Do more Europeans die of summer heat than Americans die of guns?

An attempt to improve a viral chart.

The chart below has been doing the rounds on social media. The headline is really about how poorly Europe protects people from heat. But the flip is also true for America and guns. European policy protects people against guns, but not heat; the US, the opposite.

As I explain later, I think this comparison is a bit silly, but sympathise with the overall sentiment: Europe is not doing a good job of protecting people from heat. Things don’t have to be this bad; it’s a choice.

But, unfortunately, the chart has several issues.

The heat death numbers for Europe are modelled as “excess deaths” during summer months; this attempts to capture people dying from a range of health conditions — cardiovascular disease, stroke, and others — earlier than they would have in more optimal temperatures. This is a common way researchers measure heat deaths (or cold, for that matter). I’ve done a deep dive on these methods previously.

But the US number isn’t based on this type of modelling; it’s based on heat deaths recorded on death certificates. If you used death certificate figures for Europe, they’d be far lower.

It also uses European Union figures for gun deaths, but a broader definition of Europe for heat deaths.¹

I thought I’d have a quick go at making a better version. These numbers are still not perfect, but hopefully a closer comparison.

Here are some of the changes:

• I’ve used more comparable excess heat death figures for the US (details in the footnote), so we’re not relying on death certificate records.² This is the annual average between 2000 and 2020 and for adults aged 25 to 84 (it’s not a perfect comparison, but the best I could do with available data).³

• I’ve taken the average of 2022 to 2024 for Europe, so we’re not catching an “irregular” year and comparing it to a more average year in the US.⁴

• Created one version that consistently uses EU-27 figures for both guns and heat.

• A second version that uses the broader European definition in the heat deaths paper, sourced in the original chart: the 26 EU countries (minus Malta), plus the UK, Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Norway, and Serbia (so 32 in total).⁵

• Shown the breakdown of gun deaths by homicide, suicide, and other causes (which is small but includes unintentional injury and deaths by law enforcement).⁶

Here’s the comparison for countries in the European Union only.

And now using the broader “Europe” definition.

Does it change the conclusions much? Not really. But hopefully it provides a slightly more accurate comparison. And I think the breakdown of gun deaths provides more useful context.

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What about per capita?

As always in a comment section, people asked: “What if we adjust for population?”

Here’s the same data adjusted for rates per 100,000 people in the total population⁷

It does actually change the order a bit. Gun deaths in the US are now slightly larger than European heat death rates. But to me, it doesn’t matter much for the conclusion.

As I mentioned, I found the initial framing of guns and heat as a contest to be a bit silly — they’re not substitutes. Europe is doing a bad job of protecting itself from life-threatening heat. That the US has disproportionately high rates of gun deaths compared to other rich countries is also bad. The two are not mutually exclusive.

But it does highlight something important about status quo bias. Both places take the status quo as a given: a high-mortality situation in one domain that they’d never accept in another.

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1. The definition of Europe, to most people, will seem a bit random: it's the EU-27 minus Malta, plus the UK, Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Norway, and Serbia.

2. This data comes from a recent paper from Salerno et al. (2026), which uses the common minimum-mortality temperature (MMT) approach.

It estimated that between 2000 and 2020, there was an average of around 6,100 heat-related deaths in the US per year. This study covered 92% of the population, so I’ve rounded it to around 6,500 to account for 100% population coverage.

This is not a perfect comparison as it compares to a 2024-specific figure for Europe. But I couldn’t find 2024 data for the US using this methodology.

Some studies find lower and higher US estimates than this. Zhao et al. (2021) estimate a much higher figure of around 18,000. Chu et al. (2025) estimate lower figures of 3,000 to 4,000.

de Oliveira Salerno, P. R. V., Estrada-Mendizabal, R. J., Chen, Z., Dazard, J. E., Nasir, K., Requia, W., ... & Deo, S. V. (2026). Social Vulnerability and Mortality Attributable to Non-Optimal Temperature in the United States: A County-Level Ecological Analysis. Current Problems in Cardiology, 103260.

Zhao, Q., Guo, Y., Ye, T., Gasparrini, A., Tong, S., Overcenco, A., ... & Li, S. (2021). Global, regional, and national burden of mortality associated with non-optimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study. The Lancet Planetary Health, 5(7), e415-e425.

Chu, L., Dubrow, R., & Chen, K. (2025). Heat-and cold-related mortality burden in the US from 2000 to 2020. JAMA Network Open, 8(11), e2542269.

3. Heat-related deaths tend to be concentrated in older individuals, so not having data for those aged 85+ may still slightly understate heat-related mortality in the US.

4. This doesn’t change the conclusion much: estimates were for 67,873in 2022, 50,798 in 2023, and 62,775 in 2024.

This gives an annual average of 60,500.

5. Janoš, T., Quijal-Zamorano, M., Shartova, N., Gallo, E., Méndez Turrubiates, R. F., Denisse Beltrán Barrón, N., ... & Ballester, J. (2025). Heat-related mortality in Europe during 2024 and health emergency forecasting to reduce preventable deaths. Nature Medicine, 31(12), 4065-4074.

6. European gun death figures are estimated by combining several publications. Eurostat does not publish a single aggregate figure for firearm deaths at the EU-27 level.

Firearm suicides are estimated at around 4,300/year from Eurostat total suicide figures and the Flemish Peace Institute factsheet’s estimate that 9% of EU suicides involve firearms.

Firearm homicides are estimated at around 800 per year from IHME Global Burden of Disease (2019) and Eurostat/WHO-based mortality data.

Other firearm deaths (accidents, undetermined, legal intervention) at around 450 per year.

For the broader “Europe” definition, numbers from the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro are estimated from national sources.

The original source used data from the Flemish Peace Institute's factsheet Firearms and Deaths by Firearms in the EU (Duquet & Van Alstein, 2015), which is a bit older, and has slightly higher figures.

It is estimated that approximately 6,700 firearm deaths occur per year in the EU, comprising roughly 5,000 suicides, 1,000 homicides, and 700 other firearm deaths. This is an average based on 2000–2012 data; the more recent IHME Global Burden of Disease estimates suggest this figure has fallen a bit.

7. If you were to calculate rates based on specific age groups (for example, only those particularly vulnerable to heat deaths, or age groups with highest gun mortality rates) then you’d get different results.