Gun violence in the United States caused the life expectancy of African Americans to drop by more than four years from 2000 to 2016, twice as much as the decline in life expectancy of white Americans during the same period, according to a new academic study.
Black Americans lost 4.14 years of average life expectancy due to gun violence — both homicide and suicide — while white Americans lost 2.23 years to those causes of death, according to the study by Boston University and published on Tuesday in the BMJ medical journal.
However, the study found that life expectancy loss due to suicide was higher in whites, who lost 1.62 years while blacks lost just over a half year.
The study used data gathered from the US Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to examine race-specific life expectancy loss in the United States related to firearms.
Bindu Kalesan, an author of the study and a professor at the Boston University School of…