This statistical beast is somewhat elusive thanks to the FBI’s resolute determination to lump all Hispanics in with whites. However, it is possible to work out a reasonable approximation of what the statistics would be if the FBI bothered to report them accurately.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the 20-year gun homicide rate is 41.9% “white” and
56.4% black. The “white” rate is lower than reported by the FBI for 2010, which, if I am correct, reduces the known black share from 56.4% to 49% due to the rising Hispanic population. But since there are plenty of cases that are unknown, we will use the 20-year rate in order to avoid the possibility of a single year outlier while considering the 9,146 gun homicides concerned.
We will assume, for the sake of argument, that Hispanic victims are synonymous with Hispanic killers. The BJS supports this assumption, reporting that from 1976 to 2005, 86% of white victims were killed by whites and 94% of black victims were killed by black. A CDC report states: “Homicide rates in 2010 among non-Hispanic, African-American males 10-24 years of age (51.5 per 100,000) exceeded those of Hispanic males (13.5 per 100,000) and non-Hispanic, White males in the same age group (2.9 per 100,000).”
We’re not concerned with the black homicide rate since we already know that. What interests us is how the remaining 4,116 gun homicides are divided between whites and Hispanics. The distribution indicated by the CDC report shows that 3,388 were Hispanic and only 728 were white. This may be a little skewed by the focus on young males, but nevertheless provides a very credible estimate of 6.8 per 100k population, which would put the US-Latin firearms homicide rate in between Nicaragua at 5.9 and Paraguay at 7.4. It would also indicate that the US-White homicide rate is 0.32 per 100k population, a per capita rate very close to The Netherlands at 0.33 although still higher than France, Germany, or the UK.
The chart above compares the three primary US racial populations and the rates at which they commit firearms homicide per 100k population, then pairs them with what is more or less their international equivalent. The interesting thing is that regardless of whether it is the prevalence of firearms or the proximity to a majority white population that is responsible, it is readily observable that the US-Latin and US-Black rates of firearms homicide are much LOWER than the rates at which firearms homicide is committed by non-US Latins and non-US Africans, despite the greater access of the US-based populations to firearms.