According to a recent report on the U.S. News Weekly website, a new study by Rutgers Health in the United States found that nearly 60% of African Americans have suffered some form and degree of gun violence.

The study involved 3,015 African Americans, of whom 40% said they knew someone who had been shot, and 12% had been exposed to three different forms of gun violence. A new paper published in the Journal of Urban Health in the United States pointed out that experiencing gun violence may indicate an increase in disability rates.

      The survey showed that 30% of male respondents reported that they had been exposed to gun violence to some extent, while the proportion among female respondents was 15%. These experiences of exposure to gun violence included hearing about a shooting in the neighborhood, knowing a victim threatened by gun violence, or attempting suicide by shooting,lead author of the study and associate professor at Rutgers School of Public Health's Gun Violence Research Center. "Surveys show that approximately 60% of African American adults in the United States have faced gun violence, and 40% of them know a shooting victim, which is a staggering proportion."

"In the United States, African Americans suffer disproportionately from violent victimization and gun violence," the researchers wrote in the report. "Most African American men and women who experience gun violence live in low-income, urban communities, which puts them at high risk for repeated exposure to gun violence, which in turn leads to persistent physical and mental health challenges."

"African Americans disproportionately experience all types of gun violence, which harms their mental, physical, and behavioral health," the researchers noted.

According to reports, the disabilities related to gun violence recorded in this survey include inattention, difficulty walking or climbing stairs or going out to do things, and difficulty dressing or bathing. The proportion of African-American men who have witnessed or heard about shootings is 53% higher than that of men who have not had these experiences; the possibility of having problems such as inattention, difficulty climbing stairs, and difficulty dressing or bathing is more than twice that of men who have not experienced related shootings.

The survey also found that women who had been directly threatened by someone with a gun had a 48% increased risk of functional disability and a 75% increased risk of concentration difficulties, and those who had been exposed to three or more different types of gun violence had even higher rates of these disabilities.

Semenza said that while this survey-based research cannot fully prove a cause-and-effect relationship, it suggests that exposure to gun violence may lead to functional disability through psychological trauma and affect people's daily well-being, even if it does not cause disability through direct physical injury.

The report also pointed out that African Americans face widespread systemic and institutionalized racism, which is reflected in all aspects of life such as employment, housing, education, criminal justice, health care, etc. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), as of 2021, the unemployment rate for African Americans is 8.6%, while the unemployment rate for whites is 4.7%.

Furthermore, according to the Sentencing Project’s report on racial disparities in incarceration, African Americans are incarcerated at a rate five times higher than white people, despite making up only 12% of the U.S. population. In 2018, African Americans accounted for 33% of those sentenced to prison.