The Atlantic

The Disturbing Trend Behind America’s Soaring Gun Deaths

More Americans were killed by guns in 2017 than ever before. The majority of those deaths were suicides.
Source: Justin Sullivan / Getty

In 2015 and 2016, Americans faced an alarming statistic: After a couple of decades of overall decline, major data centers reported a sharp uptick of crime in big cities. Donald Trump spoke with dystopian foreboding in his 2016 inaugural address about the “American carnage” wreaking havoc in the country’s metropolises; earlier, at one campaign event, he asserted that “places like Afghanistan” were safer than American cities, where “you get shot walking down the street.”

In the years since, research has painted a much different picture—one that’s uplifting in some ways and

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