I am asking about the USA in particular, and looking for numbers, not a political debate.
I have a colleague who also runs a firearms training business. He often talks about the horrifying things he has seen people do with guns, because they just didn’t know what they were doing. He has said that mass tragedies get a lot of media attention, but recklessness with guns actually causes more deaths.
Is this true?
Of course.
A trivial search turns up this information:
From 2013.
At the beginning of this year (I’m not sure how much it has changed, if at all), the average amount of deaths from spree shootings over the last few decades is 24 per year.
Almost every cause of death you can think of will kill more than 24 people per year in a country of 330 million. So it’s not surprising it at all.
If you’re looking strictly at deaths,in 2015 there were 40 mass shootings in the U.S. with 208 deaths.
Unintentional (neither homicide nor suicide) deaths from firearms totaled505 in 2013. (Warning: pdf. The relevant info is on page 84.)
Suicide deaths from firearms dwarf all other gun-related deaths.
Incidentally - and this is just a common pet theory - I think a huge number of accidental gun deaths - of the “he was cleaning his gun and it just went off” variety - are covers for suicide. Someone in the process feels strongly about not wanting to declare it a suicide, and so it gets written up as a firearm accident.
I think you are right, but there are still firearm accidents. When I was at basic training, they used to rod out our rifles after the firing range to make sure we didn’t have a chambered round, and I remember the soldier in front of me did in fact have one once. If a soldier (granted, one in training, but we got twice day lectures on checking for chambered rounds-- once on receiving our rifles in the morning, and once on leaving the range), it must happen all the time in the civilian world. Hunters and target shooters must do it all the time.
Now, every accident isn’t going to cause a death, and in particular discharges while cleaning are unlikely to cause death-- they are more likely to take off your hand or foot-- and I say this after hours of cleaning rifles, and a lot of time cleaning target pistols too.
So, I’m particularly suspicious of “accident while cleaning.” But real accidents do happen. Mainly, people shoot family members or friends thinking they are intruders, or children discover loaded guns, because there are people who keep them loaded and accessible all the time, because they are that paranoid about intruders.
Slight hijack: I know a guy who is a policeman who sought to become an adoptive parent. Having a firearm in the home didn’t automatically disqualify him, particularly since it was job-issued, but he had to go step-by-step through his process of coming home, removing the gun, unloading it, installing a trigger lock, and then putting the ammunition and gun in a lock box and storing it on a high shelf, and swear to the social worker that once there was a child in the house, it would be the FIRST THING he did every day when he came home. He has two sons now. One of them wanted a toy gun really badly at one point, and he also had to have a box with a real lock to put it in every night, and he stored it up on a shelf in his closet. He’s a little older now. He used to want to be a superhero, but now he wants to be a policeman, just like his dad.
Some, for sure … but it remains that guns are very dangerous, and careless handling can kill someone right quick.
This is true approximately 100% of the time for “gun cleaning accidents” (as forensic pathologists know well).
I doubt that suicide is commonly a viable explanation for other types of gun fatalities deemed accidents.
If you really want to worry, look at 2015’s 83 accidental deaths from children finding a gun.
Don’t forget professionals at work!
When I was in the infantry, we enjoyed reading the base newspaper on some days. About once every three months there would be a short article about an MP accidentally shooting themselves or another MP when they cleared their weapon after coming off duty. They really shouldn’t have been such hard-asses to the grunts!
But it did make me wonder how your typical civilian survives with weapons lying around the house.
The point about suicides is interesting. In the UK, nearly all suicides by gunshot are farmers using a shotgun. The general public have no access to guns so they use other methods. There is a high footbridge in our town which has seen three in the last decade - I am willing to bet that they would have used a gun if they could have got their hands on one.
The military seem to have quite a few accidental shootings:
Quite a few people have been injured or killed by “unloaded” guns. Colonel Cooper must cringe in his grave every time that happens.
What I find incredible is the people who are proud of their ignorance about firearm safety and can’t even , won’t even learn how to float much less swim.
In this country in this day and time.
People with a medical or mental problem are one thing but even with that, they are proud that they have an excuse to be ignorant.
Then they feel justified and informed to the point that they want to tell me how not to swim unless they approve where & when or know how I must do things with my weapons.
Bawahahahaha
Another interesting set of data: CDC - Leading causes of death. Look at the far right column for totals regardless of age.
Interesting…
Note that ‘homicide’ is not murder but includes murder.
Things that move up the list as we get older… Hummmm
Nate Silver recently did an article about gun deaths. Two thirds of them are suicide. Accidents were a relatively small slice.
The definition of “mass shooting” changes as per the politics of the Humpty Dumpty.
The CDC has a number of stats:
Firearm suicides
Number of deaths: 21,175
Deaths per 100,000 population: 6.7
All injury deaths
Number of deaths: 192,945
Deaths per 100,000 population: 60.2
All poisoning deaths
Number of deaths: 48,545
Deaths per 100,000 population: 15.4
Motor vehicle traffic deaths
Number of deaths: 33,804
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.7
All firearm deaths
Number of deaths: 33,636
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.6
All homicides
Number of deaths: 16,121
Deaths per 100,000 population: 5.1
Firearm homicides
Number of deaths: 11,208
Deaths per 100,000 population: 3.5
They also have an “unintentional injury” statistics, that doesn’t include firearms on it but list the exact same number of car deaths as on their overall injury deaths page:
Motor vehicle traffic deaths
Number of deaths: 33,804
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.7
Not sure why they separate injuries from accidental injuries and don’t put the gun injuries on the accidental injury list, but I assume they have some reason. Which suggest to me that most deaths from guns are suicides or homicides, not accidents.
However, the number of people killed every year by mass shootings is practically negligible in comparison to all other causes of death, so if you own and handle guns you’re much more likely to die in a gun accident.
I agree, but even assuming the cite uses a broad interpretation, the number of deaths from mass shootings is still lower than accidental deaths.
I assume, given their past blatant political bias and the fact they dont break out “suicides by pills” or other stuff like that, it is due to that political bias. I am not saying they made up the numbers or anything like that but they quantified them so that firearms would stand out.
But I agree with your conclusion.