Do Guns Kill More People Than Heroin?

The Washington Post reported on new information from the Centers for Disease Control stating that opioid deaths continued to surge in 2015, surpassing 30,000 for the first time in recent history.

About 25,000 deaths from opioid drugs were reported in 2014. Fentanyl, a powerful opioid, contributed to a nearly 75% increase in deaths from 2014 to 2015. About 2,000 more heroin deaths were reproted over the same time period. In the past, deaths from hydrocodone and oxycodone were rampant, but heroin has now taken over.

Do guns kill more people than heroin? Heroin and opioid deaths have taken over another milestone too: More people died from heroin than from gun homicides in 2015. As recently as 2007, gun homicides outnumbered heroin deaths by more than 5 to 1.