Gun violence hits 40-year high in Colorado

Death rates also high

BY JOHN INGOLD THE COLORADO SUN

In the spring of 2019, as the state mourned the shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch and lawmakers began eyeing a raft of new rearms-related legislation, e Colorado Sun analyzed 38 years of state data on gun deaths.

At the time, e Sun found that 20,669 people died from rearmrelated injuries between 1980 and 2018, and the death rate, after dipping in the early 2000s, was on the rise.

Now, with the reverberations from a shooting at Denver’s East High School still ringing and lawmakers again hotly debating a slate of gun bills, e Sun decided to revisit that earlier analysis.

e number of those who have died from rearm-related injuries has increased, of course. Between 1980 and 2021 — the most recent year for which nalized mortality data is available — 23,493 people were killed by gunshot wounds, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

But more surprising is that the rearm-related death rate in 2021 was the highest since at least 1980.

e new analysis shows the state recorded 18.2 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2021, far exceeding any other year in that time span. e previous high was in 1981, at 16.3 deaths per 100,000 people.

ese numbers include all deaths caused by rearms — homicides, suicides, accidents and incidents where the intent cannot be determined.

ough still preliminary, the rearm-related death rate appears to have declined slightly in 2022.

e state will likely have nal data on 2022 deaths next month, and it is possible that the preliminary gure — 16.8 deaths per 100,000 people — could rise as more deaths are cially recorded. e reason we stop the analysis at e state does have data on suicides going back to 1940 and homicides back to 1970. But, because those numbers do not record whether a gun was involved in the deaths, they are not comparable to post-1980 numbers.

1980 is because that’s how far back CDPHE has data on rearm-speci c causes of death.

Gun deaths are increasing across most age groups in the state. e only age group where a trend is di cult to discern is for children from birth through age 9. Deaths in that age range can be few enough in a given year that CDPHE won’t release the actual numbers — it is common in health statistics for small numbers to be withheld for privacy reasons. is story is from e Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support e Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun. com. e Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media.