On Deaths by the Gun

Apparently, in 2009, in the US there were 10.2 gun deaths for every 100,000 people, of which 3.7 were homicides, 6.1 were suicides, and 0.2 were accidents. That works out to about 610 accidental fire arm deaths, 11,285 homicides, and 18,605 suicides... of a population of 305,000,000. That's according to government agencies. Now, according to the CDC in that year, there were 118,021 accidental deaths of which 610 were fire arms related, or about 0.5%. Suicides accounted for 36,909 deaths that year, so about half were gun related. 11,285 homicides is a lot... but the leading causes of death in the US in 2009 were Nephritis (and related issues) at 49,000; Diabetes at 69,000; Alzheimer's at 79,000; Stroke at 129,000; Chronic Respiratory Diseases 137,000; Cancer at 568,000; and Heart Disease at a whopping 599,000.

What's my point? Instead of trying to pass gun laws or trying to spend 18,000,000,000 dollars putting cops in every school... how about we spend our time and effort and money worrying about real killers and shoring up Health Care? Diabetes alone kills 3.5x as many people as guns and we don't try legislating how much sugar people can get access to and we barely touch food preservatives and fatty foods, all of which contribute. Alzheimer's is linked to Aluminum, so conclusively that the EU bans it's use in cooking pots, but we don't ban them. Drunk Drivers killed 10,839 people in 2009. That's about 300 hundred less than were killed by gun related homicide. Where the fuck is the outrage?

Yes, Sandy Hook was a bloody tragedy, and yes Adam Lanza was a colossal asshole who deserves to burn in hell for what he did, no matter how messed up he was by his drugs or his mental problems. But it was the act of a lunatic and every single outraged "They're going to take our guns" or "We should ban assault rifles!" or "Japan / Scottland / Switzerland / Israel doesn't have these gun death rates" isn't helping. And the major reason is that this isn't that big an issue. Gun Deaths account for about 1% of all deaths in the US. let me repeat that GUN DEATHS ACCOUNT FOR ONLY ABOUT 1% OF ALL DEATHS IN THE US! Heart disease accounts for about 33% Which of these sounds like a serious emergency?