By Amanda Hernández, Stateline.org

More people in the United States died by gun suicide in 2023 than any year on record — more than by gun homicide, accidental shootings and police shootings combined.

A new report analyzing federal mortality data found that suicides involving firearms made up 58% of all gun deaths in 2023 — the latest year with available data. In total, 27,300 people died by gun suicide in 2023, according to the report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and the Johns Hopkins Center for Suicide Prevention.

The findings are based on finalized data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In all, 46,728 people died from gun-related injuries in 2023, according to the CDC’s Wonder database.

Gun homicides fell for the second year in a row, dropping from 20,958 in 2021 to 19,651 in 2022 and 17,927 in 2023. Despite the decline, the 2023 total ranks as the fifth highest on record for gun homicides, according to the report.

Rural, less populated states recorded the highest gun suicide rates in 2023. Wyoming led the nation with about 19.9 gun suicide deaths per 100,000 residents — nearly 10 times the rate of Massachusetts, which had the lowest at about 2.1 per 100,000.

“People are just using guns when it comes to considering suicide because it’s highly lethal and it’s easily accessible,” said Rose Kim, the lead author of the report and the assistant policy adviser at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. “That’s really a deadly combination, and it’s really driving the suicide epidemic in our country.”

Suicide has remained the leading category of gun death in the U.S. for nearly three decades, according to the report. That trend has continued even as public attention and legislative action have largely focused on gun homicides and mass shootings.

More than a handful of both Republican-led and Democratic-led states have passed or enacted new gun policies this year, ranging from permitless carry in North Carolina and a statewide ban on “red flag” or extreme risk protective orders in Texas to bans on assault-style weapons in Rhode Island to rapid-fire devices in Oregon.

Recently, the Michigan Senate approved legislation that would ban bump stocks and ghost guns. In Washington state, a new law set to take effect in May 2027 will require prospective gun buyers to obtain a five-year permit through the Washington State Patrol.

Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey in March signed into law a bill that made Alabama the 26th state to outlaw gun conversion devices, also known as auto sears, which can turn semiautomatic firearms into fully automatic weapons. In April, she signed into law a measure that allows people experiencing suicidal thoughts to surrender a firearm to a licensed gun dealer.

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Kim said some state policies can help reduce gun deaths, such as safe storage laws, firearm purchaser licensing and extreme risk protection orders. “It’s also important to recognize that there are public health interventions, evidence based, that can really address gun suicides and save lives,” she said in an interview.

Men were nearly seven times more likely than women to die by gun suicide in 2023, according to the Johns Hopkins report. The highest rate of firearm suicide was among men 70 and older.

For the fourth consecutive year, firearms remained the leading cause of death among youth under 17 in 2023, with 2,581 deaths recorded.

Among young people aged 10 to 19, gun suicide totals remained relatively unchanged year over year — 1,252 in 2023 compared with 1,238 in 2022 — but racial and ethnic breakdowns showed stark disparities.

Since 2014, the gun suicide rate for Black youth 10 to 19 had more than tripled, rising from 1 death per 100,000 people to 3.3 in 2023. In contrast, the rate for white youth in the same age group increased more gradually, from 2.6 to 3 per 100,000 people. It was the second consecutive year that Black youth had a higher rate than their white peers.

Gun suicides among Hispanic youth 10 to 19 also nearly doubled from 2014 to 2023, according to the CDC’s data.

Stateline reporter Amanda Hernández can be reached at ahernandez@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Police identified on Wednesday a 14-year-old who died in a motorized scooter crash in St. Paul as Kevin Reitmeier.

Officers responded to the West Side about 8:50 a.m. Tuesday on a report of a crash. Kevin, of St. Paul, was operating the scooter and a 13-year-old was a passenger. The driver of a pickup truck struck them at Ohio and George streets.

Preliminary information indicates the scooter was being operated in the street, ran a stop sign before the crash, and that neither of the teens wore helmets, said Alyssa Arcand, a St. Paul police spokeswoman.

Kevin was pronounced dead at the hospital. The 13-year-old boy was in critical, but stable condition as of Wednesday morning, according to Arcand.

Police said the pickup driver did not show signs of impairment and is cooperating with the investigation.

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By JAIMIE DING

LOS ANGELES (AP) — At a federal immigration building in downtown Los Angeles guarded by U.S. Marines, daughters, sons, aunts, nieces and others make their way to an underground garage and line up at a door with a buzzer at the end of a dirty, dark stairwell.

It’s here where families, some with lawyers, come to find their loved ones after they’ve been arrested by federal immigration agents.

For immigrants without legal status who are detained in this part of Southern California, their first stop is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in the basement of the federal building. Officers verify their identity and obtain their biometrics before transferring them to detention facilities. Upstairs, immigrants line up around the block for other services, including for green cards and asylum applications.

On a recent day, dozens of people arrived with medication, clothing and hope of seeing their loved one, if only briefly. After hours of waiting, many were turned away with no news, not even confirmation that their relative was inside. Some relayed reports of horrific conditions inside, including inmates who are so thirsty that they have been drinking from the toilets. ICE did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

Just two weeks ago, protesters marched around the federal complex following aggressive raids in Los Angeles that began June 6 and have not stopped. Scrawled expletives about President Donald Trump still mark the complex’s walls.

Those arrested are from a variety of countries, including Mexico, Guatemala, India, Iran, China and Laos. About a third of the county’s 10 million residents are foreign-born.

Many families learned about the arrests from videos circulating on social media showing masked officers in parking lots at Home Depots, at car washes and in front of taco stands.

Around 8 a.m., when attorney visits begin, a few lawyers buzz the basement door called “B-18” as families wait anxiously outside to hear any inkling of information.

9 a.m.

Christina Jimenez and her cousin arrive to check if her 61-year-old stepfather is inside.

Her family had prepared for the possibility of this happening to the day laborer who would wait to be hired outside a Home Depot in the LA suburb of Hawthorne. They began sharing locations when the raids intensified. They told him that if he were detained, he should stay silent and follow instructions.

Jimenez had urged him to stop working, or at least avoid certain areas as raids increased. But he was stubborn and “always hustled.”

“He could be sick and he’s still trying to make it out to work,” Jimenez said.

After learning of his arrest, she looked him up online on the ICE Detainee Locator but couldn’t find him. She tried calling ICE to no avail.

Two days later, her phone pinged with his location downtown.

“My mom’s in shock,” Jimenez said. “She goes from being very angry to crying, same with my sister.”

Jimenez says his name into the intercom – Mario Alberto Del Cid Solares. After a brief wait, she is told yes, he’s there.

She and her cousin breathe a sigh of relief — but their questions remain.

Her biggest fear is that instead of being sent to his homeland of Guatemala, he will be deported to another country, something the Supreme Court recently ruled was allowed.

9:41 a.m.

By mid-morning, Estrella Rosas and her mother have come looking for her sister, Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen. A day earlier, they saw Velez being detained after they dropped her off at her marketing job at a shoe company downtown.

“My mom told me to call 911 because someone was kidnapping her,” Rosas said.

Stuck on a one-way street, they had to circle the block. By the time they got back, she says they saw Velez in handcuffs being put into a car without license plates.

Velez’s family believes she was targeted for looking Hispanic and standing near a tamale stand.

Rosas has her sister’s passport and U.S. birth certificate, but learns she is not there. They find her next door in a federal detention center. She was accused of obstructing immigration officers, which the family denies, but is released the next day.

11:40 a.m.

About 20 people are now outside. Some have found cardboard to sit on after waiting hours.

One family comforts a woman who is crying softly in the stairwell.

Then the door opens, and a group of lawyers emerge. Families rush to ask if the attorneys could help them.

Kim Carver, a lawyer with the Trans Latino Coalition, says she planned to see her client, a transgender Honduran woman, but she was transferred to a facility in Texas at 6:30 that morning.

Carver accompanied her less than a week ago for an immigration interview and the asylum officer told her she had a credible case. Then ICE officers walked in and detained her.

“Since then, it’s been just a chase trying to find her,” she says.

12:28 p.m.

As more people arrive, the group begins sharing information. One person explains the all-important “A-number,” the registration number given to every detainee, which is needed before an attorney can help.

They exchange tips like how to add money to an account for phone calls. One woman says $20 lasted three or four calls for her.

Mayra Segura is looking for her uncle after his frozen popsicle cart was abandoned in the middle of the sidewalk in Culver City.

“They couldn’t find him in the system,” she says.

12:52 p.m.

Another lawyer, visibly frustrated, comes out the door. She’s carrying bags of clothes, snacks, Tylenol, and water that she says she wasn’t allowed to give to her client, even though he says he had been given only one water bottle over the past two days.

The line stretches outside the stairwell into the sun. A man leaves and returns with water for everyone.

Nearly an hour after family visitations are supposed to begin, people are finally allowed in.

2:12 p.m.

Still wearing hospital scrubs from work, Jasmin Camacho Picazo comes to see her husband again.

She brought a sweater because he had told her he was cold, and his back injury was aggravated from sleeping on the ground.

“He mentioned this morning (that) people were drinking from the restroom toilet water,” Picazo says.

On her phone, she shows footage of his car left on the side of the road after his arrest. The window was smashed and the keys were still in the ignition.

“I can’t stop crying,” Picazo says.

Her son keeps asking: “Is Papa going to pick me up from school?”

2:21 p.m.

More than five hours after Jimenez and her cousin arrive, they see her stepfather.

“He was sad and he’s scared,” says Jimenez afterwards. “We tried to reassure him as much as possible.”

She wrote down her phone number, which he had not memorized, so he could call her.

2:57 p.m.

More people arrive as others are let in.

Yadira Almadaz comes out crying after seeing her niece’s boyfriend for only five minutes. She says he was in the same clothes he was wearing when he was detained a week ago at an asylum appointment in the city of Tustin. He told her he’d only been given cookies and chips to eat each day.

“It breaks my heart seeing a young man cry because he’s hungry and thirsty,” she says.

3:56 p.m.

Four minutes before visitation time is supposed to end, an ICE officer opens the door and announces it’s over.

One woman snaps at him in frustration. The officer tells her he would get in trouble if he helped her past 4 p.m.

More than 20 people are still waiting in line. Some trickle out. Others linger, staring at the door in disbelief.

ZURICH (AP) — The NHL, NHLPA and international officials on Wednesday finalized a long-ago agreed-to deal to send players to the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics.

The league, union, International Ice Hockey Federation and International Olympic Committee confirmed the participation of NHL players at the Games for the first time since 2014. The groups negotiated the agreement and announced it initially last year.

IIHF president Luc Tardif called it “a major step forward for our sport.”

The final touches took time to figure out after officials insisted for months they were not concerned about the lack of a signed document. The deal opens the door for NHL participation to continue in 2030, something that had also been agreed to in February 2024.

Last month, the 12 participating countries unveiled the first six players on their Olympic rosters. The men’s hockey tournament at the 2026 Games is scheduled to run from Feb. 11-22.

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