Gun Violence in America vs Brazil: The Numbers That Changed Our Minds

Before we moved to Florianópolis, we had the same fears every American has about Brazil. Crime. Violence. Safety. We almost didn't go. Then we started looking at the actual data — not the headlines, not the travel warnings, but the raw numbers on gun deaths, homicides, and daily violence. What we found completely reframed how we think about safety in both countries.

The US Gun Death Epidemic in Numbers

In 2023, the CDC reported 46,728 gun deaths in the United States. That's roughly 128 people every single day. Every day. To put that in perspective, that's more Americans killed by guns annually than the entire population of many small cities. Of those deaths, approximately 58% were suicides and 38% were homicides — meaning roughly 17,757 Americans were murdered with guns in a single year.

The US gun death rate stands at approximately 13.6 per 100,000 people — one of the highest in the developed world. For comparison, the rate in Brazil's Santa Catarina state (where Florianópolis is located) is 8.9 homicides per 100,000 total — and that includes all methods of homicide, not just guns.

Mass Shootings: An American Phenomenon

The Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as any incident where four or more people are shot (not necessarily killed), recorded over 600 mass shootings in the United States in recent years. The FBI, using a stricter definition of "active shooter incidents," recorded 24 such events in 2024 alone — down from 48 in 2023, but still representing a uniquely American problem.

Mass shootings at concerts, grocery stores, churches, and schools have become so normalized in American culture that most don't make national news unless the death toll is particularly high. In Brazil — and specifically in Florianópolis — this type of random, public mass violence is extraordinarily rare. The cultural and structural conditions that produce American mass shootings simply don't exist here in the same way.

Why the Perception Gap Exists

Brazil's reputation for violence is not entirely undeserved — the country as a whole has serious crime problems, particularly in its northeastern states and the peripheries of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. But Brazil is a country of 215 million people spread across 8.5 million square kilometers. Judging all of Brazil by Rio's favelas is like judging all of America by Baltimore's most dangerous neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, American gun violence has become so normalized that it rarely registers as a crisis in the same way. The 128 daily gun deaths don't generate the same international alarm as a single high-profile crime in Brazil. This asymmetry in media coverage creates a distorted picture that keeps many Americans from even considering a move that could dramatically improve their safety and quality of life.

What We Actually Worry About in Florianopolis

Living in Florianópolis, our safety concerns are real but manageable: don't leave valuables visible in your car, be aware of your surroundings at ATMs, avoid certain neighborhoods at night, and don't flash expensive electronics in crowded tourist areas. These are the same common-sense precautions you'd take in any major city worldwide.

What we don't worry about: being shot at a concert, a school shooting, road rage escalating to gunfire, a mass shooting at the supermarket. These American-specific fears have simply evaporated from our daily lives. And that absence — that freedom from a particular kind of ambient dread — is something we didn't fully appreciate until we left.