Just one day after a gunman opened fire in a Louisville bank, killing five and injuring several others, a new report has found that one in five U.S. adults say they’ve been threatened by a gun.
The report from KFF, the nonprofit organization previously known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, was published Tuesday and noted that more than half of U.S. adults recently surveyed said they or a family member have experienced a gun-related incident.
The organization defined gun-related incidents as “witnessing a shooting, being threatened by a gun, or being injured or killed by a gun.”
While 21% said they had personally been threatened by a firearm, an additional 19% said they had a family member who was killed by a gun, and 17% said they had seen someone shot by a firearm in person.
The data comes on the heels of several national shootings, including one in South Carolina that saw six people fatally shot on a beach during a senior skip day and another at a Christian school in Nashville where six people, including three 9-year-olds, were gunned down.
So far this year, the Gun Violence Archive’s tally of mass shootings in the U.S. is up to 145, with at least 39 of them coming within the first 24 days of the year.
As shootings continue to happen across the country, KFF’s report finds that experiences with gun violence are becoming more common, and certain groups, like people of color, are more likely to experience gun violence.
“While many factors, such as income, education, age, gender, and where they live can play a role in people’s experiences with gun-related incidents and worries about gun violence, race and ethnicity consistently is one of the strongest demographic predictors of both,” the report states.
The report examined the impact of gun violence on communities of color. It found that around one-third of Black and Hispanic adults worry daily or almost daily about a loved one or themselves being a victim of gun violence.
Compared to white adults, that number was 10%.
When it comes to planning ahead for potential gun violence, 84% of respondents said they take “at least one precaution to protect themselves or their families from the possibility of gun violence.”
Thirty-five percent of those surveyed reported staying away from large crowds to be better protected from potential gun violence. Around 25% said they did the same for public transit for the same reason.
The report also found that many have become gun owners themselves to provide their own protection. Of those surveyed, 29% reported buying a firearm, and 44% said they acquired a weapon other than a gun to protect themselves from gun violence.
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