Brady PAC Data on Gun Violence

The Brady PAC was formed leading up to the 2018 midterm elections. It was created to serve as a counterweight to “dark money” Super PACs created by the gun industry. It upholds the policy ideals that have been championed by its sister organization, Brady—one of the nation’s oldest gun violence prevention grassroots advocacy organizations.

Brady, United Against Gun Violence (formerly Handgun Control, Inc., the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence) is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for gun control and against gun violence. It is named after James “Jim” Brady, who was permanently disabled and later died in 2014 as a result of the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt of 1981, and his wife Sarah Brady, who was a chairwoman of the organization from 1989 until her death in 2015.

According to information that Brady PAC just released, there are over 393 million guns in America. An average of 110 people die from guns every day in the U.S. Moreover, guns are the leading cause of death for children in the U.S. About 3 million American children are exposed to gun violence each year. And more than a million Americans have been shot in the last decade.

The only way we can reduce gun deaths and violence in the U.S. is to reduce the number of guns in the hands of Americans. We have 120.5 guns for every 100 people—we have more guns than people. The ratio between the number of guns held and the number killed by guns is largely uniform throughout the world: the more guns in the hands of the population, the more people who are killed by guns.

In 2020, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is well past time that we find a way to reduce the number of firearms in American hands. Until we do, we will continue killing off our population.