A report released Monday by the Sycamore Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, indicates that gun deaths are on the rise in Tennessee.
That’s bad.
They’ve been rising overall for about a decade — by 66% between 2011 and 2021 — and, most alarmingly, among children.
The report details, for instance, that men die from gunshots at a far greater rate than women, that Blacks have a much higher rate of deaths by firearms and that Black men have the highest rate of gun deaths among all Tennesseans.
You probably knew that much.
You also may have known Tennessee — the 16th largest state by population — doesn’t fare well in comparison to other states.
It has the country’s 11th highest rate of firearm deaths, seventh highest rate of gun homicides, ninth highest rate of child shooting deaths and 18th highest rate of suicides involving a firearm. All four levels are well above the U.S. rate.
We mentioned children earlier.
Gunfire was the leading cause of death among Tennessee children between the ages of 1 and 18 in 2021, and gunfire overtook car accidents in 2017 as the state’s top cause of death for children older than age 1 and widened the gap between the two in 2021.
Although the report does not detail any information as to responsibility for gun deaths, we believe the proliferation of weapons in the state has to be a part of the puzzle.
According to FBI firearm background check data, gun sales increased in Tennessee from 654,192 in 2015 to 984,760 in 2020.
Even without intentionality being involved, there are more guns in homes, more guns available to be stolen, and more guns for children, either together or alone, to find and play with. And where there is intentionality involved, that means there are more guns available for suicides.
Suicide deaths in the state increased 17.2% between 1999 and 2019, and suicide rates involving guns continue to be higher than homicide rates involving guns.
Although the percentage of Tennesseans who choose suicide with a firearm is about the same (67%) in 2021 as it was (68%) in 1999, the increase in the state’s suicides with a firearm has increased from less than 9 per 100,000 people to nearly 12 per 100,000 with the increase in the state population.
But the homicide rate with a firearm has grown both in percentage (68% in 1999 to 88% in 2021) and per 100,000 people from about 5 per 100K to more than 10 per 100K. That’s a big jump.
It will surprise no one that Hamilton County, as the state’s fourth largest county, had the fourth most firearms deaths between 2012 and 2021. But, thankfully, the county did not rank in the top five among the state’s 95 counties in either shooting death rates per 100,000 people over the same time period or the change in the number of firearm deaths per 100,000 between 2002-2011 and 2012-2021.
Officials with the Sycamore Institute said they prepared the report ahead of a special session of the state legislature that Gov. Bill Lee is expected to call in late August that will focus on firearms, public safety and mental health.
But the report itself doesn’t delineate the increase in the number of guns in the state over the past decade, nor does break out who is responsible for the homicides, how that responsibility falls according to age, sex and race, and how many of the guns used in homicides were legal or illegal
As to the last point, the report does say that “the level of detail reported to and available in Crime Insights” — which is compiled by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and reported through its Tennessee Incident Based Reporting System — “does not allow us to answer additional research questions of interest” such as what percentage of gun-related crimes involved an illegally possessed gun.
We admit that trying to find apple-to-apples comparisons on gun crimes — and especially up-to-date, state-by-state numbers on the responsibility for homicides by age, sex and race — is a heavy lift. Statistics are usually several years behind, are listed differently by various law enforcement agencies, governments and other agencies, and often won’t include cases yet to be adjudicated.
Without that information, it’s hard to zero in on where to start in correcting the problem, and we’re left with the reality that — duh! — guns are responsible for gun deaths.
As we said above, the proliferation of guns is part of the puzzle. But if that’s the only argument for the special session, it’ll be a losing one. Because there are too many members of the supermajority of Republicans in the legislature who are ready to stand on their Second Amendment right that nobody at any time is going to take away their constituents’ God-given (or Constitution-given) right to own a gun.
But perhaps they’ll have some additional numbers that will finally open some eyes to the need for action.