Firearms kill Black women at rates no other weapon approaches. Nearly three out of four Black female femicide victims die by gunshot. That proportion has climbed 47% since 2011. Guns do not cause femicide. But they determine who survives it.
Intersectional Femicide
Black women are most often killed by someone they love, trust, or share a home with. Nine out of ten victims knew their killer.
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered the sharpest single-year escalation in Black femicide rates in two decades. Though rates declined slightly from their 2021 peak, they remain 25% higher than pre-pandemic levels–and the federal funding rollbacks of 2025 have removed the infrastructure most likely to reverse that trajectory. The years between 2020 and 2023 represent the most acute phase of the Black femicide…
Black women are killed at rates that expose a crisis rigidly upheld by structural racism. This page documents national femicide rates for Black and white women from 1999 to 2023, drawing on peer-reviewed research, FBI data, and the Violence Policy Center’s annual analysis. Terminology: The Purpose Of The Word Femicide Narcissistic Abuse Rehab narcissisticabuserehab.com Black Femicide Statistics Hub · National…
Two decades of data reveal that Black women face persistently elevated risk of femicide–up to 20 times higher than white women in some states.