You’re right, we should pay more attention to them, and to their cumulative toll. Thanks for making this point.
There are more gun deaths annually than there were 30 years ago. Not sure how that happened with fewer shootings, but if you say so…
Gun suicides have climbed steadily. IIRC, over 19k of the deaths you show there were from suicides (we still have a lower suicide rate than many other countries btw, but using a gun seems to be a preferential way to off ones self in the US)
I have no clue what the violent crime numbers are, but not all gun fatalities are the result of violence.
There seems to be a consistent (maybe climbing?) number of people who shoot themselves, deliberately or accidentally, which unfortunately includes children as well as adults.
My, shooting is certainly in fashion this season!
I just hope it doesn’t grow clichéd from overexposure.
The other thing is that we don’t accept risk levels we used to accept, just in general. Cars have gotten safer, vaccines have reduced the risks from childhood diseases, playground equipment has gotten safer, workplaces have gotten safer, and so forth.
The fact that gun deaths have stayed in a fairly tight range for decades says that guns haven’t gotten with the program here.
Well, it is one way to keep the debate of the table.
Hard not to think of the children when they are getting shot.
The whole truth would make a more valid point, I think. Starting from 30 years ago gun homicides did indeed drop at a steady rate…until about the year 2000. From 2000 until today they have pretty much plateaued, leaving one to wonder why the gun homicide rate suddenly stopped moving downward.
Fewer survivors?
That’s true, but that’s still no reason to write them off as nothing to be concerned about. If your teenage son gets depressed because his girlfriend ditched him, and offs himself with a friend’s gun, he’s just as dead as if he’d been gunned down on the street.
The availability of guns for purposes of suicide undoubtedly make the exit from this life quicker and less painful for some who have, over time, gotten to the point where they just can’t take any more of this life. But the flip side is that that same availability can turn what otherwise might well be a passing bad moment into forever.
Since we can’t poll recent suicide victims, it’s hard to know which is which. But many pro-gun folks basically say, “suicides don’t count,” and I must disagree.
This is kind of an interesting question, If I shoot you deliberately, that is surely gun violence.
If I shoot myself deliberately, is THAT gun violence? If I shot you either you or me accidentally, is THAT gun violence?
You’re saying that there was some year, or series of years, that the US had more than 21,900 firearm homicides in a year? What year was that???
If you look at the suicide rate in the US compared to many other countries, we actually are in the middle of the pack. Many countries that totally ban handguns or any kind of gun have higher rates than we do, which leads me to speculate that it’s not guns that cause suicides, but only provide a specific tool for their use. Take the tool away and that doesn’t drop the rate of suicide, it merely shifts it to something else.
So, I disagree with your disagreement…suicides don’t really count unless you can show that the US has a higher rate of suicide than other countries because of easy access to guns. Perhaps I’m mis-remembering, so if you can demonstrate that then I’d have to rethink my stance on that aspect.
What year did we have 21k firearms homicides recently? According to this, the number of homicides ('any method) in 2011 was 15k. You have to go back to 1995 to get 21k of homicides.
Here is the number of gun homicides:
Ah very sorry. About 17,000 - in 1980. I looked at total homicides which were about 23,000 that year.
Actually, I think 1993 saw about 18,000 gun homicides. So not 60 per day. 50 per day. Down to 11,000 gun homicides in 2010. Don’t see 2013 data anywhere.
Not quite. To show this, you’d have to isolate unintentional firearm related death. Homicide and suicide would need to be omitted to get information on the safety of the gun itself.
1991: 1441
2001: 802
2010: 606
A 24% drop in the last 10 years, and a 58% drop in the last 20 years using 2010 data.
Pulled from here (pdf). I did verify the 2001 and 2010 numbers at the CDC site here. but I couldn’t find the source of the 1991 figure.
At any rate, at least by this measure which is not an all definitive - firearms themselves have gotten safer.
You know what I am sick and tired of? People like racepug referring to any shooting as a “mass shooting!”
This is what happened in Oregon this morning.
Murder and suicide. Mass shooting is just another media inspired catch phrase. CNN was helpfully fueling the flames by noting that a “semi-automatic weapon” was used. I see that the latest version on CNN has removed that phrase. A phrase designed for the uninformed person. Yeah, it was a pistol, probably a semi-auto pistol but still, all the scary catch phrases get pumped into the story.
Kid shot somebody then killed himself. Big fucking mass shooting! But we’ve got to do something because our kinds are our future!
Because gun ownership is common in the US, and ownership of a gun increases the chance of suicide. And contrary to pro-gun rhetoric, people suicidally inclined who don’t have a gun usually don’t just choose another method.
The same goes with any easy, painless method of suicide; its presence increases the chance of people killing themselves on impulse. For example, once coal gas was replaced with safer natural gas, the suicide rate went down in homes with natural gas because sticking your head in the oven was no longer an easy way to kill yourself.
This doesn’t demonstrate that the overall suicide rate per 100k dropped, however. A quick Google search seems to indicate that it’s going up, not down, but I don’t have stats from the 50’s for the UK. Since it’s your assertion, though, feel free to provide if you like (though this is the Pit, so no problem if you don’t want too).