While most countries include airguns within their legal definition of firearms, the United States does not. Federal law defines a ‘firearm’ almost exclusively as a weapon capable of expelling a projectile by the action of an explosive.^{1 2}

As US official statistics follow the same definitions, and to avoid larger distortions, GunPolicy.org excludes airgun-related mortality and morbidity from its ‘death and injury by firearm’ data for the United States.

Although this can cause small variations in country-to-country comparisons, several factors reduce the effect. For example, in the United States the nationally reported rates of death and injury by airgun are low.³