The deadly shooting this month in Maine has once again shone a spotlight on how frequent this type of violence is in the United States compared with other wealthy countries.
The U.S. has the 28th-highest rate of deaths from gun violence in the world: 4.31 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021. That was more than seven times as high as the rate in Canada, which had 0.57 deaths per 100,000 people — and about 340 times higher than in the United Kingdom, which had 0.013 deaths per 100,000.
On a state-by-state calculation, the rates can be even higher. In the District of Columbia, the rate is 13.93 per 100,000 — the highest in the United States. The second-highest is in Louisiana: 10.91 per 100,000. In Maine — scene of the deadliest recent mass shootings — the rates are much lower than the national average: 1.15 per 100,000. But five other states that were the site of mass shootings over Halloween weekend – Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana and Texas – have rates that are higher than the national average.
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