Originally posted by backyard guru
All these shootings that are taking place, scare the living crap out of me.
It might help ease your mind to know that "all these shootings" are actually very few and very far between. There is
no epidemic of
gun-related death in America, although the American Medical Association and Centers for Disease Control have
tried to convince lawmakers that
such an
epidemic exists.
Please keep in mind that our American press also sensationalizes gun violence
far beyond any actual threat to the population. If you want a
more objective perspective on gun-related death in America, you need look no farther than the U.S. Census, which compiles many arcane and interesting
statistics on death in this country.
According to the U.S. Census, only about 1% of all fatalities (deaths due to mishap or assault) can be attributed to firearms. That's not 1% of the
entire population, that's 1% of those who die by other than natural means. So, of all the people who are accidentally or intentionally killed every
year in America, only
1% die by gunshot.
Here's where the U.S. Census puts things in perspective: Only 1% of fatalities in America are due to firearms. You are
5 times more likely
to die by
suffocation with a plastic bag over your head. You are
40 times more likely to die in a car wreck.
So, do plastic bags scare the living crap out of you? Knowing what you know now, will you stop driving your car? Well. Of course not.
Like airplane crashes, gun-related deaths get
a lot more press than they deserve, and the hysteria-driven press
is intended to frighten
you. That's because those kinds of deaths are at the extreme end of our imagination. That's what makes them newsworthy, because they are so
sensational and out of the norm. I mean, as horrific as a jetliner crash may seem, flying is
still the
safest way to travel — a
hell of a lot safer than driving your SUV down to the grocery store, in fact. So, like airplane crashes, gun-related deaths are blown out of
all proportion in the press, creating the
illusion that the threat is far greater than it actually is.
But hold on, let's take this a step further.
Do you realize that over 80 million Americans
legally own some 220 million firearms? That's
220,000,000 guns, emphasizing the zeros.
This is a greater number of firearms than many, many
combined military forces. The United States military doesn't have even a
tenth of
that firepower.
A
tenth of that firepower — only 22 million guns — could overthrow all of Central America and Canada in one afternoon, if the guns were all
pointed in the proper directions. We are talking about American citizens privately owning the largest arsenal that the world has ever seen. American
citizens, if sufficiently motivated, could overthrow
whole nations by force of arms.
Yet.
Yet, only 1% of all fatalities in America are gun-related.
How is it possible that a population so heavily armed is
at greater
risk of suffocating with plastic bags over our heads??
The answer is simple — the vast, vast majority of American gun owners are intelligent, educated, and tolerant. We know our firearms, we know our
rights, and we respect the law. We're
not hot-heads, we're
not trigger-happy, we're
not hicks and racists and hillbillies and
all the other pejorative terms thrown at us by the anti-gun movement.
We
are going to be the last ones standing, I can promise that — not because we own and use guns, but because
we have backbones.
— Doc Velocity
[edit on 3/13/2009 by Doc Velocity]