Gun violence within Latino(a/e/x) and Hispanic communities in the United States has risen exponentially in recent years. Over the last decade, gun deaths among US Latino and Hispanic individuals have increased at nearly twice the rate of gun deaths nationally. From 2014 to 2023, the number of Latino gun deaths rose 91 percent; comparatively, US gun deaths overall rose by 40 percent. These trends highlight an urgent but often underexamined dimension of firearm violence in the United States: how gun violence affects Latino and Hispanic communities and how prevention efforts can better engage these populations.
My ongoing research examines how Latino and Hispanic communities engage with firearm safety behaviors and practices, focusing on the social, cultural, and structural factors that shape participation in prevention initiatives. Understanding these dynamics is critical for designing effective firearm safety strategies that reach communities disproportionately affected by gun violence. In this blog, I share insights from my current research in New Mexico, providing an important case study that illustrates both the severity of these disparities and the opportunities for culturally informed safety strategies that may inform efforts nationwide.
Gun Violence Within Latino-Hispanic Communities in New Mexico
New Mexico provides an important context for understanding firearm violence disparities affecting Latino and Hispanic populations. Of all 50 states, New Mexico has the highest rate of gun deaths among Latino and Hispanic populations. In 2022, 64 percent of gun homicide victims in New Mexico were Latino and/or Hispanic. By comparison, non-Hispanic white New Mexicans made up only 16 percent of gun homicide victims while comprising 36 percent of the state’s population. This disparity in gun homicide is particularly concerning, given that just 49.2 percent of New Mexicans identify as Latino and/or Hispanic. While this is a significant portion of the population, they are still overrepresented among gun homicide victims.
These disparities in gun violence experiences mirror the structural and social factors that negatively and disproportionately impact Latino and Hispanic New Mexicans compared to non-Hispanic white New Mexicans, including lower educational attainment and higher rates of poverty and incarceration. For instance, 23 percent of Latino and Hispanic New Mexicans did not complete high school in 2023, which is considerably higher than the New Mexican average of 15 percent of all residents and the national average of 7.9 percent. Additionally, the poverty rate for Latino and Hispanic New Mexicans is nearly double that of non-Hispanic white New Mexicans (20.7 percent vs. 10.8 percent). Lastly, 56 percent of New Mexico’s prison population is Latino and/or Hispanic, a higher proportion compared to their composition in the state. In comparison, white New Mexicans are underrepresented (23 percent) compared to their composition in the state (41 percent), and Latino-Hispanic persons comprise only 22 percent of the US prison population nationwide.
In response to firearm-related deaths nearly doubling for Latino and Hispanic New Mexicans over the course of a decade, state policymakers have been pressured to take action to increase firearm safety. Firearm safety is broadly defined as the set of practices, policies, and behaviors intended to reduce the risk of unintentional injury, suicide, homicide, and other harms associated with firearms. These actions often take the form of policies meant to increase safe firearm use, such as a waiting period enacted in New Mexico in 2024, which requires buyers to wait seven days before receiving purchased firearms. Other policies categorized as ‘red flag laws,’ also known as extreme risk protection orders, allow law enforcement and family members to petition courts to temporarily restrict a person’s ability to possess firearms based on the threat of future harm, and were signed into law in 2020. In addition to policy-based efforts, nonprofits and grassroots organizations have attempted to increase firearm safety through community-based initiatives, including organizing gun buy-back events, where unwanted guns are brought in and dismantled. Other strategies have included public education programs to increase knowledge about the costs of gun violence by sharing information on the impact by trauma surgeons.
The confluence of disparities that disproportionately impact Latino and Hispanic New Mexicans may also affect their desire or ability to engage meaningfully with firearm safety.
In recent years, firearm research has begun to pivot from examining the experiences of individuals and towards the factors that may influence engagement with firearm safety practices and behaviors. Engagement with firearm safety practices and behaviors previously has been found to differ based on demographic factors such as race/ethnicity and gender, as well as gun ownership status and personal beliefs regarding firearms. Community and neighborhood characteristics have also been associated with differences in firearm safety engagement, including concentrated neighborhood disadvantage and area of residency. The confluence of disparities that disproportionately impact Latino and Hispanic New Mexicans may also affect their desire or ability to engage meaningfully with firearm safety. However, firearm violence prevention research has often neglected the perspectives of Latino and Hispanic communities and the factors that may be associated with their engagement with safety practices and initiatives. This shortcoming in the literature highlights the critical need to examine the factors that impact Latino-Hispanic firearm safety engagement.
The Social Ecology of Latino and Hispanic Firearm Safety Engagement
To understand how Latino and Hispanic communities engage with firearm safety, it is helpful to think about the broader social environments that shape people’s beliefs and behaviors. Social ecological models are frameworks that highlight how health behaviors are influenced not only by individual choices, but also by relationships, community contexts, and broader social conditions. These models assume that individuals both shape and are shaped by the environments around them, including their families, communities, and institutions. Factors that may impact firearm safety engagement among Latino and Hispanic populations are varied, and recent research has begun to provide insight into these details. These factors span different social ecological domains, including individual, interpersonal, communal, organizational, and structural.
Individual Factors
At the individual level, firearm safety engagement may vary depending on how people perceive their risk of victimization, how safe they feel in their daily lives, and what they believe about firearms. Research shows that personal beliefs about guns can strongly influence how firearms are stored and used. For example, one study that examined patterns of firearm-related beliefs among gun owners found that individuals who believed guns unconditionally made the home safer were more likely to store firearms loaded and unlocked.
Latino and Hispanic gun owners have also been shown to hold distinct firearm-related beliefs. One study examining public support for firearm policies found that Hispanic gun owners were more likely than other racial groups to support legal carrying. At the same time, they were less likely than non-Hispanic white gun owners to believe that owning a gun improved their personal safety (Hispanic gun owners: 60 percent; white gun owners: 79 percent).
Between 2019 and 2020, gun purchases by Latinos grew by nearly 50 percent, and Latino buyers accounted for roughly one-fifth of new gun owners during that period.
These beliefs are especially important to understand, given the rapid increase in Latino-Hispanic gun ownership in recent years. Between 2019 and 2020, gun purchases by Latinos grew by nearly 50 percent, and Latino buyers accounted for roughly one-fifth of new gun owners during that period. Understanding how gun owners’ beliefs shape firearm safety practices is particularly important given the heightened risk of firearm-related harms experienced by both Latino-Hispanic New Mexicans and by gun owners more broadly.
Interpersonal Factors
Family relationships and household dynamics can also influence firearm safety practices. Among Latino and Hispanic communities, aspects of family structure, including family cohesion, have been identified as important factors in shaping safety behaviors. Research suggests that strong family connections may help reduce unsafe firearm behaviors. For example, one study using nationally representative data to examine risk and protective factors for weapon involvement among Black, Latino, and white adolescents found that family connectedness served as a protective factor against weapon involvement, but only for Latino teens.
Communal Factors
Neighborhood environments may also shape firearm safety experiences. One important communal factor is neighborhood racial homogeneity, which refers to communities where most residents share the same racial or ethnic background. In some contexts, racially homogeneous neighborhoods have been associated with lower levels of violence, crime, and neighborhood disorder. These outcomes are often linked to stronger social cohesion, meaning residents may share social ties, mutual trust, and a sense of collective responsibility for their community. These dynamics are especially common in areas with large immigrant populations, where shared experiences adapting to life in the United States may strengthen communal bonds. Considering neighborhood racial composition may be particularly important when examining firearm safety engagement among US Latino and Hispanic populations. Approximately one-third of Latino and/or Hispanic persons living in the US are immigrants, and these community dynamics may influence how residents perceive safety and engage with firearm safety strategies.
Organizational Factors
Organizational factors, including challenges with law enforcement, immigration, and health literacy, can also influence firearm safety engagement. Relationships between Latino and Hispanic communities and law enforcement have often been strained. Studies have shown that Latino and Hispanic individuals in the United States are more likely than non-Hispanic white Americans to experience threatened or actualized excessive use of force by police, particularly in predominantly Latino communities. These tensions are especially pronounced in New Mexico, where Latino and Hispanic residents experience deaths during police encounters at more than twice the rate of Latino and Hispanic residents in any other US state. The risk of dangerous police-related encounters may discourage Latino and Hispanic New Mexicans from certain gun behaviors, such as carrying a firearm or having purchased one on their record.
Immigration-related factors may also shape firearm safety engagement. In the United States, the legal ability to possess a firearm varies depending on immigration status. For example, the Second Amendment right to gun ownership does not extend to undocumented immigrants, and firearm licensing rules may vary depending on visa status and state residency, including in New Mexico. These legal barriers may be relevant to gun safety for a portion of the 22.7 million Latino and Hispanic immigrants living in the United States.
Health literacy can present another organizational barrier. Health literacy refers to a person’s ability to find, understand, and use information to make informed health decisions. Research suggests that many firearm safety resources in hospitals and social service settings are not always accessible or easily understood by the communities most affected by firearm violence. Language barriers may also contribute to this gap. Latino and Hispanic individuals in the United States who are not proficient in English may encounter additional obstacles in navigating healthcare systems that rely heavily on English-language materials and services. This concern is significant given that more than 28 percent of Latino and Hispanic persons in the United States report speaking English less than “very well.”
Structural Factors
Broader structural inequities can also influence firearm safety engagement. One important structural factor is concentrated disadvantage, a term used to describe neighborhoods experiencing multiple overlapping forms of socioeconomic hardship. Research has shown that communities experiencing concentrated disadvantage often face higher risks of firearm-related harms, including injury, exposure to violence, perpetration, and death. These neighborhoods may be characterized by lower levels of educational attainment, limited economic opportunities, weaker participation in community activities, and gaps in infrastructure and resources. Over time, these conditions can weaken residents’ ability to respond collectively to local problems or engage in efforts that help prevent violence. As a result, firearm violence may become more difficult to address within these environments.
Concentrated disadvantage is a particularly important issue in New Mexico. Latino and Hispanic New Mexicans are more likely than other groups to live in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. In 2025, nearly half (48 percent) of New Mexico’s Latino and Hispanic population lived in poverty at rates almost double those of white New Mexicans and nearly triple those of Latino and Hispanic populations nationally.
Conclusion
Understanding the disparities that shape Latino and Hispanic engagement with firearm safety is an important step toward interrupting the conditions that make these communities more vulnerable to firearm violence. The social ecological factors discussed here highlight that firearm safety engagement does not occur in isolation. Instead, it is shaped by the broader environments and dynamics in which people live, work, and interact with institutions.
These findings suggest that policymakers and practitioners should implement firearm violence prevention strategies that are both culturally informed and place-specific. Policies and programs that focus solely on individual behavior may miss the broader social and institutional factors that influence whether people are able or interested in engaging with firearm safety initiatives. Expanding access to culturally and linguistically appropriate firearm safety resources, strengthening trust between Latino and Hispanic communities and public institutions, and supporting community-based organizations that are already embedded in these neighborhoods may help improve engagement with safety practices and behaviors.
In the long-term, addressing structural inequities such as poverty, educational disparities, and concentrated neighborhood disadvantage may also play an important role in reducing firearm violence risk. By recognizing how these interconnected factors shape firearm safety engagement, policymakers, researchers, and community leaders can work together to design firearm safety strategies that better support Latino and Hispanic communities in New Mexico and across the United States.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Monte-Angel Richardson is an affiliate scholar with the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium and Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto