Last year was the third consecutive year that the rate of firearm deaths rose in the United States. While public mass shootings like the one in Las Vegas make up a small percentage of firearm deaths, they have changed the national conversation.
More people died from firearm injuries in the United States last year than in any other year since at least 1968, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There were 39,773 gun deaths in 2017, up by more than 1,000 from the year before. Nearly two-thirds were suicides. It was the largest yearly total on record in the C.D.C.’s electronic database, which goes back 50 years, and reflects the sheer number of lives lost.
When adjusted for population size, the rate of gun deaths in 2017 also increased slightly to 12 deaths for every 100,000 people, up from 11.8 per 100,000 in 2016. By this measure, last year had the highest rate of firearm deaths since the mid-1990s, the data showed.
It was the third consecutive year that the rate of firearm deaths rose in the United States, after remaining relatively steady throughout the 2000s and the first part of this decade.
state legislatures passed a surge of new gun control laws, gun control groups outspent the National Rifle Association in the midterm election cycle and the medical community recently took on the N.R.A. over an assertion that doctors should “stay in their lane” on gun policy
— the findings underscore that even after such efforts ramped up after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, gun violence continued its dizzying assault on America.
In 2017, about 60 percent of gun deaths were suicides, while about 37 percent were homicides, according to an analysis of the C.D.C. data by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, a public health think tank.
Suicide over all has been on the rise for more than a decade and is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, according to the health statistics center. But researchers say firearm homicide has ticked upward recently and also helps explain the rise in gun deaths since
In 1996, under pressure from the N.R.A., Congress stripped the C.D.C. of its budget to study the health effects of shootings and prohibited the agency from advocating or promoting gun control.
“We have decided as a country not to do research on this problem, so we don’t understand it,” said Dr. Wintemute, a leading researcher on gun violence who identified himself as a member of the N.R.A.
Though public mass shootings make up no more than 1 percent of all firearm deaths, Dr. Wintemute said, they have changed the dynamic of the conversation.