This Is How Many People Have Been Murdered by Guns in America This Year

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 10, 7:21AM EST

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This Is How Many People Have Been Murdered by Guns in America This Year — © FlyMint Agency / iStock via Getty Images

On a subject as horrible and important as the number of people who are murdered by guns each year, it might be assumed that the definition of murder, and how it is measured, would be straightforward. It is not. However, one of the most widely regarded research firms that gather gun violence statistics shows that 16,213 people have been the victims of gun murder, gun homicide, unintentional homicide gun death or defensive gun use (which are estimated to be only a small part of the total). It is as solid a number as any other.

The Gun Violence Archive (GVA) has kept gun violence data since 2013. It puts gun deaths into two primary categories. There have been 20,724 suicides so far in 2020, in addition to those 16,213 “murders.”

The GVA uses both an automated system and human research to come by its figures. It looks at 7,500 sources, which include local and state police reports, media, data aggregated by other sources and government information. It records each death by street address (when possible), city and state. It also gives the age and gender of the victim and the source of the information. The GVA claims there can be as many as 120 variables for each incident.

The debate about the GVA definition pivots on the definitions of murder and homicide. The Federal Bureau of Investigation keeps such records as part of its Uniform Crime Reporting Program. That data is collected from law enforcement agencies only. Murder is added to “nonnegligent manslaughter” to come up with a total, and the figure covers all causes and not just incidents that involve guns. Last year, the FBI count of murders was 15,020.
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The GVA also categorizes gun deaths by “mass shootings,” which it counts at 522 so far this year. Its definition, which it makes clear is different from the FBI’s, is “based ONLY on the numeric value of 4 or more shot or killed, not including the shooter.” The FBI labels incidents as “mass killings,” and these can involve weapons other than guns.

The GVA murder figure will rise this year over last, when the figure for the entire year was 15,424.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.