Carmen Heredia Rodriguez
\nCalifornia Healthline
\nAfter steadily declining for more than two decades, deadly shootings are rising across the country, according to a new government report.<\/p>\n
The researchers also said that the number of suicides involving a firearm grew 21 percent between 2006 and 2016.<\/p>\n
The report, published Thursday<\/a> by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, looked at gun deaths around the country and in 50 major metropolitan areas. The researchers found a rise in gun homicides in 2015 and 2016, reversing a downward trend and bringing them to a level comparable to a decade ago.<\/p>\n It also reported that deadly shootings were up across all age groups nationwide.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is too soon to know whether recent increases in firearm homicide rates represent a short-term fluctuation or the beginning of a longer-term trend,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n The findings were released shortly after a gunman in Thousand Oaks, Calif., killed 12 people, including a county sheriff\u2019s deputy, at a bar popular with college students, and less than two weeks after a gunman walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 people.<\/p>\n Despite the high publicity garnered by mass shootings in recent years, the Pew Research Center<\/a> previously reported that the rate of firearm homicides began declining in the 1990s and then remained fairly flat from 2001 to 2014.<\/p>\n The federal researchers analyzed mortality and population data from the nation\u2019s 50 most populous metropolitan areas to calculate both firearm homicides and suicides during two time periods, 2015-2016 and 2012-2013. The group also highlighted the rate of these incidents among 10- to 19-year-olds.<\/p>\n According to the report, more than 27,000 people were killed in gun homicides in 2015-2016, for a death rate of 4.4 per 100,000 people. The rate is higher for the 50 cities, where more than 17,000 people were killed, or 4.9 per 100,000 people.<\/p>\n By comparison, nearly 23,000 people died across the country and more than 14,000 died in those cities from firearm homicide in 2012-2013.<\/p>\n Andrew Papachristos, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University who was not involved in the study, said changes in the level of gun violence can come from a variety of factors, including different police protocols, gang violence and general mistrust.<\/p>\n