Death by gun

The Journal of the American Medical Association just published the Global Mortality From Firearms: 1990-2016 report, which underlines the scale of the threat to public health posed by gun violence. In 2016 alone, 251,000 people worldwide died from firearm-related injuries. Casualties of war, terrorism and police shootings were not included—victims of mass shootings that were explicitly deemed homicides, as opposed to acts of terror (such as the incident at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando), were included in the numbers. The U.S. had the second highest number of gun-related deaths (37,200) of any country in 2016 (behind Brazil at 43,200), and had the 20th highest death rate at 10.6 per 100,000 (El Salvador was highest, at 39.2; Singapore was lowest, at 0.1). Of the global numbers, 64 percent were due to homicide, 27 percent suicide and 9 percent accidental. The U.S. had the second-highest suicide-by-firearm rate, with 6.4 per 100,000 people, or 60 percent of its overall gun-related deaths.