD-10 codes throughout 2014-2024; 2024 counts are final. The CDC tables used agree exactly where they overlap.
100%
Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: total gun violence deaths, all causesGun Violence Archive · Independent countRetrieved 2026-10-2641,0912024
GVA's "Total Number of GV Deaths - ALL Causes" for 2024: 16,935 deaths it recorded incident by incident (homicide, murder, unintentional and defensive-use shootings) plus a suicide figure of 24,156 that GVA does not collect itself.

Directness 0: more than half of this total is a suicide figure GVA takes or extrapolates from CDC, so it is not an independent count of all firearm deaths. Shown for comparison, not counted.

2024 ledger on GVA's Past Summary Ledgers page (values in scripts/us-gun-deaths.manual.json). GVA's suicide explainer (https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/explainer/suicides) says suicides are collected through the CDC as an aggregate; its methodology page (https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/methodology) says the suicide numbers were based on CDC extrapolations, and the ledger notes these have been removed until a more accurate number is available, while the row still shows a figure. GVA publishes no total including suicides before 2019.

1 of 5 checks
  • Yes: Method and definitions published. GVA publishes a methodology page and definitions.
  • No: Official statistics or peer-reviewed. An independent project, not official statistics and not peer-reviewed.
  • No: Full count or representative sample. Only the non-suicide part is GVA's own count; GVA says its suicide figure comes from CDC in aggregate.
  • No: Raw data downloadable. Suicides have no incident records; GVA says they are available only as an aggregate number.
  • No: No known break or quality problem. GVA's 2024 suicide figure (24,156) is 3,437 below CDC's final count; GVA says its suicide numbers were based on CDC extrapolations.
Not counted
All firearm deaths in the United States, 2024, by source · deaths
  • CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States)
  • Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: total gun violence deaths, all causes
020K40K60K201420162018202020222024CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States), 2014: 33,594CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States), 2015: 36,252CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States), 2016: 38,658CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States), 2017: 39,773CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States), 2018: 39,740CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States), 2019: 39,707CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States), 2020: 45,222CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States), 2021: 48,830CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States), 2022: 48,204CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States), 2023: 46,728CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States), 2024: 44,447Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: total gun violence deaths, all causes, 2019: 39,633Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: total gun violence deaths, all causes, 2020: 44,238Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: total gun violence deaths, all causes, 2021: 47,800Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: total gun violence deaths, all causes, 2022: 47,647Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: total gun violence deaths, all causes, 2023: 43,367Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: total gun violence deaths, all causes, 2024: 41,091
Show the data as a table
YearCDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths (Stats of the States)Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: total gun violence deaths, all causes
201433,594–
201536,252–
201638,658–
201739,773–
201839,740–
201939,70739,633
202045,22244,238
202148,83047,800
202248,20447,647
202346,72843,367
202444,44741,091

Firearm suicides in the United States, 2024

Deaths by intentional self-harm with a firearm. United States (50 states and DC), US residents for CDC, Calendar year 2024. Unit: deaths.

27,593deaths, 2024

71Trust scoreModerate certainty

Only one source – not confirmed by others. Agreement can't be measured, so the score can't reach High.

Score breakdown

Quality40 / 40

How well the sources are made

Agreement15 / 30

Unknown with one source, so set to half

Independence6 / 20

How many separate ways the number was measured

Freshness10 / 10

How recent the newest data is

How much each source counts

  • CDC100%

Sources

SourceValueDefinitionQualityWeight
CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intentCenters for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): NCHS and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control · Death and health registersRetrieved 2026-10-2627,5932024
Deaths of US residents whose underlying cause is intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of firearms (X72-X74), from death certificates.

2024 is final data.

2014-2016 from the NCHS Injury Mortality dataset (https://data.cdc.gov/d/nt65-c7a7); 2017-2018 from NCHS "Deaths: Final Data" reports, Table 6 (values in scripts/us-gun-deaths.manual.json); 2019-2024 from CDC's Mapping Injury, Overdose, and Violence data (https://data.cdc.gov/d/t6u2-f84c, analysis date 06/22/2026). The NVSR tables for 2016 and 2019 match the datasets exactly, and the three intents' source totals match the NCHS state table for every year.

5 of 5 checks
  • Yes: Method and definitions published. NCHS publishes its coding rules: ICD-10 underlying cause of death, firearm codes listed in its reports.
  • Yes: Official statistics or peer-reviewed. Official statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics (National Vital Statistics System).
  • Yes: Full count or representative sample. Counts every death certificate filed for a US resident in the 50 states and DC; not a sample.
  • Yes: Raw data downloadable. Yearly counts are downloadable as CSV from data.cdc.gov; NCHS also releases the record-level files.
  • Yes: No known break or quality problem. Same ICD-10 codes throughout 2014-2024; 2024 counts are final. The CDC tables used agree exactly where they overlap.
100%
Firearm suicides in the United States, 2024, by source · deaths
010K20K30K201420162018202020222024CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2014: 21,386CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2015: 22,018CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2016: 22,938CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2017: 23,854CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2018: 24,432CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2019: 23,941CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2020: 24,292CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2021: 26,328CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2022: 27,032CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2023: 27,300CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2024: 27,593
Show the data as a table
YearCDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent
201421,386
201522,018
201622,938
201723,854
201824,432
201923,941
202024,292
202126,328
202227,032
202327,300
202427,593

Firearm homicides in the United States, 2024

People killed by another person with a firearm (homicide or murder), excluding killings by police in the line of duty. United States (50 states and DC), US residents for CDC, Calendar year 2024. Unit: deaths.

15,364deaths, 2024

75Trust scoreModerate certainty

Score breakdown

Quality34 / 40

How well the sources are made

Agreement11.1 / 30

How close the sources are to each other

Independence20 / 20

How many separate ways the number was measured

Freshness10 / 10

How recent the newest data is

How much each source counts

  • CDC63%
  • FBI19%
  • GVA19%

Sources

SourceValueDefinitionQualityWeight
CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intentCenters for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): NCHS and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control · Death and health registersRetrieved 2026-10-2615,3642024
Deaths of US residents whose underlying cause is assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms (*U01.4, X93-X95), from death certificates.

2024 is final data.

2014-2016 from the NCHS Injury Mortality dataset (https://data.cdc.gov/d/nt65-c7a7); 2017-2018 from NCHS "Deaths: Final Data" reports, Table 6 (values in scripts/us-gun-deaths.manual.json); 2019-2024 from CDC's Mapping Injury, Overdose, and Violence data (https://data.cdc.gov/d/t6u2-f84c, analysis date 06/22/2026). The NVSR tables for 2016 and 2019 match the datasets exactly, and the three intents' source totals match the NCHS state table for every year.

5 of 5 checks
  • Yes: Method and definitions published. NCHS publishes its coding rules: ICD-10 underlying cause of death, firearm codes listed in its reports.
  • Yes: Official statistics or peer-reviewed. Official statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics (National Vital Statistics System).
  • Yes: Full count or representative sample. Counts every death certificate filed for a US resident in the 50 states and DC; not a sample.
  • Yes: Raw data downloadable. Yearly counts are downloadable as CSV from data.cdc.gov; NCHS also releases the record-level files.
  • Yes: No known break or quality problem. Same ICD-10 codes throughout 2014-2024; 2024 counts are final. The CDC tables used agree exactly where they overlap.
63%
FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weaponFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Uniform Crime Reporting Program · Police and justice recordsRetrieved 2026-10-2612,0862024
Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter victims killed with a firearm ("Total firearms" in Expanded Homicide Data Table 8), as reported by agencies that sent supplementary homicide data.

Excludes justifiable homicides by police and private citizens. Directness 0.5: these agencies covered 16,445 murder victims, 95.6% of the FBI's national estimate of 17,206, and the FBI publishes no national estimate of firearm murders.

2024 value from the 2025 edition of Table 8 (file expanded-homicide-2025.zip on the Crime Data Explorer downloads page), which revises earlier editions. The series takes each year from the latest edition that contains it: CIUS 2018 for 2014 and CIUS 2019 for 2015 (FBI UCR site, e.g. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls), and the 2020, 2024 and 2025 CDE editions after that. National estimate from CIUS Table 1 (2025 edition).

3 of 5 checks
  • Yes: Method and definitions published. The FBI publishes UCR and NIBRS definitions and its data methodology.
  • Yes: Official statistics or peer-reviewed. Official statistics from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
  • No: Full count or representative sample. Only agencies that sent supplementary homicide details: 95.6% of the FBI's estimated murders in 2024; not a national estimate.
  • Yes: Raw data downloadable. Tables are downloadable as Excel files from the Crime Data Explorer; master files are also published.
  • No: No known break or quality problem. Agency coverage changes every year (78.4% of estimated murders in 2021, 95.6% in 2024) and later editions revise earlier years.
19%
Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicidesGun Violence Archive · Independent countRetrieved 2026-10-2616,9352024
GVA's "Homicide/Murder/Unintentional/DGU" deaths for 2024: people killed in shootings GVA verified from police and news reports, excluding most suicides.

Directness 0.5: it also includes unintentional and defensive-use shootings, which are not homicides in CDC's or the FBI's definitions.

2024 ledger on GVA's Past Summary Ledgers page (values in scripts/us-gun-deaths.manual.json). For 2014-2018 the series uses the ledgers' "Number of Deaths", which GVA says excludes suicides. GVA includes suicides linked to murder-suicides and officer-involved incidents in its real-time count.

3 of 5 checks
  • Yes: Method and definitions published. GVA publishes a methodology page and definitions.
  • No: Official statistics or peer-reviewed. An independent project, not official statistics and not peer-reviewed.
  • Yes: Full count or representative sample. Tries to record every shooting reported by police or news sources, not a sample.
  • Yes: Raw data downloadable. Incident lists with source links can be exported as CSV from GVA's reports.
  • No: No known break or quality problem. Deaths that are never reported publicly are missed; GVA says it grew from about 2,500-3,000 sources in 2014 to about 7,500 by mid-2015, so the earliest year is less complete.
19%
Firearm homicides in the United States, 2024, by source · deaths
  • CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent
  • FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weapon
  • Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides
010K20K30K201420162018202020222024CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2014: 11,008CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2015: 12,979CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2016: 14,415CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2017: 14,542CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2018: 13,958CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2019: 14,414CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2020: 19,384CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2021: 20,958CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2022: 19,651CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2023: 17,927CDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intent, 2024: 15,364FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weapon, 2014: 7,803FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weapon, 2015: 9,143FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weapon, 2016: 10,403FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weapon, 2017: 11,020FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weapon, 2018: 10,484FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weapon, 2019: 10,537FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weapon, 2020: 14,483FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weapon, 2021: 13,093FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weapon, 2022: 15,543FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weapon, 2023: 14,151FBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weapon, 2024: 12,086Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides, 2014: 12,410Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides, 2015: 13,797Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides, 2016: 15,425Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides, 2017: 15,924Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides, 2018: 15,082Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides, 2019: 15,692Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides, 2020: 19,946Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides, 2021: 21,472Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides, 2022: 20,609Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides, 2023: 19,277Gun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides, 2024: 16,935
Show the data as a table
YearCDC, National Vital Statistics System: firearm deaths by intentFBI Crime Data Explorer, Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: murder victims by weaponGun Violence Archive, past summary ledgers: deaths excluding suicides
201411,0087,80312,410
201512,9799,14313,797
201614,41510,40315,425
201714,54211,02015,924
201813,95810,48415,082
201914,41410,53715,692
202019,38414,48319,946
202120,95813,09321,472
202219,65115,54320,609
202317,92714,15119,277
202415,36412,08616,935

Why the numbers differ

  • Suicides are often left out of gun-violence counts: Gun Violence Archive builds its daily tally from shootings it can find in news and police reports and does not collect suicides itself, while CDC counts every death certificate whatever the intent.
  • Suicides were 62.1% of CDC's firearm deaths in 2024 (63.7% in 2014). GVA's suicide row matched CDC's final counts in 2019, 2020, 2021, but for 2024 it shows 24,156 against CDC's 27,593, so GVA's all-cause total is 3,356 lower than CDC's. Calculated from both sources in the sources table. (source, retrieved 2026-10-26)
  • FBI expanded homicide data cover only agencies that send supplementary homicide reports: 16,445 murder victims in 2024, 95.6% of the FBI's national estimate of 17,206, down to 78.4% in 2021. Part of the change in the FBI line over time is coverage, not crime. Calculated from FBI Expanded Homicide Data Table 8 and CIUS Table 1. (source, retrieved 2026-10-26)
  • CDC homicide excludes unintentional shootings, deaths of undetermined intent and police shootings (legal intervention): together 1,490 of CDC's 44,447 firearm deaths in 2024. GVA's non-suicide figure includes unintentional and defensive-use shootings, which CDC does not count as homicide. Calculated from the CDC lines on this page. (source, retrieved 2026-10-26)
  • GVA records a death only if it appears in police or news reports it can verify, and the FBI counts what police agencies report as murder; CDC counts the cause written on the death certificate, whether or not police record a crime.

Common mistakes

  • Quoting the Gun Violence Archive's daily death tally as all US gun deaths: it leaves out most suicides, the majority of gun deaths.
  • Reading a rise or fall in FBI expanded homicide counts as a change in crime without checking how many agencies reported that year.