Faced with the saturation of the traditional white-male market for guns in the U.S., America’s firearms industry has targeted Hispanics as a new untapped market for gun sales. And gun deaths among that group have risen commensurately, according to a new study.
More than 5,700 Hispanics died by gunfire in the United States in 2023, according to the latest edition of Hispanic Victims of Lethal Firearms Violence in the United States, an annual study from the Violence Policy Center (VPC). That year (the most recent for which national data is available) guns claimed 5,747 Hispanic lives. Of these, 3,284 (57 percent) were gun homicides. An additional 2,198 Hispanic lives were lost in gun suicides that year.
Over the 22-year period from 2002 to 2023, more than 83,000 Hispanics were killed with guns in the United States: 51,780 in gun homicides; 27,160 in gun suicides; 1,220 from unintentional gun deaths; and 2,847 from other firearm deaths.
The study’s authors note that as a result of the limitations in current data collection, the total number of Hispanic victims is almost certainly higher than the reported numbers suggest.
In 2015, the firearms industry and gun lobby launched a coordinated campaign targeting Hispanics and other communities of color in the U.S. to increase gun sales and increase the political power of the pro-gun movement.
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