Washington, D.C. — While gun violence is often framed as an exclusively urban crisis in national political discourse, a new Center for American Progress study reveals that rural American communities are facing a disproportionate and growing epidemic of gun violence when compared with urban communities.
The report highlights a dangerous disconnect: As many large American cities have seen historic declines in homicide rates, the firearm homicide rate across all rural counties was still 12.7 percent higher in 2024 than before the pandemic. Across large metropolitan counties, the firearm homicide rate was only 5.6 percent higher in 2024 than before the pandemic. When accounting for all firearm deaths, the firearm mortality rate in rural counties reached an estimated 16.6 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2024—a rate 45 percent higher than that of large metro areas. Additionally, the difference in firearm mortality rates between rural and large metro counties more than doubled from 2.3 deaths (2001) to 5.1 deaths (2024) per 100,000 residents, marking 2024 as the largest single-year disparity in more than two decades. Of the 50 U.S. counties with the highest annualized firearm mortality rates during that same time frame, a majority (32) were rural.
The rural firearm mortality rate was driven by two devastating trends:
- Gun suicides: In 2024, the gun suicide rate in rural counties was 12.5 per 100,000 residents—more than double the rate of large metro counties (6.2). Factors such as social isolation, limited mental health infrastructure, and high firearm availability have turned suicide into a primary driver of rural gun deaths.
- Gun homicides: Half of the U.S. counties with the highest annualized gun homicide rates (2021–2024) were rural. In 2024, rural Holmes County, Mississippi, had the highest per-capita firearm homicide rate.
“Politics is costing lives. Ignoring the data means that communities disproportionately suffering from gun deaths and gun violence will not get the critical support they need,” said Chandler Hall, associate director for Gun Violence Prevention at CAP. “Yet this administration’s dishonest attempts to frame gun violence as an urban issue in an effort to justify the deployment of military personnel in big cities comes at the cost of lives in rural communities. Our policymakers must move past sensationalized narratives about gun violence and allocate resources based on data-driven reality rather than political rhetoric.”
Read: “Gun Violence in Rural America Is the Forgotten Public Health Epidemic” by Chandler Hall
For more information or to speak with an expert, please contact Rafael Medina at [email protected].