Gun violence in the United States has reached its worst level in more than 25 years, with the rate of firearm homicide rising by 35 per cent in the first year of the pandemic, the U.S. public health agency reported Tuesday. Nearly 5,000 more people were murdered by guns in 2020 than the previous year, with increases in both urban and rural areas, among men and women and across all age groups, Thomas Simon, associate director for science at the CDC’s division of violence prevention, said Tuesday. “Every one of those lives lost has a ripple effect of families dealing with ongoing trauma and communities dealing with the extraordinary cost of gun violence,” said Adam Skaggs, chief counsel and policy director at Giffords Law Center, an organization dedicated to fighting gun violence.