Gun Deaths Outpace Motor Vehicle Deaths in 10 States in 2009 New Analysis Shows

[ConstitutionCowboy]

Does the VPC's data differentiate between murder, suicide, self defense, and accident? How can anyone rightly compare auto accident deaths to anything other than accidental deaths via other means?

Oh, right. I forgot. Sorry. The ends justify their means.

Woody

 

[Telekinesis]

Isn't it interesting how the likes of VPC and Brady Campaign never elaborate on their research methodology. Pretty much makes it all senseless blathering.

I forget which study it was, but several years ago I was able to find the actual study cited by either the VPC or Brady and it was so full of holes it should have been laughed out of the peer review before being published!

Guns are already regulated by SAMMI. We could get into an argument about mandating proofing but this isn't the place.

SAMMI is far from regulation because it sets standards which are followed voluntarily by manufacturers. No wildcat or +P+ loadings are listed/specified by SAMMI, but that doesn't make them illegal.

 

[Sky]

http://www.nramedia.org/t/590443/6565905/14712/0/

Fast forward to the present. This week, the VPC claimed that in 2009, firearm-related deaths outnumbered motor vehicle accident deaths in 10 states. It said, "Motor vehicle deaths are on the decline as the result of a successful decades-long public health-based injury prevention strategy that includes safety-related changes to vehicles and highway design informed by comprehensive data collection and analysis. Meanwhile, firearms are the only consumer product not regulated by the federal government for health and safety."

That's baloney, of course. The reason that anti-gun activists dropped their "cars and guns" propaganda more than a decade ago is that after 1993, motor vehicle accident deaths began increasing sharply, despite massive government regulation of vehicles, drivers and roads, while deaths involving firearms began decreasing. So great did the disparity between the two trends eventually become, that by 2004 there were 15,364 more motor vehicle accident deaths than all firearm-related deaths combined.

 

[happygeek]

Years ago I saw a chart showing the historical trend of firearms deaths in the US. It was sloped downwards.

And where did this data come from?

He was possibly referring to this:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/uc.../crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10shrtbl08.xls

 

[Jorg Nysgerrig]

Guns are already regulated by SAMMI. We could get into an argument about mandating proofing but this isn't the place

SAAMI is a voluntary industry association. It's a little misleading to call that regulation.

SAMMI only deals with ammunition specifications, not with the guns themselves.

You might want to let SAAMI know that, otherwise they'll keep cranking out documents like this:
http://www.saami.org/specifications_and_information/publications/download/207.pdf

But it might be that the SAMMI you two are talking about is different from the SAAMI I am thinking of.

 

[Wanderling]

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

The cars did indeed get a whole lot safer in the last 20 years. That's a good thing.

 

[brickeyee]

That works out to 60% of the firearms deaths reported by VPC are self inflicted.

This would tend to invalidate the conclusion they are driving at.

It tanks right up there with only counting cases were a gun is used to kill someone as the sole metric for using a gun defensively.

Another common shibboleth of bad studies often sourced from the left.

 

[Telekinesis]

Hmm, I stand corrected. I've only heard SAAMI mentioned in discussions about ammo, so I thought they were only involved in the proofing of loads.

 

[Cosmoline]

Alaska: 104 gun deaths, 84 motor vehicle deaths

They're absolutely, positively including suicides in this figure. So a depressed guy shoots himself in the head, and they count that as a "gun death" even though, absent a firearm, he would have just as easy a time ending his life by, say, taking a swim. Or hopping off any of our millions of cliffs. Or throwing a rope over a tree branch or joist.

If you compare accidental killings involving a firearm with accidental killings involving a car, the numbers aren't even in the same universe.

Complete hogwash, basically. What else would you expect from VPC?

 

[Forage]

I think there were something like double the amount of suicides as there were motor vehicle fatalities last year in Canada, which has less guns per person than the States. So I could see how it would be pretty easy for gun deaths to surpass traffic deaths if there were a lot more guns available.

I'm also pretty sure that Canada actually has a higher per-capita suicide rate than America, while still having way less guns per person. This does somewhat undermine any link between gun ownership and increased rates of suicide. Although you still have to consider external circumstances: ie, how many nights in a row can you sit in an igloo eating boiled moose wang in the dark before you end it all?

 

[Sky]

I'm also pretty sure that Canada actually has a higher per-capita suicide rate than America, while still having way less guns per person. This does somewhat undermine any link between gun ownership and increased rates of suicide. Although you still have to consider external circumstances: ie, how many nights in a row can you sit in an igloo eating boiled moose wang in the dark before you end it all?

Hummmmmm

 

[NavyLCDR]

Now, that's fascinating. I hadn't thought of suicides, self defense or Officer Involveds being part of the stats. Thanks.

Probably because the Violence Policy Center will never tell you that because it lessens the emotional, brain-washing impact of their statements.

 

[IndianaBoy]

VPC is a bunch of scumbags.

Their studies aren't useful for anything but lining the floor of a kennel.


When they quote firearms deaths, they include suicides, justifiable self defense killings, justifiable police shootings, gang bangers killing other gang bangers... etc.


If I recall correctly, they even include gang bangers still in their teens... (19? perhaps even older), in their data set for 'children killed by handguns'.




Biased morons desperately trying to stay relevant.

 

[Neverwinter]

When they quote firearms deaths, they include suicides, justifiable self defense killings, justifiable police shootings, gang bangers killing other gang bangers... etc.

One of these things is not like the others...

Sent using Tapatalk 2

 

[Nicky Santoro]

A new Violence Policy Center (VPC) state-by-state analysis of government data....

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. The day I believe anything that comes out of the VPC is the day pigs fly.

 

[leadcounsel]

I get annoyed with bogus stats...

For instance, it's often said that "texting while driving is responsible for more deaths than drunk driving..." Well, it doesn't take a genious to figure out that more people text and drive, and it occurs during larger periods of the 24 hour day, with more frequency, by more people, during periods of the day when there are more people statistically on the roads. Whereas drunk driving typically occurs from 10pm-4am by a small number of people when there are not as many people on the roads...

Getting back on topic, we don't know why those "gun deaths" occurred. Self defense? Police shootings? Suicides...?

Also, cars are much safer today than ever. ABS, 8 air bags, AWD, crumple zones, shatter-safe glass, better materials and crash testing proceedures, the free market making better cars, seatbelt laws, etc. 30 years ago you'd ride around in a hunk of steel with rear wheel drive and poor breaks and bald tires and steering and possibly no seatbelts being used...

 

[arizona98tj]

Read pages 39 & 40....regarding accidental gun deaths (they have a number of interesting comparisons and the data comes for the Center for Disease Control).

http://www.gunfacts.info/pdfs/gun-facts/6.1/gun_facts_6_1_screen.pdf

If you don't have a copy of this handy, download it. Put it on your hard drive, cell phone, tablet, etc. I've used it before.....it is the easiest tool to use to slap down a BS firearms discussion with a coworker, neighbor, etc.

 

[Warp]

Does the VPC's data differentiate between murder, suicide, self defense, and accident? How can anyone rightly compare auto accident deaths to anything other than accidental deaths via other means?

Oh, right. I forgot. Sorry. The ends justify their means.

Woody

BINGO.

The first thing I tell every single person who will listen, is that when evaluating statistics or numbers one must be very clear on the definition of terms. Find out how the term is defined, and then ask (yourself and the provider of the info) why that term and definition were chosen.

A very, VERY common strategy for deception from the antis is to lump all "gun violence" or "gun deaths" into one singular category with the implication that all of them were negative.

PS: Another area to especially look for this is when they use the term child or kid.

 

[mstreddy]

Folks,

VPC's data is skewed, to say the least. Obviously, they have an agenda -- an Anti-Gun agenda. The CDC has the numbers for mortality/death rates here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/mortality/lcwk9.htm. I only see up to 2008 available, but haven't dug too much. The FBI maintains crime stats that you can use to compare as well, and I'm sure the NTSB has numbers for motor vehicle accidents.
By far, the numbers from VPC are misleading at best. Yes, they seem to be including suicide, police involved shootings and the like in their "gun deaths" numbers, but I don't expect much better from them.

EM

Edit - just found the 2009 data: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/deaths_2009_release.pdf

 

[p2000sk]

http://www.drugpolicy.org/docUploads/nexus.pdf

I found this report from a search of "drug nexus" (nexus, meaning of connection). The summary is on page 13 of 17.

The antis beat their drum without filtering out the drug culture related deaths.

As an example, little Jimmy gets shot while practicing his vocation of streetcorner pharmaceutical sales. Little Jimmy dies as a result of his wounds. Little Jimmy becomes a statistical number as a gun/homicide victim.
A statistical number which happens to be used as fuel on the anti-gun fire.

If a death is relative to narcotic trafficking, how is it fair that such a number not be statistically separated in a way that it could not be used against the pro-gun community?

 

[Warp]

http://www.drugpolicy.org/docUploads/nexus.pdf

I found this report from a search of "drug nexus" (nexus, meaning of connection). The summary is on page 13 of 17.

The antis beat their drum without filtering out the drug culture related deaths.

As an example, little Jimmy gets shot while practicing his vocation of streetcorner pharmaceutical sales. Little Jimmy dies as a result of his wounds. Little Jimmy becomes a statistical number as a gun/homicide victim.
A statistical number which happens to be used as fuel on the anti-gun fire.

If a death is relative to narcotic trafficking, how is it fair that such a number not be statistically separated in a way that it could not be used against the pro-gun community?

And what I am more concerned with is when Little Jimmy attempts armed robbery to get money to pay his pharmaceutical dealer and the intended victim shoots/kills Little Jimmy. Bang...gun death. But the kind of gun death that is precisely why we do NOT want to restrict firearms ownership, and why we need to stop deceiving and misleading the general public in an attempt to disarm them

 

[Carl N. Brown]

How can anyone rightly compare auto accident deaths to anything other than accidental deaths via other means?

It bears repeating: VPC wants guns regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, like gas grills and teddy bears, with mandatory recalls of "unsafe products"; in the case of firearms, that could be declaring leveraction rifles without crossbolt safeties "unsafe".

The vast majority of gun death numbers used by VPC are intentional homicide or suicide, not accidents, and comparing those intentional deaths to deaths by auto accidents and implying additional safety features would prevent them is

 

[hAkron]

Handguns were designed SPECIFICALLY for self protection. Cars were designed for transportation. The fact that anybody is shocked that guns were responsible for more deaths than cars in only 10 of the 50 states is a horrifying commentary on how unsafe cars are.

 

[mortablunt]

The VPC counts suicides, which are the majority of gun fatalities. Without suicides, cars kill 3x times as many people.

 

[Shimitup]

Having given this some thought, my safety is guaranteed by any gun I own. I have absolute certainty that I can load any one of them and pull the trigger and it will go bang every time. Why in the world would I want CPSC messing with a perfect track record like that.