Assertion Partly supported AI assessment confidence: 90% certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Biofire CEO: Suicides and Accidents Drive Two-Thirds of US Gun Deaths

Kai Kloepfer · A biometric smart gun with Kai Kloepfer of Biofire · Oct 5, 2023 · at 2:36

Biofire founder and CEO Kai Kloepfer discusses the data that guided his company's focus on biometric smart gun technology.

0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.4s

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“While mass shootings and other kind of violent crime like that, obviously, something that we hear about a lot in the news, they actually make up a very small percentage of gun deaths where two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States are the result of suicides and accidents.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States are the result of suicides and accidents.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Official mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Vital Statistics System (via CDC WONDER) shows that suicides and unintentional/accidental firearm deaths consistently make up the majority of US gun deaths, but slightly below the stated two-thirds (66.7%) figure. Historically and in the years surrounding the claim (2017–2024), firearm suicides accounted for roughly 54% to 62% of all firearm deaths, while unintentional/accidental deaths accounted for an additional 1% to 2%, yielding a combined share between ~55% (during the 2020–2021 surge in homicides) and ~60% to 63% (in baseline years such as 2017–2019 and 2023–2024; specifically ~57.2% in 2022 and ~59.4%–60.0% in 2023). Because this offhand estimate is close to the actual multi-year range of ~55%–63% (within roughly 10%–15% of two-thirds), it is graded as partially true.

CDC WONDER data for 2017–2019 shows suicides accounted for 60.0%–61.5% of gun deaths and unintentional deaths ~1.2%–1.5%, totaling ~61.5%–62.7%.
CDC WONDER data for 2022 recorded 48,204 gun deaths: 27,032 suicides (56.1%) and ~1.1% unintentional deaths, totaling ~57.2%.
CDC WONDER data for 2023 recorded 46,728 gun deaths: 27,300 suicides (58.4%) and ~1.0% unintentional deaths, totaling ~59.4%–60.0%.
CDC WONDER data for 2024 recorded 44,447 gun deaths: 27,593 suicides (62.1%) and ~1.0% unintentional deaths, totaling ~63.1%.

Checked against

[1] statista.com [2] nsc.org [3] ammo.com [4] pewresearch.org [5] thetrace.org [6] nih.gov [7] wikipedia.org [8] everytownresearch.org

"Pew Research Center" "suicides accounted for" "gun deaths" 2020 OR 2021 OR 2022 OR 2019 OR 2018 OR 2017 CDC WONDER gun suicide unintentional deaths percentage total gun deaths 2020 2021 2022 "gun deaths" "suicides" "CDC" "two thirds" OR "60%" OR "54%" OR "56%" OR "60 percent" CDC firearm mortality suicide accident percentage 2021 2022 2023 percentage of gun deaths suicide accident CDC

assessed as of 2026-09-03

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

gun deaths United States

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