This dashboard uses data from the CDC WONDER system to capture gun deaths in the US since 1999.

Per CDC policy, death counts below 10 and associated death rates are suppressed to protect the anonymity of victims. Within the dashboards, suppressed values are indicated with an asterisk (“*”).

The CDC WONDER system classifies shootings by police as “Legal Intervention.” Within the dashboards, these deaths are classified as “Shootings by Police” for purposes of clarity. Furthermore, research has shown that the “Legal Intervention” category significantly undercounts all police killings. For a more comprehensive database of police shootings, refer to the Washington Post’s Police Shooting Database (2015–present).

The CDC created new race categories starting with 2018 data. As such, the categories “More than One Race” and “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander” are only available starting in 2018. For the “Asian” category, the pre-2018 data includes the “Pacific Islander” population as well.

The first chart displays national age-adjusted gun death rates over time (in other words, the death rate in each year is “adjusted” to reflect a consistent age distribution within the population). All other charts use crude death rates (in other words, the rate reflects the number of deaths per 100,000 in a population with no adjustment for age distribution). This is because many charts allow for visualization and filtering by age group, and these rates cannot be age-adjusted.  

For charts displaying county-level data, data from all available years is combined to minimize the impact of suppression. As such, there is no ability to filter by year on these charts. The naming of counties reflects changes made to county names and geographies since 1999. For example, Kusilvak Census Area in Alaska was named the Wade-Hampton Census Area prior to 2014. In the dashboard, this county shows up under its current name: Kusilvak Census Area.

For a full list of changes to county naming and geography incorporated into the dashboard, see the CDC’s “County Geography” document. Within the dashboard, counties are classified on a continuum from rural to urban based on a 2023 analysis by the US Department of Agriculture.