Steve Spencer
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 p.4 #16 · Bag for Camera & Gun - Wait, hear me out! | |
trebuchet wrote:
My question to you is, How many people are killed in this country every day by legal gun owners with legally owned firearms.
I don't think anyone can answer your specific question, because when the FBI that compiles the statistics on gun deaths collects the data they don't collect whether the gun was legally owned in examining each death. Let me summarize what is know about gun deaths in the U.S. About 30,000 people a year die as a result of being shot. About 55 percent of these deaths are suicides, about 40 percent are homicides (This is a homicide in the way coroners classify a death, it does not necessary mean a murder. It means that one person intentionally caused the death of another, but this may be justifiable homicide or self-defense, etc.) and the rest are unclassified or accidents. If you want these numbers broken down by day there are about 84 people a day who die as a result of being shot each day, 46 suicides, 34 homicides, and 4 accidents or unclassified deaths.
As a comparison there are about 45,000 motor vehicle deaths a year, 15,000 people who die from falls, 4,000 people who drown, 3000 people who die in fires, and 500 who die from electrocution.
There are arguments that suggest that gun ownership may be related to increased deaths. The primary evidence is that when comparing across countries the more legally owned guns in a country the higher the homicide rate. The trouble with all such relationships, however, is that it is hard to know what causes what. In countries that have higher legal gun ownership there is also probably much higher illegal gun ownership (although this is of course hard to quantify--you don't get a straight answer on a survey when you ask people the question of how many illegal guns they own). There are also compelling counter examples to the general trend. For example, Israel has an extremely high rate of legal gun ownership (much higher than the U.S.), but an extremely low rate of homicide deaths by guns. How do you interpret this unusual case? Well it might be that the very high implementation of security measures in Israel dramatically lowers the homicide deaths by guns, which seems fairly reasonable. Others, however, note that all Israeli citizens (both men and women) are required to serve two years in the military as early adults and therefore get a fairly sophisticated education in how to handle a gun and its proper use.
So, there are obviously strong opinions on both sides of this issue and the data in my mind do not clearly resolve the issue. On a personal note, I don't have any axe to grind in this debate. I grew up in the U.S. and had six or seven guns (no hand guns, however because I could never shoot them a lick). I enjoyed having the guns and shooting them. Now, however, I lived in Canada for about 12 years and don't have a gun and have not bothered to go through the hassle of trying to get one. I don't miss it much at all and I appreciate that Canada has a murder rate that is 1/10th per capita (overall 1/100th) the murder rate in the U.S. That is a good thing whether or not it is caused by more restrictions on guns or not.
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