Suicide makes up 55% of gun deaths, and the US is literally the only country in the world that counts these as gun violence. The remainder is primarily gang violence. Shooting of non-gang affiliated people is extremely rare, and noteworthy because of this rarity. Murder-suicides are also rare, about 1% of suicides.
Most discussion and statistics about gun violence intentionally obfuscates these facts. We could speculate about the motivations why, but it is largely irrelevant.
You seem to be hinting, by your choice of statistics, that gun violence in the USA is not the pressing social issue it is commonly made out to be. (We could speculate about the motivations why, but it is largely irrelevant.)
Since I disagree, I will offer my own statistic: the leading cause of death in the United States among children and adolescents is gunshot wound.
I would agree that gun violence is a serious issue. However, I think most people are misled/misinformed about nature of the problem, who is at risk, and their personal risk.
I think that the risk is highly concentrated on a subset of people, an individuals can take simple actions to remove themselves from that subset.
Examples would be if you steer clear of gangs, drugs, and abusive partners, your risk is drastically lower than the national average. The same is true for your kids, especially if you don't keep guns in your house.
Now, I still think it's a problem that other Americans are dying from gun violence, even if I don't think I am personally at much risk. I will admit that this does reduce the sense of urgency I feel, and I suspect that this is why the numbers are obfuscated.
The groups that want to reduce gun violence rightly understand that personal fear is a greater motivator then general concern for the well-being of others, so the narrative exaggerates the former and not the letter. This is why you get lone suicide grouped with home invasion for gun violence statistics. It is why you get 2 gang members shot in a drug deal gone bad classified with school massacres as mass shootings.
Not off-hand. Last time I looked into it, tagging homicide associations was a pretty messy business. I think drug related gun homicides and gang homicides two side to the same coin.
I've seen numbers on the order of 10% for intimate gun partner homicide. The percent is much higher for women, but women are a minority of gun homicide victims overall.
I looked at a variety of sources for the above numbers, but it certainly didn't seem like gang- or drug-specific associations drove the majority of non-suicide gun deaths. A decent chunk, but there are other reasons.
One surprising / not surprising other fact: ~50-75% of gun deaths involve alcohol and ~25% meth.
Parent specifically said “shooting deaths”, which technically includes guns shooting the person holding them in any country.
Gun suicide specifically affects white conservatives males and their kids more than any demographic. Either it’s access to guns, or conservatives are particularly more depressed (or maybe they lack access mental health services?). Having a friend die this way when I was in high school (and knowing no one who was shot and killed by someone else), it’s particularly real to me.
True, let me revise. The majority of "shootings" are suicides, which can be carried out in all manner of ways. The second largest contributors are gangs and organized crime. The smallest, by far, is what people actually picture in their mind when they hear "mass shooting".
Guns are an easy way to do it with a higher success rate. It is really hard to stab yourself to death even though it’s possible, for example. Who knows what would happen in Korea if guns were legal.
