I included all deaths resulting from bullets entering human flesh because excluding certain pet categories is disingenuous, to say the least. In order to encompass all gun violence, I would also have to include the 50-60 thousand bullet-caused injuries not resulting in death and every instance of a gun being brandished. However, death statistics drawn from death certificates seem to be easier to find and harder to dispute. Impossible to find are statistics for incidents where firearms were brandished, but no injuries or deaths resulted.
I intentionally do not state “caused by guns” because some dingleberry will immediately chime in with a ridiculous cliche.
Half of that 33,000 is suicide. I do not consider that gun violence.
You are using the wrong divisor. There are at least 350 million guns in the U.S. (We have been hearing of 350 million for a decade, with the industry pumping of ~ 20 million additional guns per year, which never seems to change the 350 million count).
There are about 100 million gun owners
Of all the gun violence, the amount attributable to non gang, non drug, non urban folks, ie, your typical American gun owner, => when divided into the number of licit guns OR licit gun owners <= is a rounding error. A TINY rounding error.
Which means, essentially, that to a rounding error, almost zero guns are ever used for anything untoward. Almost zero legal gun owners are in involved in untoward gun violence. It’s is almost all restricted to gangs and drugs.
Sorry, I can’t address the police issue you raised - I don’t know anything about it.
I challenge you to quote me using those exact words… I said they are meant to kill. You then extrapolate from your misstatement of what I said to make your next point.
Unless you really want to argue that “meant to” and “designed to” are two radically different concepts, I think they’re fairly characterizing your stated position.
Uhhh… you might want to take another look at those maps. First, you have to scroll down to “Homicides”, because the first two maps show suicides as well.
Then take a look at something very curious with the color scheme - all the colors have very small increments associated with them - less than one death to a maximum of a bit less than two. Except for the last one - which goes from 6 to 40 (!)
This map gives every indication that it was made to be deceptive, because by using lots of colors to indicate essentially very similar numbers, it maximizes the amount of territory covered by colors. When, in fact, as I said - because the best available information tells us so - gun violence is mostly an urban drug and gang problem.
It cities the crime rate is higher due to population densities. And in general most of the people killing one another are involved in illicit activities. To say they are in gang or drugs is a simplification, because there are many more people who are involved in just old fashioned robbery etc.
Your point that violence happens every where is a valid one.
However, there are certain areas where the violence is grossly off the average. Even in large cities with the worst violence, that violence is usually contained mainly in certain areas, usually the poorest.
Here is some really in depth statistics of a couple large cities. Note who are not only the murders, but the victims.
Again, your point that violence happens every where is very valid, but if we cherry picked the data, removing the worst offenders, our murder rate as a nation would be closer to the Canada. I think it would behoove us to find a way to uplift these communities. But, as long as the violence isn’t in their 'hood, people don’t usually care enough to do anythin.
That quote @nimelennar mentioned was the one I was thinking of. I do see that in aggregate, your comments suggest killing things and not specifically people. I stand corrected.
There are 350,000,000 illicit guns and/or gun owners in America?
You said the number of violent incidents caused by a “typical” American gun owner, divided into the number of illicit guns and/or owners, is negligible. As proof, you’ve instead divided what looks like roughly half of the annual gun death statistic (excluding suicides for your poorly-explained, arbitrarily-determined reason) into the number of people in America.
Well, like Mark Twain said, there are lies, damn lies, and statitics. Or something like that.
I think it IS important to separate the types of gun deaths, because murders, accidents, and suicides are three distinct problems with three waaaaay different causes and will require three grossly different approaches in reducing them - unless you want to just simplify it to “guns bad - ban all guns”.
I too would like to know this, as based on anecdotal data, guns are used a lot to stop crime as well as cause it, where and armed victim is able to brandish and send the would be robber/attack running or held for the police. We don’t have a national data base of this, though if I had $$$ I would make some sort of grass roots site that gathered this data from news reports. Turning anecdotal info into data.
Yes this means also more guns used in crime. And I have acknowledged in the past that the number of people killing others is very small, the number using them in crimes is larger. But again - it is very small compared to the overall number of gun owners.
I don’t know about “radically” but the meaning of those words is different. I’m not assigned “meaning” but the design intent of a pistol, for example, is clearly for the ending of human life. It is not a hunting device.
No - there are at least 350,000,000 LEGALLY-OWNED guns in the U.S.
About 1/3 of Americans say they own a gun = ~ 120,000,000 people.
Divide 17,000 into either number, and you get a rounding error. Same with 33.000 if you want.
Don’t see where I said anything that’s bullshit.
As far as suicide, you can make your own judgements. Me, I’d like to keep it legal. I consider it the sort of gun death that is intentional and does no physical harm to anyone but the suicide, so I do not see how it belongs in a discussion about how the severity of (unwanted) gun violence justifies contemplation of abrogating Constitutional rights.
One thing I hear constantly from the anti-gun-control side is that people who want to regulate firearms aren’t qualified to do so because they don’t know anything about them. This ad is a pretty effective rebuke of that claim.
Is it not? Is it the guns fault? Certainly people who commit suicide are in some way “sick”, but they are making a conscious, often times rational decision.
Same as with anyone else who practices self abuse, like cutting.
You’re still not doing the math you said you were doing. You’ve (seemingly) been trying to make the point that only illegally-owned firearms are used in the commission of gun violence, to the point that legally-owned guns as a share of that value are a statistical rounding error. Instead, your math is making the vastly different point that all gun deaths (a much narrower category than gun violence) are a very small percentage of incidents when compared to the number of people/guns/gun owners in America. Those are two different points, and while I’m happy to have a conversation about either of them, you’re being disingenuous by conflating them with one another.
So, again, show me the evidence that illegally-owned firearms are used in the overwhelming majority (>99.9%) of gun violence incidents. And I do mean gun violence, which includes cases of domestic abuse (not just murder by spouse, though over 50% of spousal murders are committed with a firearm according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline statistics I linked above), injury, brandishing, police shootings, etc.
Also, a final remark about why suicides are still a vital and relevant component of gun death statistics: I would argue very strenuously that the families and friends of those who killed themselves with a gun would classify their deaths as “unwanted gun violence”. Your argument is no different than discounting driver-only drunk driving fatalities because “nobody else got hurt”.
I do not have the words right now to politely express how outrageously infuriating and wrong this attitude is.
It is still gun violence no matter how some deny it. Murdering a school of children with a rifle is free will too, right? Why does suicide not count but shooting people in McDonalds does?
Certainly many murders are committed by people who can legally own guns. Certainly domestic abuse accounts for some of them, though domestic abuse is one of the few non-felony offenses that can get you restricted from gun ownership.
Note how nearly all murders have arrest records. We can confirm that they were all prohibited persons, but there evidence is there that a good number of them are.
The link to the actual paper is in this article, but the chart shows that 79% of the criminals in the study didn’t legally own the gun they used in the crime.
Please correct me. People who are suicidal need help. What would you suggest should be done to reduce the number of gun suicides and suicides in general.
As I said above:
I think it IS important to separate the types of gun deaths, because murders, accidents, and suicides are three distinct problems with three waaaaay different causes and will require three grossly different approaches in reducing them - unless you want to just simplify it to “guns bad - ban all guns” - in which case I see why one would want to lump the numbers together.
Thank you for switching your go-to Chicago violence reference from a private person with an agenda to an official site instead. I mean it: thank you. That’s the fair way to do it.
