Originally Posted by
J Craft
Barring the fact that once again the FBI in Florida was tipped off to this shooter weeks in advance and didn't feel the need to do anything about it here are some facts about gun deaths and how they relate to other types of deaths in the United States that might give some perspective to this issue as it relates to the country.
There are 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, and this number is not disputed. The U.S. population is 324,059,091 as of June 22, 2016. Do the math: 0.0009% of the population dies from gun related actions each year. Statistically speaking, this is insignificant! What is never told, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths, to put them in perspective as compared to other causes of death:
• 65% of those deaths are by suicide, which would never be prevented by gun laws.
• 15% are by law enforcement in the line of duty and justified.
• 17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally ill persons – better known as gun violence.
• 3% are accidental discharge deaths.
So technically, "gun violence" is not 30,000 annually, but drops to 5,100. Still too many? Now lets look at how those deaths spanned across the nation.... Now we could even get more detailed and break it down by type of gun in which case you'll find just hundreds of deaths from assault rifles and almost all the other deaths from pistols.. and of course I won't bore you with the statistics of how many people are bludgeoned to death and stabbed to death because they in turn exceed the number of gun deaths as well...
• 480 homicides (9.4%) were in Chicago
• 344 homicides (6.7%) were in Baltimore
• 333 homicides (6.5%) were in Detroit
• 119 homicides (2.3%) were in Washington D.C. (a 54% increase over prior years)
So basically, 25% of all gun crime happens in just 4 cities. All 4 of those cities have strict gun laws, so it is not the lack of law that is the root cause.
This basically leaves 3,825 for the entire rest of the nation, or about 75 deaths per state. That is an average because some States have much higher rates than others. For example, California had 1,169 and Alabama had 1.
Now, who has the strictest gun laws by far? California, of course, but understand, it is not guns causing this. It is a crime rate spawned by the number of criminal persons residing in those cities and states. So if all cities and states are not created equal, then there must be something other than the tool causing the gun deaths.
Are 5,100 deaths per year horrific? How about in comparison to other deaths? All death is sad and especially so when it is in the commission of a crime and or senseless but that is the nature of things. Robbery, death, rape, assault are all done by criminals. It is ludicrous to think that criminals will obey laws. Hell we can't even keep drugs out of federal prisons...
But what about other deaths each year?
• 40,000+ die from a drug overdose! That number will be over 50,000 this year...
• 36,000 people die per year from the flu, far exceeding the criminal gun deaths.
• 34,000 people die per year in traffic fatalities(exceeding gun deaths even if you include suicide).
Now it gets good:
• 200,000+ people die each year (and growing) from preventable medical errors. You are safer walking in the worst areas of Chicago than you are when you are in a hospital!
• 710,000 people die per year from heart disease.
If Congress focused their attention on heart disease, even a 10% decrease in cardiac deaths would save twice the number of lives annually of all gun-related deaths (including suicide, law enforcement, etc.). A 10% reduction in medical errors would be 66% of the total number of gun deaths or 4 times the number of criminal homicides ................ Simple, easily preventable 10% reductions!
And in all fairness I'm not a statistician or researcher and these are rough approximations so they're going to be inaccurate to some degree but the fact of the matter is is guns are not even on the top 10 list of problems we need to tackle in this country...
Gun control = Jedi mind fuck... "Move Along these aren't the droids you're looking for..." by Frank Rowley.
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