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.

The chart above includes three racial categories: (1) American Indian/Alaska Native (2) Black, and (3) White; as well as one Hispanic Origin category: (1) Hispanic/Latino. Race and Hispanic Origin categories defined by the CDC are not mutually exclusive, meaning that a person counted in the Hispanic/Latino category will also be counted in a racial category at the same time.

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, Asian/ Pacific Islander females and males, and Hispanic/Latino females.