Gun violence hits 40-year high in Colorado

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 dip- ping in the early 2000s, was on the rise. 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,

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.

SEE 40-YEAR HIGH, P32