As the nation reflects this week on the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre six years ago, new data have revealed that nearly 40,000 people in the U.S. were killed by guns last year, the highest number of firearm deaths in decades.

The data, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s WONDER database, show that 39,773 people died by gun in 2017, an increase of more than 10,000 deaths from the 28,874 in 1999, for comparison. The age-adjusted rate of firearm deaths per 100,000 people rose from 10.3 per 100,000 in 1999 to 12 per 100,000 in 2017.

CDC statisticians confirmed to CNN that gun deaths have reached a record high going back to at least 1979, which was the year firearm deaths started to be coded in mortality data at the health agency. Firearm deaths in the data include homicide and suicide, unintentional deaths, and deaths in war or police interventions.

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“In 2017, nearly 109 people died every single day from gun violence,” said Adelyn Allchin, the director of public health research for nonprofit Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, in a statement, after assessing the data.

“Gun violence is a public health epidemic that requires a public health solution, which is why we must immediately enact and implement evidence-based interventions — like permit-to-purchase policies and extreme-risk laws,” she said.

But the best way to slow the number of deaths by firearm remains a hotly debated topic in the U.S., where gun ownership greatly outnumbers that of its industrialized-economy peers (even details around this comparison are debated and subject to frequent fact checks on both sides). The consumerism of gun ownership, with multiple weapons possessed per individual in some cases, is apparent in FBI data that show the jump in background checks around big shopping days such as Black Friday and when would-be buyers think regulations are about to tighten.

The National Rifle Association lobby this week tweeted a repeat of its position on what it argues is the ineffectiveness of gun-control laws, mostly, it says, in keeping weapons out of criminal hands since “straw purchasers” can pass the check and buy for others.

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Many Americans thought the gun-ownership debate might sway more heavily toward tighter control in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, considering the age of the majority of the victims. Dec. 14 marked the sixth anniversary of the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., which left 20 students, aged 6 and 7, and six adults dead at the hands of the 20-year-old shooter, who had earlier killed his mother and eventually took his own life. (An NBC news report said the school received a bomb threat on Friday that led to an early dismissal.)

The Washington Post, which crunched gun-violence numbers in a different way, has an updated data base tracking how many students have experienced gun violence, meaning those both exposed to the threat but not a direct victim and those killed and injured, since the 1999 shooting rampage by two students at Columbine High School in suburban Denver. The number since then? 219,000.

The voices of young people and their views on guns got considerably louder after the February shooting, by a fellow student, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla., where the highest profile #MarchForOurLives advocates are largely calling for stiffer background checks and mental-health support.

The Newtown shooter, Adam Lanza, had a documented history of problems ranging from sensory issues to an obsession with mass murder and indications of pedophilia, many of these details only released in full recently, according to the Hartford (Conn.) Courant, citing 1,000 pages of documents on Lanza, who had access to legal guns stored at his mother’s home.

The CDC figures show that suicide-by-gun figures are also alarmingly on the rise: 23,854 people died from suicide by gun in 2017, the highest number in 18 years.

White men made up 23,927 of the total 39,773 firearm deaths last year, including suicides.

In 2017, the age-adjusted rate of suicide deaths by firearm was highest among white men at 14 per 100,000. That compares with:

• 2.2 among white women.

• 6.1 among black men.

• 0.7 among black women.

• 3.0 among Asian men.

• 0.5 among Asian women

• 9.3 among American Indian or Alaska Native men.

• 1.4 among American Indian or Alaska Native women.

The age-adjusted rate of homicide deaths by firearm was highest among black men at 33 per 100,000. That compares with:

• 3.5 among white men.

• 1.1 among white women.

• 3.5 among black women.

• 1.4 among Asian men.

• 0.5 among Asian women.

• 4.8 among American Indian or Alaska Native men.

• 1.2 among American Indian or Alaska Native women.

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Statistics, including those from health agencies like the CDC (which only this year regained the authority to study the public health impact of guns), can help shape the debate. The issue can impact Americans regardless of whether they’ve fired a gun, been touched by gun violence, or are concerned by the impact on the health-care system, as three of the publicly traded gun companies — American Outdoor Brands US:AOBC, Sturm, Ruger RGR, +2.26% and Vista Outdoors VSTO, -2.78% — are in several major stock indexes.

Vanguard is the largest institutional shareholder of American Outdoor Brands, the maker of the AR-15 assault rifle, and a 2016 analysis of 23,000 mutual funds by MSCI found that nearly three-quarters “had some exposure to the weapons industry” and approximately half of those funds “had direct exposure to gun manufacturers.”

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