Dec 8th 2015, 19:29:12
Chris Byrne posted this last week...
something to chew on
Neil Degrasse Tyson tweeted that there were 3,500 people "killed by houshold firearms" in five weeks in the U.S.
That's not right.
There were 11,000 someodd homicides by firearm in the u.s. in 2013. There were 22,000 someodd suicides by firearm in 2013. That's the last year with data available.
Also, that's CDC data, DOJ/FBI data says that there were appx 8,600 homicides by firearm in 2013. The difference is that CDC data includes non-criminal homicides, and DOJ/FBI only includes criminal homicides.
Ok... So presuming we use the CDC data, altogether that's a bit under 34,000 and 5 weeks is about 10% of the year, so that's probably where he got that.
But that's just lying with statistics.
Of the homicides, over 60% were one criminal killing another in the course of other criminal activity (FBI and DOJ estimates... and I'm deliberately being conservative here and undershooting the number).
Most of the rest... about 25%... were domestic violence of some kind (and please understand I am not dismissing how horrible that is). The remaining 15% or so were "all other categories", which includes stranger and acquaintance murders, workplace violence, mass shootings (that's another issue entirely), justifiable homicides (both self defense and law enforcement), and accidental deaths ruled homicide (generally meaning that someone other than the victim was responsible for the death, whether truly accidental, negligent, or otherwise criminally responsible).
So, if you count all suicides and domestic violence as "deaths by household guns", that's almost 25,000 annually, and 5 weeks would be more like 2500.
But really, no, you can't count suicide. That's someone doing something to themselves, that they have every right to do, even if we hate it. You may make the argument that having access to a firearm makes it easier to commit suicide, but ultimately it is the decision, the action, and the responsibility of the person who commits suicide.
Oh and there were about 40,000 or so suicides that year, and about half were committed with guns... just to put it in perspective.
So that's more like 250 in five weeks, 50 a week, 7 or so a day... Which, yes, is awful... BUT... That number is meaningless without context.
2500 homicides by "household guns"...
Out of 330 million population.
Out of 3 million deaths per year.
It's not just less than 1%... it's less than 0.1%... It's actually 0.08%
If we go for the CDC murder numbers (which are 30% higher than the FBI numbers) it's .3%
And even if you take all 33,000... absolute worst case, including all suicides and all non criminal homicides, and use the almost 30% higher CDC numbers...
... It's still about 1% of all deaths.
It's almost negligible.
By the way, homicide is only the 18th most common cause of death in the country... barely even makes the top 20... And only 65% of homicides are with all types of guns combined. Homicide by firearm is something like the 60th leading cause of death, and again that includes justifiable and accidental homicide.
So yeah... total deaths by firearm, including accident, suicide, and homicide, are approximately ONE percent of all deaths.
Less than one 1 in 10,000 people will die from gunshot wounds... 2/3 of them suicides,
Less than 1 in 30,000 will die by homicide, 2/3 of them being one criminal killing another.
So... your chances of being shot to death by someone else this year (accidentally or criminally), if you aren't an active criminal, are less than 1 in 90,000.
We don't have a gun problem in this country... we have a "people who can't do math" problem.
* All stats from FBI, DOJ, and CDC published reports. Look them up yourself. No I will not do the work for you. I've already done the research, now you need to... you won't trust me anyway.
Surely what a man does when he is caught off his guard is the best evidence as to what sort of man he is. - C.S. Lewis
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