Confronting the Violence Black Women and Girls Endure
It’s time to reclaim the narrative: Black women and girls must be centered in discussions of gun safety.
When we talk about gun violence prevention, the narrative often centers men—especially Black and Brown men.
It’s important that we acknowledge and aim to understand these experiences. But we can’t forget that they exist as part of a broader picture, and that doing so diminishes the experiences of other impacted groups.
Among these impacted groups are Black women and girls. The violence they experience too often goes unrecognized and unaddressed.
This erasure is not accidental. It’s systemic.
As a researcher committed to exploring the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and structural violence, I’ve spent years studying the overlooked and often invisible burdens Black women and girls carry. We are survivors, caretakers, advocates, and leaders—yet our names are often missing from the stories told and the policies made.
Recent CDC data interpreted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions paints a harrowing picture. From 2022 to 2023, gun violence claimed the lives of 2,320 Black women and girls. Each day, an average of three lives were taken, which amounts to one life lost every 7.5 hours. From 2019 to 2023, the number of gun deaths among Black women rose by 49%, the largest increase of any group in the country.
Among youth, the disparities are just as alarming. Black teen girls between 13 and 17 face gun homicide rates nearly 10 times higher than white teen girls. For Black girls under 12, the risk is more than five times greater. Suicide by firearm among Black women has also surged, rising 65%, with nearly 40% of these deaths involving a gun.
Regionally, the crisis is especially acute in Southern and Midwestern states. Ohio recorded a 123% rise in gun death rates among Black women, the sharpest increase in the country. Virginia, Texas, and Louisiana also saw rates climb by more than 65%. Unfortunately, many of these states lack the infrastructure, funding, or policy to respond to this growing crisis.
But these numbers are not just data. These are our sisters, our daughters, our friends—people navigating unrelenting cycles of trauma while being told, implicitly or explicitly, that their pain does not matter. Whether directly impacted by bullets or living in the shadow of violence, Black women and girls are carrying the weight of a system that refuses to see them.
As Brooklynn Hitchens writes in Second Killings, the trauma does not end with the bullet. The grief of Black women and girls who survive the deaths of loved ones is often ignored and unacknowledged, a phenomenon she calls “second killings.” These are the emotional and psychological wounds inflicted when survivors are forced to endure their pain in silence, without institutional support or public recognition. Their suffering is compounded by the erasure of their stories in both media narratives and public policy.
This violence is not new. What is new is the increasing urgency with which we must center the voices of Black women and girls in both research and response. For too long, we have been pushed to the margins even as we lead the work of healing our communities.
We are not merely victims. We are visionaries, healers, organizers, and fighters. But we cannot do this alone, and we should not have to. Recognizing the impact of violence on Black women and girls means building with us, not just studying us after tragedy strikes.
At the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, I co-authored a study titled A Scoping Review of the Impacts of Firearm Violence on Black Women and Girls in the United States, analyzing 56 peer-reviewed studies. The findings expose a deeply entrenched and under-researched public health emergency.
Gun violence against Black women most often occurs in the context of intimate partner violence, where firearms are used as tools of control, terror, and murder. Many others are killed or injured as bystanders to community violence. All carry psychological weight, including depression, PTSD, and anxiety, with limited access to culturally competent mental health care and often no institutional support at all.
Homicide is one of the leading causes of death for Black women under 45, with most of these deaths involving firearms and committed by someone the victim knows. The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by more than five times. Yet despite legal protections such as restraining orders, many women report that firearms are not removed from their abusive partners. This leaves them vulnerable to continued threats and violence.
Survivors overwhelmingly support firearm removal as part of safety planning, and pilot studies show this intervention is both feasible and effective. Despite this, enforcement varies across states—but stronger gun laws are consistently linked to lower rates of intimate partner homicide.
Black women disproportionately face this lethal risk, yet their experiences remain underrepresented in prevention strategies and data collection efforts, further compounding the structural inequities that drive trauma and limit access to care and justice.
For Black girls, early exposure to gun violence, often normalized in their environments, shapes their mental health and development well into adulthood. And still, few studies even ask the right questions about their lives. Even fewer seek their insight.
Across every context, home, school, community, one truth is clear. Black women and girls are disproportionately affected and systematically excluded from both the data and the solutions.
We do not need more studies that treat Black women and girls as afterthoughts. We need research that centers us, our experiences, our leadership, our needs. We need policy shaped by those most impacted. We need funding that supports Black women–led solutions.
The time for passive recognition has passed. This is a call to researchers to elevate Black women and girls as core to the story of gun violence in America. To funders, invest in our leadership, not just our pain. To policymakers, craft solutions in partnership with us. To media and storytellers, amplify our voices.
As Hitchens powerfully argues, failure to act is not just a research gap; it is a public health failure. The absence of data, focused attention, and dedicated resources allows preventable violence to continue unchecked. I echo and reinforce her call: Addressing the crisis facing Black women and girls requires more than acknowledgment. It demands urgency, investment, and accountability.
This is not just about representation. It is about survival. About transformation. About building a future where Black women and girls live fully, freely, and safely, not in spite of the systems around them, but because those systems are finally being reshaped in their image.
Black women and girls are not footnotes. We are the frame.
SPOTLIGHT
GUN VIOLENCE STATISTICS
Explore facts, figures, and original analysis compiled by our experts. To end our gun violence crisis, we need to better understand where, how, and why violence occurs.
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