Gun violence has affected the majority of US families, according to a new survey

() — Concern and fear about gun violence are widespread in the United States, where most families have been affected by a gun-related incident, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).

Nearly 1 in 5 adults have had a family member killed by a weapon, including in homicide and suicide. About the same number of adults have been personally threatened with a weapon, and about 1 in 6 adults have witnessed an injury from a shooting, the survey found.

The new report comes less than a day after a shooting that claimed at least five lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Mass shootings have intensified in recent years, reaching a record pace by 2023. There have been at least 146 incidents so far this yearaccording to the Gun Violence Archive, which have left more than 200 people dead and hundreds more injured.

About half of all gun-related deaths are suicides, as federal data shows. And the suicide rate has risen recently, too, reversing years of decline and returning to near-record levels.

These tragic trends are part of an epidemic of gun violence that has become deadlier than ever in the US There were nearly 49,000 gun-related deaths in 2021, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (CDC), an unprecedented increase of around 23%, over two years into the covid-19 pandemic.

The vast majority of adults say that, at least sometimes, they worry that they or someone in their family will become a victim of gun violence, the new KFF survey found. Nearly a quarter of parents of children under 18 say they worry about it on a daily or almost daily basis.

Firearms are now the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the US, surpassing motor vehicle crashes by 2020. In no other comparable country are firearms among the top four causes of death among children, according to another analysis recent from the KFF.

There are also huge disparities in who is killed by guns. A study A recent study found that the homicide rate among young black men was nearly 10 times higher than the overall rate of US firearm deaths in 2021.

According to the new KFF survey, black adults are more than twice as likely as white adults to have lost a loved one to gun violence and to have personally witnessed someone being shot.

The weight of that disparity is felt strongly in the black community. One in 6 black adults say they feel unsafe in their neighborhoods, a far higher proportion than white or Hispanic adults, according to the new KFF survey. About one-third of black and Hispanic adults say they worry daily or almost daily that a family member is a victim of gun violence, and about 1 in 5 say crime, injury and gun-related deaths are a constant threat to your community.

But preventive measures are still lacking.

About three-quarters of adults who have a gun in their home say it’s stored in a way that contradicts common gun safety practices, such as unlocked or already loaded, the new survey found. And only 5% of adults say a health professional has spoken to them about gun safety.

The latest KFF survey is based on responses from a representative sample of approximately 1,300 adults collected in mid-March.