How Many People Die From Guns Every Day
Firearms kill around 250,000 people a year outside war, about 685 a day. Global and US figures, and the split between homicide, suicide and accidents.
Picture an emergency department at a big-city hospital in the United States on a Saturday night. The trauma team is called three times before midnight for gunshot wounds. Two of the patients are young men in their early twenties, one of whom survives. The third, an older man brought in from a quiet suburb, did not get there because of a fight or a robbery. He used a gun on himself.
That third patient is the part of the firearm story that rarely makes the headlines. When people picture gun deaths, they picture shootings in the street, or the mass shootings that dominate the news for days. Those deaths are real and devastating. But in the country with the most gun deaths in the rich world, they are not where most of the toll comes from.
The headline number
Outside of war, firearms kill around 250,000 people a year worldwide. That estimate comes from the Global Burden of Disease study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found about 251,000 firearm deaths in 2016, and later updates have stayed in the same range. It works out to roughly 685 firearm deaths every day.
Those deaths are part of the 62 million a year you can watch on our live death counter.
| Time period | Firearm deaths (approx.) |
|---|---|
| Per minute | 0.5 |
| Per hour | 29 |
| Per day | 685 |
| Per week | 4,800 |
| Per month | 21,000 |
| Per year | 250,000 |
That figure excludes deaths in armed conflict, which are counted separately. Wars add many more firearm deaths in the years they rage, as we cover in how many people die in wars every year.
How firearm deaths break down
Globally, the Global Burden of Disease study split firearm deaths roughly like this:
| Type | Approx. share of global firearm deaths |
|---|---|
| Homicide | ~64% |
| Suicide | ~27% |
| Unintentional (accidents) | ~9% |
So worldwide, most firearm deaths are homicides. Firearms are the weapon in a large share of the 458,000 homicides a year that we cover in how many people are murdered every day, especially in the Americas.
But that global average hides big differences between countries. In some countries, homicide accounts for almost all gun deaths. In others, including the United States and many European countries, suicide is the larger share.
Where firearm deaths happen
The same study found that just six countries accounted for about half of all firearm deaths in the world, despite having less than a tenth of the world's population. All six are in the Americas.
| Country | Main type of firearm death |
|---|---|
| Brazil | Homicide; the largest number of firearm deaths of any country in the study |
| United States | Suicide, followed by homicide |
| Mexico | Homicide, much of it linked to organised crime |
| Colombia | Homicide |
| Venezuela | Homicide |
| Guatemala | Homicide |
At the other end of the scale, countries such as Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom record firearm death rates that are close to zero by comparison. Japan typically records only a handful of firearm deaths in a year in a population of over 120 million.
The United States in detail
The US is the outlier among wealthy countries, so it is worth looking at separately. According to the CDC, about 46,700 people died from firearm injuries in the US in 2023. That is about 128 a day, or a little more than five every hour. The peak year was 2021, with nearly 49,000 deaths.
| Type of US firearm death (2023) | Approx. deaths | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Suicide | ~27,300 | ~58% |
| Homicide | ~17,900 | ~38% |
| Unintentional | ~460 | ~1% |
| Legal intervention and undetermined | ~1,000 | ~2% |
| Total | ~46,700 | 100% |
A few things stand out in that table:
- More than half of US gun deaths are suicides. Firearms are used in more than half of all US suicides, and they are far more lethal than most other methods. Many people who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die by suicide later, which is why the lethality of the method matters so much.
- Mass shootings are a small fraction of the total, even though they dominate coverage. The large majority of firearm homicides involve one victim.
- Since 2020, firearm injuries have been the leading cause of death for American children and teenagers aged 1 to 19, overtaking road crashes, according to CDC data.
If that first point touches anything personal, please know help is available right now: call or text 988 in the US, or contact Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK. We cover the wider data on suicide on our suicide page and in how many people die from suicide every day.
How the US compares with other rich countries
| Country | Firearm deaths per 100,000 people (approx.) |
|---|---|
| United States | ~13.7 |
| Canada | ~2 |
| Australia | ~1 |
| Germany | ~1 |
| England and Wales | Well under 0.5 |
| Japan | Under 0.1 |
Figures are approximate and drawn from national statistics and the Global Burden of Disease study; years vary slightly by country.
The US firearm death rate is several times higher than in other high-income countries. In England and Wales, police-recorded firearm homicides typically number around 30 a year. In the US, a figure like that would be reached in less than half a day.
For a broader look at deaths across the US from every cause, see how many people die in the US every day and the leading causes of death in the US.
Who dies from guns
Across nearly every country, the victims of firearm deaths are overwhelmingly male. In the US, men account for roughly 85% of firearm deaths.
| Group | Pattern |
|---|---|
| Young men, 15 to 34 | Highest rate of firearm homicide in most countries |
| Middle-aged and older men | Highest rate of firearm suicide in the US |
| Children and teens | A growing share of US firearm deaths since 2019 |
| Women | Lower rates overall; a large share of female firearm homicide victims are killed by partners |
The young-adult pattern is part of why injuries, rather than disease, dominate deaths among 15 to 29 year olds. For more on that age group, see the leading causes of death for young people.
Trends over time
Firearm deaths have moved in different directions in different places.
| Region or country | Recent trend |
|---|---|
| United States | Rose sharply in 2020 and 2021; homicides fell markedly in 2023 and 2024, while firearm suicides stayed near record levels |
| Latin America | High and volatile, closely tied to organised crime and drug markets |
| Western Europe | Low and broadly stable |
| Australia | Fell after the 1996 national firearms agreement and has stayed low |
| Japan | Consistently among the lowest in the world |
Globally, the GBD study found the firearm death rate fell slightly between 1990 and 2016 even as total numbers rose with population growth.
Why firearm injuries are so lethal
Doctors who treat gunshot wounds often point out that the weapon matters as much as the intent. A stab wound or a beating is survivable in most cases. A gunshot wound to the head, chest or abdomen often is not, because a bullet carries far more energy into the body than a blade or a fist.
| Type of injury | Approx. share who die (varies by study) |
|---|---|
| Suicide attempt with a firearm | Around 85 to 90% |
| Suicide attempt by most other methods | Well under 10% on average |
| Assault with a firearm | Much higher than assault with a knife or by hand |
That gap is the reason public health researchers focus so heavily on firearm access in suicide prevention. Suicidal crises are often short. If the most lethal method is not within reach during those hours, many people survive, and most of those who survive an attempt do not go on to die by suicide.
Survivors of gunshot wounds often live with long-term disability, chronic pain, repeat surgery and post-traumatic stress. In the US, non-fatal firearm injuries treated in emergency departments outnumber deaths by a wide margin each year.
What reduces firearm deaths
Firearm policy is fiercely debated in some countries, but there is broad agreement among researchers on a number of measures that reduce deaths without being especially controversial.
| Measure | What it addresses |
|---|---|
| Safe storage (locked, unloaded, ammunition separate) | Child accidents, teen suicide and theft |
| Crisis lines and follow-up care | Suicide during short periods of acute crisis |
| Community violence intervention programmes | Retaliatory shootings among young men |
| Trauma care and faster ambulance response | Turns some fatal injuries into survivable ones |
| Tackling organised crime and trafficking | The main driver of firearm homicide in Latin America |
| Removing firearms from people at acute risk | Domestic violence and suicide crises |
Countries with very low firearm death rates tend to combine strict licensing, low ownership and strong policing. Countries with high rates vary: in Latin America the driver is mostly organised crime, while in the US it is a combination of high ownership, suicide and concentrated urban violence.
Guns compared with other causes of death
Firearm deaths are a significant cause of early death, but they sit well below the biggest killers.
| Cause | Approx. deaths per year worldwide |
|---|---|
| Cardiovascular disease | 18,600,000 |
| Road injuries | 1,190,000 |
| Suicide (all methods) | 700,000 |
| Homicide (all methods) | 458,000 |
| Drowning | 300,000 |
| Firearms (homicide, suicide and accidents) | 250,000 |
Where gun deaths stand out is in how young the victims are. Because most are in their teens, twenties and thirties, each one takes away decades of life. On measures of years of life lost, rather than simple counts, firearms rank much higher in countries like the US and Brazil than their raw numbers suggest. You can compare causes side by side with our cause comparison tool.
While you were reading this
You have spent about 12 minutes with this article. In that time, roughly 6 people have died from gunshot wounds somewhere in the world outside of war, and in the United States alone about one more person has died from a firearm.
You can see every death, from every cause, adding up in real time on our live death counter and on the deaths today page.
Firearm deaths are not spread evenly across the world. They are concentrated in a handful of countries, among young men, and, in the US, among people in crisis. That concentration is what makes them one of the most studied, and most argued over, causes of death on earth.
Data sources: Global Burden of Disease Study firearm mortality estimates (GBD 2016 Injury Collaborators, JAMA 2018), US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Vital Statistics and WISQARS, UNODC Global Study on Homicide 2023, Office for National Statistics (ONS) crime and homicide statistics. Figures are rounded and represent the most recent available estimates; country rates vary by year and are indicative. This article is for informational purposes only.
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