Purpose

We examined the socio-demographic distribution of gun deaths across 3143 counties in 50 United States’ states to understand the spatial patterns and correlates of high and low gun deaths.

Methods

We used aggregate counts of gun deaths and population in all counties from 1999 to 2013 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER). We characterized four levels of gun violence, as distinct levels of gun death rates of relatively safe, unsafe, violent, and extremely violent counties, based on quartiles of 15-year county-specific gun death rates per 100,000 and used negative binomial regression models allowing clustering by state to calculate incidence rate ratios and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs).

Results

Most states had at least one violent or extremely violent county. Extremely violent gun counties were mostly rural, poor, predominantly minority, had high unemployment rate and homicide rate. Overall, homicide rate was significantly associated with gun deaths (incidence rate ratios ¼ 1.08, 95% CI ¼ 1.06e1.09). In relatively safe counties, this risk was 1.09 (95% CI ¼ 1.05e1.13) and in extremely violent gun counties was 1.03 (95% CI ¼ 1.03e1.04).

Conclusions

There are broad differences in gun death rates across the United States representing different levels of gun death rates in each state with distinct socio-demographic profiles.