Rex Trulove
Although gun-related deaths in the US dominate the news, we’ve already seen that gun-related deaths are much rarer than other preventable deaths. We’ve also looked at the number three cause of death in the US; medical malpractice and misdiagnosis. Let’s take a look at another preventable cause of death: Accidents.
Since a large part of the point is to show how exaggerated the media is in an attempt to work people into a frenzy in order to enact gun control laws that don’t work, let’s recap a little.
According to the CDC, about 33,000 people die each year from gunshots. Easily the majority of these, as many as two-thirds, are suicides. A large number of what is left are people who are shot during the commission of a crime, those killed in gang violence, and those related to illegal drugs and drug wars. The number that is left is a small percentage of the total and these represent the homicides. Homicides include the rare school shootings, domestic violence, and so forth.
It can be pointed out that 3,000 to 5,000 people, even in a nation of over 350 million people, is too many. However, it doesn’t come close to the hundreds of thousands of people who die annually from malpractice and misdiagnosis. So how do 3,000-5,000 deaths stack up against accidents?
According to the CDC, about 146,500 people die every year from accidents. That means that you are 70 times more likely to die in an accident than you are of being killed by someone with a gun, assuming that you don’t belong to a gang, aren’t in the illegal drug crowd, and aren’t a criminal.
Some of the accidents that are specifically mentioned by the CDC:
* About 47,500 people per year die of accidental poisoning. This number is obviously higher than the total number of gun-related deaths, including suicide. It should be obvious that people need to be educated in regard to this danger.
* About 37,700 people die in car accidents every year. This number is staggeringly high, considering that so many could be avoided. As a single example, Montana ranks the highest in the nation in vehicle deaths per 100,000 people and the largest number of the people who die in car accidents weren’t wearing a seatbelt. There is good evidence that simply by wearing a seatbelt, the total number of people who die in car accidents in Montana would drop by about 75%.
Of the deaths, Montana also ranks very high in the number that involved drunk driving and speeding. It isn’t rocket science to figure out that if people quit drinking and driving and slow down to the speed limit, that would drop the number of fatalities enormously. If everyone was buckling up, in addition to driving sober and at the speed limit, Montana would have one of the lowest car accident death rates in the country.
* About 33,400 people die in the US from accidental falls. There are many common sense ways this number could be lowered tremendously.
The bottom line is that while the media widely reports on shooting death incidents, despite how rare they are, they don’t often report on things that cause 70 times more deaths each year. At the very least, they should draw attention to accidental deaths. These are not only preventable, they are easily preventable.
If people don’t know about this, though, little is done to save lives. It becomes easy to see that the news media isn’t interested in saving lives, they are simply interested in a political agenda and control. No wonder the approval rating for the news media continues to drop.
The number of gunshot deaths are staggering. Thank you for sharing this
Sad that 2/3 of gunshots are suicide.
I agree, but again, the problem isn’t guns, it is the mental condition of the person. If nothing is done but removing the guns, they’ll simply find another way to commit suicide. Focusing on the guns actually means that people aren’t getting the help they need.
We have the same problem … fast driving, carelessness, alcohol … completely unnecessary deaths.There is much talk about it, but people think that an accident happens to someone else.When it happens to them … it’s too late.
It is needless, too. Speeding is a great example that shows that people really don’t think it through. The speed limit in Montana is 70. The nearest major population center to me is about 70 miles, so it takes about an hour to get there. A person who speeds and drives at 80 gains less than 10 minutes. In fact, they will probably gain much less than 10 minutes, because it is likely that they will need to slow down multiple times when they get behind slower traffic until they can pass.
Here is the shocker, though. At 80 mph, even if they have lightning reflexes, if they have to stop in a hurry they will still travel over 500 feet. That means that if a deer steps out into the road 200-300 feet ahead (a half a city block), the person can’t avoid hitting the deer unless they go off the road.
Yes, absolutely unnecessary speed…There is a slogan with us..,,Not faster than life,,..It would be good for everyone to respect this.