Gunfire accounted for 45,222 deaths in the United States in 2020. Relative to the size of the U.S. population, that translated to a gun death rate of 13.7 deaths per 100,000 population, By comparison, in the prior year there were 39,707 deaths caused by gunfire in the U.S., and the national gun death rate was 12.1 deaths per 100,000 population. The gun death rate in 2020 varied widely by region, with the deadliest region of the country, the Southeast, having a gun death rate that was triple the rate of the least deadly region, New England.  A closer examination of data from the National Center for Health Statistics provides the following details about regional gun death rates in the U.S.  Follow the "region" links in the table below to see state-level data within each region:

Regional Gun Death Rates in the U.S.

Region	Deaths	Population	Death Rate*
Far West	5,677	56,579,620	10.0
Great Lakes	6,839	46,834,910	14.6
Great Plains	3,201	21,481,834	14.9
Mid-Eastern	4,352	48,757,828	8.9
New England	898	14,847,468	6.0
Rocky Mountain	2,064	12,547,416	16.4
Southeastern	15,547	85,565,785	18.1
Southwestern	6,734	42,869,262	15.7
U.S.	45,222	329,484,123	13.7

(*) number of gun deaths per 100,000 population

Report Period: 2020

Source: CDC Wonder. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Underlying Cause of Death 1999-2020 on CDC WONDER Online Database, released in 2021. Data are from the Multiple Cause of Death Files, 1999-2020, as compiled from data provided by the 57 vital statistics jurisdictions through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program.