Number of deaths
The “other” category is defined as any firearm death that is not defined by the CDC as a homicide or a suicide. This could include unintentional, undetermined, and legal intervention. To obtain the number of deaths in the “other” category, the total number of firearm suicide deaths and firearm homicide deaths were subtracted from the overall firearm deaths in a given year.
* Denotes years in which fewer than 10 firearm suicides were reported. The CDC suppresses data in which fewer than 10 deaths are reported. For any year in which there were less than 10 firearm suicides reported, these deaths are collapsed into the “other” category.
The majority of suicide decedents are males. In DC, Black males in particular are disproportionately impacted by firearm suicide.
The chart above includes one racial category: (1) Black.
The CDC considers firearm suicide rates based on fewer than 20 deaths “statistically unreliable” and suppresses firearm suicide rates based on fewer than 10 deaths. Fewer than 20 firearm suicides were reported during this time period for the following races and Hispanic Origin category and therefore are omitted from the above chart: American Indian/ Alaska Native females and males, Asian/ Pacific Islander females and males, Black females, White females and males, and Hispanic/Latino females and males.
Age-Adjusted Firearm Suicide Rate per 100,000
Notes:
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Suicide Deaths and Rates per 100,000. WONDER Online Database, 1999-2019. Available: http://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10.html.
This page was last updated March 2021.