Perspective Matters: Away Game Repost

Saw this image shared by Sheriff Jim Wilson on Facebook and decided to expand upon it a bit. Here's a comparison of our "gun death epidemic" to the other causes of death that, you know, actually make up the majority of deaths.

Perspective matters. This is made from slightly older CDC data and involves a bit of rounding, but it's very close to accurate still.

According to the most recent report, there were 33,636 deaths related to firearms. 21,175 were suicide (about half of all suicides), 505 were accidental, and 11,208 were homicide (there's a few missing, probably legally justifiable and police related and whatnot). It's also important to note that both homicide and suicide are OVERWHELMINGLY men's issues, but I'll discuss those in a different post to keep things focused.

That same newer CDC data provides further perspective;
Accidental falls accounted for 31,240 deaths. You are approximately equally likely to trip and fall and die as you are to die to a firearm. Remember that every time you take the stairs, stand on a balcony, or hike a path on a slope.

There were 48,545 deaths from poisoning, of which about 80% (38,836) were accidental. You (or your children) are 1.15x more likely to die of eating/drinking the wrong thing accidentally than by all gun death combined, and nearly equally likely to be deliberately poisoned as you are to be killed in an assault with a firearm.

33,804 people were killed in car accidents. Almost all gun death involves at least one willing participant (the criminal shooting, or the person committing suicide), while very few car accidents involve any willing participants.

Septicemia, a precursor to sepsis, also known as blood poisoning, accounts for 38,156 deaths. That is to say, death by infection when it spreads to the blood. That infection you have is more likely to lead to your death than all gun related deaths combined.

Alcohol related causes (everything from alcohol poisoning to a terminal case of "Hold my beer and watch this!") accounted for 29,001 deaths. It's important to note that alcohol is purely a luxury, and serves exclusively to inhibit the user and impair judgement. Enjoying a night at the bar is very nearly as likely to lead to your death as all gun death combined.

Ever go to the doctor? Around 400,000 people die to preventable medical errors every year in the US. http://www.healthcareitnews.com/…/deaths-by-medical-mistake… It seems it's likely rolled into other statistics on the CDC list, but taken separately it's the #3 killer of Americans, behind cancer and heart disease (584,881 and 611,105 respectively). Included in that are around 100,000 deaths from catching other infections acquired at the hospital http://www.nytimes.com/2007/…/19/washington/19hospital.html…

As a sidenote related to mass shootings and so-called assault weapons (a manufactured category that most of the people attempting to ban can't actually define); Even the US, which is supposedly the world capital of them, almost never breaks 100 deaths per year (using the FBI definition of 3+ deaths in a public place, not gang related). For reference, on average 183 people will be killed in animal attacks throughout the US based on data from 2001-2013 https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/chart-the-animals-that-ar…/

Every death is a tragedy, but with our sensationalist media it's desperately important to remind yourself where the real problems lie. Treated as a single monolithic category, guns amount to around 3% of all deaths in the US. While it's important not to overlook small causes lest they add up, guns are far from the overwhelming epidemic they are made out to be, and what problems are associated with them would be better solved by targeting the underlying causes (legacy of racism and disadvantage leading to gang violence, social mores that cause men to commit suicide vastly more often than women, and so on) is more effective than simply blaming the object.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/…/liberal-media-gun-grabbe…/ a somewhat biased site with a mostly unbiased collecting of data from the report for readability.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf the CDC report on mortality released in feb 2016, using data from 2013ish.
http://www.youargue.com/…/38-putting-murder-by-gun-in-persp… a slightly older thing putting things in perspective with graphs and such.