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Wednesday, 19 December 2012

Guns, Damned Guns, and Statistics

Posted on 06:42 by hony
I started digging up statistics. For the following graph, I used data from the FBI and CDC's Vital Statistics Report. All numbers represent 2011. 2012 data is not yet fully available obviously.

Figure 1. Number of Americans Killed in 2011 By Major Cause

You'll notice that cigarettes cause 44,300 deaths for every one person killed by an assault weapon. Will the President announce a "cigarette control task force"?

And then this:

Figure 2. Gun-related deaths in 2011.

For "mass murderers" I am using the Mother Jones definition of "any homicide event that has 4 or more victims, not including the shooter." In which case in 2011 there were five: Tuscon, Yuma, Copley Township, Grand Rapids, and Carson City with a total of 30 non-shooter deaths. In all five cases, handguns were used. In only one case (Tuscon), high-capacity clips were used.
I feel it is worth at least quickly pointing out that for every person murdered by a gun, there are about 2 suicides. Most people are surprised by this, but the anti-gun side of the argument prefers to just lump the two groups together into a large pool of "deaths by gun."

I won't really add any more comments, I think these statistics speak for themselves. I'm just trying to make a point here: if we write sweeping, knee-jerk legislation due to a single statistical outlying event that tugs at our heartstrings...we will almost certainly regret it.


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