Gun Violence Faced by a ‘Striking’ 60% of Black Americans

Nearly 60 percent of Black Americans have been exposed to some degree of gun violence, new research has found.

In a survey of 3,015 Black Americans by Rutgers Health, 40 percent of participants said that they knew someone who had been shot, and 12 percent had been exposed to gun violence in three separate ways.

This exposure to gun violence may also predict increased rates of disabilities, according to a new paper in the Journal of Urban Health.

“Traditionally, the majority of efforts related to gun violence have focused on reducing homicides, but this study indicates that we need to provide more support to those who face such exposures to violence beyond homicide,” Daniel Semenza, an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health’s Gun Violence Research Center and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

Thirty percent of the men in the survey reported some degree of exposure to gun violence, compared to 15 percent of the women, with these exposures ranging from hearing a shooting occurring nearby to knowing a victim to have been threatened or even shot themselves.

Of the survey participants, 4 percent of the men and 2 percent of the women reported having been shot.

“These numbers are striking because this was a nationally representative sample, matched to all Black Americans as a whole by age, sex, income, education and area of residence,” said Semenza. “The survey shows that roughly 60 percent of all Black adults in the US have faced exposure to gun violence and that 40 percent of them personally know a shooting victim, which is staggering.”

Black people in the United States face a huge range of systemic and institutional racism, manifesting in various aspects of life, including employment, housing, education, criminal justice, and health care. As of 2021, the unemployment rate for Black Americans was 8.6 percent, compared to 4.7 percent for white Americans, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, and Black workers earn, on average, 76 cents for every dollar earned by white workers.

Additionally, Black Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of white Americans, with Black individuals comprising 33 percent of the sentenced prison population in 2018, despite making up only 12 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Sentencing Project’s report on racial disparities in incarceration.

Over 85,000 people every year experience some form of firearm injury, the paper said, with survivors being likely to have long-term disabilities afterward.

“Black Americans experience a disproportionate burden of violent injury and exposure to firearm violence in the U.S.,” the researchers wrote in the paper. “The majority of Black men and women exposed to firearm violence reside in low-income urban communities, placing them at high risk for repeated exposure and resultant ongoing physical and psychological health challenges.”

“Black Americans disproportionately experience numerous types of firearm violence exposure detrimental to mental, physical, and behavioral well-being,” they wrote.

The disabilities associated with gun violence recorded in the survey include trouble concentrating, struggling to walk/use stairs or run errands, and issues with dressing or bathing. Men who saw or heard about shootings had a 53 percent increased rate of suffering from some form of functional disability than those who had not and were over twice as likely to report trouble concentrating, walking up or down stairs, dressing, or bathing.

The survey also found that women who had been directly threatened by a person with a gun had a 48 percent increased rate of having a functional disability and a 75 percent higher chance of having difficulty concentrating.

Those who had been exposed to three or more forms of gun violence experienced these disabilities at even higher rates.

“This kind of survey-based study cannot prove causation, but it suggests that exposure to gun violence might shape functional disability and everyday well-being through mental trauma, even when it doesn’t disable people directly via physical injury,” Semenza said.

“We need to continue efforts to reduce gun violence, but we also need to make sure that when gun violence does occur, there are resources available where affected people can go to help manage the trauma that such exposure creates.”

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