Gun deaths reached the highest level ever recorded in the United States in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control reported on Tuesday. Gun-related homicides in particular rose by 35 percent, a surge that exacted an unprecedented toll on Black men, agency researchers said. 

“This is a historic increase, with the rate having reached the highest level in over 25 years,” Dr. Debra E. Houry, acting principal deputy director of the C.D.C. and the director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, said at a news briefing on Tuesday. 

“We need to be vigilant in addressing the conditions that contribute to homicides and suicides and the disparities observed,” she added.

More than 45,000 Americans died in gun-related incidents as the pandemic spread in the United States, the highest number on record, federal data show. But more than half of gun deaths were suicides, and that number did not substantially increase from 2019 to 2020.

The overall rise in gun deaths was 15 percent in 2020, lower than the percentage increase in gun homicides, the C.D.C. said.

The rise in gun murders was the largest one-year increase seen in modern history, according to Ari Davis, a policy adviser at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which recently released its own analysis of C.D.C. data.