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If you listen to the media, you know the United States is in the middle of a crisis. Blood is running in the streets. Children are dying. Violence is at epidemic levels. And to the anti gun contingent, this is no surprise. After all, by some estimates, there is a gun for every man, woman and child in the United States of America. This makes the people who would like to control the average citizen a bit nervous. The elites, after all, study history. And history shows that if a populace is pushed too far, they tend to revolt. And in the history of the world, there is no more heavily armed populace than the American people of the early twenty first century . . .

So there are people who would like to change that. People who would like that to whip up emotional fervor, confuse the facts at every opportunity and push the civil disarmament agenda forward.

If you listen to the antis talk, you’d think guns are the number one threat to life, health and soundness of limb in these early years of the New Century. So let’s take a look.

The Centers for Disease Control keeps track of what kills us year by year. The latest statistics they have up are for 2013. According to the CDC, two million, five hundred and ninety six thousand people died in 2013. That was out of a population of three hundred and sixteen million. So what was the big killer in 2013? Firearms, right?

Nope. Heart disease was the number one killer. It killed 611,105 people and accounted for 23.5% of all deaths in the US. Despite accounting for nearly a quarter of all deaths, heart disease only gets the occasional mention in the media. The president doesn’t give solemn speeches telling us “something must be done, politics be damned.” No former New York City mayor billionaires wage personal crusades against our nation’s number one killer.The are no Moms Demanding Against Heart Disease. I think the American Heart Association buys the occasional ad in off peak hours on basic cable from time to time.

Still, gun deaths have to be near the top of the list. Gun violence is an epidemic, right? Maybe it’s number two?

Not hardly. Cancer of all kinds takes the number two slot, having killed 584,881 Americans in 2013, accounting for 22.5% of all deaths. To be fair, cancer awareness is pretty high. It gets talked about a lot. Maybe as much as guns. After all, the NFL wears pink every October. So there’s that at least. Still, guns must be next on the list.

Yeah, no. Chronic respiratory diseases take the number three slot at 149,205 fatalities accounting for 5.7% of all 2013 deaths, and I won’t even pretend there’s any kind of media drumbeat for those. That’s followed by stroke at 128,978 deaths (4.9%). Alzheimer’s killed 84,767 (3.2%), diabetes accounted for 75,578 (2.9%) and the flu and pneumonia killed 56,979 (2.1%) and kidney failure ended 47112 lives (1.8%)

If you’re seeing a pattern here, that’s because there is one. Disease is the big killer in America. “But,” the dedicated anti-gunner will cry, “Those aren’t violent deaths.” As if watching your loved one waste away because of cancer or Alzheimer’s isn’t a violence to the soul. As if having your dignity robbed from you as your body betrays you and fails isn’t just as terrible as any “gun violence.”

But alright. Let’s take a look at untimely deaths caused by something other than disease.

Accidents claimed 130,557 lives in 2013, which accounted for 5% of all deaths. Those are all accidents, whether they were auto accidents, drownings, slipping in the shower, or, yes, getting accidentally shot.

Breaking it down, poisoning deaths killed 48,545 people, 1.8% of the total death toll. Drug overdose killed 43,982 people (1.6%), though the CDC notes that 35,663 (1.3%) were unintentional. The rest were suicides. Motor vehicle deaths killed 33,804 (1.3%).

And finally, ranking dead last (pun intended) are firearms fatalities. In 2013, a bullet from a gun killed 33,364 people, accounting for 1.2% of all deaths in the US.

But it breaks down even further. The CDC keeps track of suicide deaths by type, and in 2013, 21,175 people chose to end their lives with a firearm, leaving 12,189 non-suicide firearms deaths, which account for .4% of the total death toll. And that .4% makes up all non-suicide gun deaths, including murder as well as justified self defense use.

At this point, an anti-gunner would say, “But if you took the guns away, they wouldn’t commit suicide!”

Which leads to South Korea. South Korea has some of the most restrictive gun laws on the planet. The only firearms allowed to the citizenry are rifles and shotguns for hunting. They must be registered and when not being used, all firearms must be stored at the local police station. Civilian gun ownership in South Korea is effectively nonexistent. Yet South Korea has a national suicide rate of 28.5 per 100,00, over twice the rate of the United States, where the suicide rate is 12.6 per 100,000. The moral: those who want to kill themselves find a way, gun or no gun.

Anti-gunners depend on fear and emotion. They continue to press a civil disarmament agenda that ignores the fact that guns are literally the least lethal problem facing the American public. The argument that taking away guns will prevent suicide is laughably false. Suicide is tragic, but someone determined to kill themselves will always find a way. Guns are hardly necessary for someone determined to end their life.

Guns get portrayed as one of the largest problems facing the US. A problem equal to the number two killer, cancer, at least judging by the amount it’s talked about. The fact is, the civilian disarmers don’t care about your lives or your heath. American citizens dying by the hundreds of thousands of heart attacks doesn’t threaten their designs on control. People overdosing on prescription drugs doesn’t threaten their agenda, either.

But the American citizenry owning firearms in record numbers does.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

79 COMMENTS

  2. When you look at the accidental deaths of children; after all, it is all about the children. For those 14 and younger, accidental deaths by gun is at the bottom of the list; below death by drowning in bathtubs, buckets and pools; poisoning by drinking chemicals from under the sink, by falls and by auto accidents.

  3. Nicely done! That’s the end game of gun control: people control. Sadly, the antis are unwilling to see it for what it is and chug the koolaid “for the children”.

    • Those financially and politically driving the grabber flock absolutely see gun control ► confiscation for what it is, even if their programmed minions do not.

  5. Cancer and heart disease are NOT fully preventable There are millions of folks worldwide with either a genetic disposition toward cancer or congenital heart disease. Of course NOT eating a lard cake for lunch a la Michael Moore can lower your risk for heart failure as can regular light exercise and sensible diet. That does not mean a baconless life or never eating a cheeseburger but all things in moderation.

    A chain smoker like Algore runs a greater cancer risk than a casual social cigar smoker but a snuff guy really risks oral cancer. It’s all in choices but choice is anathema to Utopian thinking.

    Ray

    • Algore’s going to be OK as long as he can keep getting his second chakra released. Then he can continue funding his search for ManBearPig with all that Al Jazeera cash.

    • Cancer and heart disease are NOT fully preventable

      I don’t know what “fully” means, but cancer and heart disease are preventable. In fact, there was a time in America when coronary heart disease and cancer were virtually unknown. We won’t be able to turn back the clock, and the reasons for rampant heart disease and cancer are myriad, but both can be prevented.

      • Uh, what?

        en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cancer#Early_diagnoses

        And cancer is not 100% preventable. There are genetic and environmental factors to predisposition of cancer.

        And misdiagnosis does not mean that cancer or heart disease did not exist.

      • For most people cancer and heart disease are diseases of old age. !00 years ago fewer people made it to the age where you were prone to these two killers.

      • Yup back when people didn’t live long enough to die from cancer..

        The problem with charts like the one seen in this article is they don’t actually show cause and effect. Yup the chart shows that cancer and heart disease are the number one killers but what the authors failed to do is include the metrics that would have indicated cause and effect, basically making the chart and any assertions based on it useless.

        This article is a perfect example proving how easily unethical individuals can misinterpret scientific data for partisan political purposes.

        As I mentioned this chart is very deceptive as it doesn’t indicate cause and effect. Over at PubMed I read the study that this data was unethically taken from and What that study really told us was that people today are living long enough that cancer and heart disease end up killing them where previously people generally didn’t lived long enough to die of cancer or heart disease.

        Now remember there was a time in this country not to long ago where living to the ripe old age of 25 was considered a long time. And if you managed to make it to 35 well you where an old man. There was a time in this country where typhoid and cholera were the primary cause of death and if you think crime today is bad then you might want to open a history book and take a look at the Gold rush era which makes today’s crime rate look as scary as a childrens ride at Disney Land

    • Actually, that’s debatable, if anthropological studies can be believed. Throughout most civilizations for which a shift from meat/vegetable-based diet to grain-based diet can be discerned, heart disease and cancer incidence is exceedingly low when the primary diet is meat and vegetable-based, and heart disease and cancer incidence rises within a generation or so of a shift to a grain-based diet.

      I’ll be happy to post sources when I’m back at home.

      • There is more and more emerging research indicating that sugars and starches are what lead to most heat disease. Basically spiking blood sugar levels at each meal causes blood vessels to inflame, which makes cholesterol stick, and eventually block an artery. It sends to have started with studies that lowering cholesterol with medications did not effectively lower heart attack risk. In short, if the cholesterol doesn’t stick, there’s no issue.

        The research is still preliminary add far as I know, but it makes sense and is pretty promising.

        • The research into the connection between sugars/starch and obesity/heart disease predates the current, decades-old low-fat emphasis (which actually has almost no actual supporting research). See Ralph’s comment referencing Ancel Keyes, who’s cherry-picked Seven Countries study overturned then-conventional medical knowledge regarding the sugar/starch connection to obesity/heart disease.

          P.S. cholesterol doesn’t “stick” to blood vessels, causing a blockage. Rather, the vessel cell wall ruptures, causing cholesterol to erupt into the inside of the vessel, causing the blockage. Serum cholesterol levels have almost nothing to do with that occurrence, either. (And that’s as far as I’ll attempt to go in explaining; I did not sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night.)

      • ” heart disease and cancer incidence is exceedingly low when the primary diet is meat and vegetable-based, and heart disease and cancer incidence rises within a generation or so of a shift to a grain-based diet.”

        What you and everyone else who propagates this paleo snake oil nonsense fails to mention is that the human life spans dramatically increased as our diets shifted away from meat and to a more balanced diet.

        Its fairly well established that reason cancer and heart disease seem to have increased is because we are living much longer then ever before. Cancer and Heart disease weren’t primary killers during our meat eating days because humans basically didn’t live long enough back then for cancer or heart disease to kill them.

        It wasn’t that long ago when you were considered lucky if you lived to the ripe old age of 35. Life expectancy in the US has more than doubled since the 1900 and its more than tippled since man learned to farm grains. In fact there is a direct correlation between our increased lifespan and the introduction of grains to our diets. Interesting how people pushing this caveman diet BS like to ignore these historical facts.

  6. In other words, I am eight times more likely to kill myself when compared to being killed by a bullet. After all, killing yourself is illegal.

  7. “a bullet from a gun killed 33,364 people, accounting for 1.2% of all deaths in the US.”

    That was just ONE bullet! Wow! Now I get what the gun-control people are going on about! Those bullets are DANGEROUS! And EVIL! And an AR high-dispenser capacity clipped magazine coupon can shoot 30 per second! At least!

    Now, having channeled Michael Bloomberg, I need to find some brain bleach…

  8. I pull out this same study when I hear folks going on and on about venomous snake bites and shark attacks; your tub is more likely to kill you…or your horse, cow, dog, etc. Some people just need to be scared to make their insignificant existence somewhat more interesting.

  9. I think the numbers are interesting if you think about firearm fatalities as a percentage of all guns owned in the US. So 12,189 non-suicide firearm fatalities over a denominator of 300,000,000 US firearms? That means .004% of firearms in the US caused a non-suicide fatality.

    If you do the same thing for cars, you will find that 33,804 deaths per 254.4 million cars means .013% of cars in the US caused a fatality in a given year.

    Which means (drumroll please)… cars are 3 times as deadly as firearms. So let’s join Moms Demanding Action Against Automobiles today! For the children!

    • Let’s work the stats in our favor:

      Assume that each suicide, accidental shooting, and murder used only one round. And that of the 300 million guns in the U.S., 1/3 is used per year, and is fired 100 times. Hunters might fire far less, while enthusiasts could fire thousands. Let’s just start somewhere! That’s ~ 32,000 rounds.

      Since I can’t keep the numbers straight (100 million or 300 million guns?), let’s assume 100 million guns in the U.S., multiplied by 100 fired rounds per year.

      That comes out to….0.0000012, or 0.00012% of bullets actually kill.

  10. There are lots of interesting things about actual vs perceived risk, which speak to this.

    Ironically, it can often be the lower probability risks that dominate our thoughts – someone mentioned shark attacks, for instance – because they are less familiar. Travel via car vs airplane is another classic example.

    Anyway, the basic problem is that the old joke about “don’t confuse me with the facts” really isn’t a joke. Reversing misperception about this sort of thing can be darned near impossible. Just try convincing someone who doesn’t believe in vaccinating their kids, for instance.

    • Yep. Just look at the fear of mass shootings. I’ve met more than one person who is absolutely petrified of a crazed gunman, despite the fact that mass shooting fatalities can be rounded down to zero.

  11. In data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2010 out of 150,000 recorded deaths, only THIRTY (30) were caused by firearms.

    Cycling accidents killed 45 people, and intentional self-harm killed over 2,300.

    But according to the media, the anti-gun groups, and The Greens political party, legal firearm owners are the cause of blood flowing in the streets, the constant drive-by shootings, armed robberies, being prospective domestic terrorists worse than the extremes of ISIL, the Sydney cafe siege, and the general breakdown of society.

  12. Well, well, well. So death by gun does not even make THEIR big list. So all those young black men are not dying from high velocity penetrative injuries? Or do they just not give a f**k how they die, so long as they get political capital out of it? I’d say it is #2.

  16. The gun banner’s consider suicide by gun to be gun violence. I only consider it gun violence if it’s one person trying to harm another. The way I see it if someone wants to kill themselves they will find a way.

    • I had two friends who killed themselves. One hung himself and the other jumped off a tall building. The death wish will always find a way, even if it’s a horrible way.

  18. I found it interesting that they would note “unintentional” overdose deaths by drugs which seperates suicides. However, that means every addict that snorts, shoots, pops, etc just a little more than they should have trying to have a good time and end up dead counts as “unintentional” because they didnt try to die.

    Then why not seperate the “unintentional” gun deaths? Im sure a 5 year old who finds and plays with a gun and ends up shooting his sibling was no more intentional than some junky off the street overdosing. How about some bonehead who kills himself while cleaning his shotgun? This was intentional? I would say less so than pumping too much heroine into your arm.

    If you seperate the negligent discharges and accidental shootings (all “unintentional”) as well as the above mentioned justified defensive shootings from true homicide that number gets considerably lower.

  19. First, these numbers show that gun-involved deaths are astonishingly low and proves every Media Pundit, News Writer, Gun Grabber and anyone else who claims gun-involved deaths are a “epidemic” is nothing but a willful liar.

    Second, if you want to better understand the Number 1 killer, Heart Disease, (and related illnesses) check into Dr. David Perlmutter’s book GRAIN BRAIN, He explains the mechanisms of what happens to proteins, fats, cholesterol, starches, sugars and fiber inside your Body very clearly. Huis work is well-documented and cites many resources.

  20. Not only does South Korea have very restrictive firearm laws but they’re no stranger to mass shootings. There have been numerous occasions where ROK soldiers have gone on a rampage killing their fellow soldiers.

    • yeah, not every guy in S.Korea is particularly happy about getting conscripted into the military. Not that it makes murderous rampages OK, though my Korean homies like to joke that blood rage is a genetic gift of their ancestry. Or to quote my S.Korean friend who once proudly declared, “We like to fight, drink, and war against our brothers in the north. We’re like the Irish of Asia.”

      • The Irish of Asia… That explains a lot. My understanding is that the Japanese leadership from circa 1860 to 1930 consciously tried to remodel their society somewhat after the British due to perceived similarities in geography and cultural psychology. Except they got to the empire building phase and were a little too enthusiastic about it and had to be reined in. Now go look at a map. What small country is directly west of England? Ireland. What’s West of Japan..?

        So does this make Hokkaido the Scotland of Asia?

        Back on topic: I’d like to see the non-suicide deaths by firearm broken down into self-defense and non.

  21. “The fact is, the civilian disarmers don’t care about your lives or your heath. American citizens dying by the hundreds of thousands of heart attacks doesn’t threaten their designs on control.”

    But wait. There must be SOME way that we can improve our marketing to civilian disarmers. No?

  24. Spend more time trying to cure my Diabetes than trying to take guns away from law abiding citizens. I got it when I was 27 and in the best shape of my life. Genetics and some ‘switch’ that just flipped. 30+ MILLION Diabetics that are each averaging $25,000 per year in diabetes related care, at least. This includes Child Diabetics too. Not all Diabetics contract the degenerative disease as older, overweight people. Why cure it when each of us is a Medical Credit card for all the drug and care companies?

  25. I don’t know if someone already said this but a billionaire mayor did try to intervene in this other diseases by banning crazy big sodas and making bars and restaurants smoke free. His position on guns is of a piece with these others. The libertarian strain of gun people no more want government action against these diseases than again guns, right?

  26. Of those 33,364 fire arm fatalities, how many were LEO’s? Border Patrol, ICE, Coast Guard, ATF, FBI… add them all in to the equation and…
    Then, the number grows smaller.
    Not small enough for the Anti’s. But then what else will they cry about?

  27. The CDC using 33,364 is disingenious. After all, ~20,000 pf those deaths are suicides, and likely counted in the suicides as well. And ~500 of those deaths are accidents/negligent discharges, and probably counted in the accidents as well.

  28. No. 1 cause of death … stupidity…but they don’t really track that.

    I’ll bet that Home Depot sells more dangerous and deadly items than all of the FFLs.

    Message brought to you by Dads Demand Action for Tool Sense in America (a movement to bring shop class and rifle club back to America’s schools). 🙂

  29. Wonder what percentage of violent deaths by firearm would be if we took the inner city gang related violence out of these statistics? Separate out violent deaths by gangs versus non-gang related violent deaths. My understanding is that most of the violence in the inner cities is due to gang related activity. And those inner city gang deaths are typically in areas with very tight gun control laws. What does that tell us?

    • That would put us at about the same murder rate as Lichtenstein. We don’t have a high murder rate in the US, we have one in the inner cities run by Democrats.

  30. “The elites, after all, study history. And history shows that if a populous is pushed too far, they tend to revolt.”

    You can easily identify the self-anointed “elites” in America by seeing which group goes into a slobbering, drooling love fest whenever a member of the inbred British “Royal Family” deigns to visit the American colonies. “OOOOH A Prince!” The same chattering classes who referred to JFK Jr. as “America’s Crown Prince” when the idiot found out that the law of gravity even applies to a Kennedy.

    And the elites are sure that we peasants are, in fact, quite revolting.

  31. Maybe if they had some Heart Disease and Cancer Free Zones there would be a reduction in those statistics? Too much to ask? Think of the children, whose parents would be around more.

  32. It should be pointed out that the gun death statistics from the CDC also includes those as a result of legal law enforcement.. i.e. police shootings. Thus the actual statistic related to citizen (non law enforcement/government) is less. Whether that sum is significant or not, I do not know. I just know it is even lower.

  33. It’s not about what’s the number one cause of death in America. Everyone knows that America has the highest obesity rate in the world, which leads to many of the disease that cause our death. The point is there are things that are preventable and things that aren’t. A person’s health is an individuals responsibility. If they want a longer life, then eat healthy, workout, live a happy life..whatever. But gun violence is something that is prevalent in our community. Lord knows how many deaths occur intentionally and unintentionally due to gun violence. Gun violence has taken away countless lives in our societies and that’s something we as a community are responsible for cause GUN RELATED DEATHS ARE PREVENTABLE. But that’s only if we as a community take action to protect each other. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have guns. I’m saying, we need to implement strict gun control in order to prevent those unnecessary deaths. But of course there are people that only care about themselves and can careless about how many lives a gun takes, cause hey if it’s not you or a loved one, then it doesn’t matter right?

    • So-called “gun violence” is perpetrated by violent criminals who have no qualms about breaking laws. Therefore I must ask: how will strict gun control prevent said violent criminals from committing “gun violence”?

      And where implemented, where has the efficacy of strict gun control been demonstrated? Chicago? New York City? Washington D.C.?

      • “Violent criminals”? So what’s your definition of a violent criminal? Thugs, gangsters, drug dealers? What about those students that go shooting up schools? And what about those that gun down innocent people based on their skin color, race, religion, how they dress (ex: the chapel hill shooting, shooting of trayvon martin)? We don’t know who will want to go around shooting people! What if you or I went into a certain location and just started shooting people? I’m not a violent criminal and I don’t think you are either. But there is no way of knowing if we are capable of doing such a thing unless the government makes obtaining a gun strict.

        • “Violent criminals”? So what’s your definition of a violent criminal? Thugs, gangsters, drug dealers?

          Murder, rape, kidnapping – those classes of crime are what I would consider violent.

          What about those students that go shooting up schools?

          Statistically irrelevant. And if you want to eliminate them, stop making schools defenseless-victim, free-fire areas known as “Gun Free Zones.”

          And what about those that gun down innocent people based on their skin color, race, religion, how they dress (ex: the chapel hill shooting, shooting of trayvon martin)?

          The Chapel Hill shooting was perpetrated by a violent psycho who was triggered by his OCD obsession over a parking space; it had nothing to do with race/religion. Trayvon Martin was shot in self-defense, because he assaulted George Zimmerman, and in so doing committed a forcible felony and reasonably put Zimmerman in mortal fear.

          Inter-racial murder accounts for well under 10% of all murder. Over 90% of black murder victims are killed by black assailants. Over 80% of white murder victims are killed by white assailants. In any case, vast majority of murder involves gang and drug-related violence.

          We don’t know who will want to go around shooting people! What if you or I went into a certain location and just started shooting people? I’m not a violent criminal and I don’t think you are either. But there is no way of knowing if we are capable of doing such a thing…

          You appear to be in favor of prior restraint, which is unconstitutional and a violation of rights.

          …unless the government makes obtaining a gun strict.

          Criminals do not have any problems obtaining firearms, regardless of laws in effect. Criminals, by and large, get their firearms through means that bypass laws and government restrictions.

          The only people inconvenienced by strict government laws are law-abiding citizens.

          What specific law or laws will keep firearms out of the hands of criminals? For any such laws: where (if anywhere) have they been tried, and what has been their efficacy?

    • So, your solution is slavery. You planning to be the “master” and command who is to die and who is allowed to crawl on their knees and worship your sh*t? Don’t think so, leftard.

      • Sweetheart you must have mistakenly wrote your response to a different post on mine. If not, then poor baby your reasoning is child-like. Slavery and worship? HAHAAHA, stop it. I got tears in my eyes.

        • The really sad part is until we create a test that weeds out mental defective socialist f*cks like you the Human Race will not be able to take its next evolutionary step forward. We will. Don’t doubt that, you socialist c*nt, we will. Science, real science, is our best weapon against you sub-human f*cks.

    • Najia, despite your claim, the actual CDC numbers show that gun violence is not prevalent in the U.S. And those CDC numbers actually do count those lives you called “countless.” Not only does the Lord know how many deaths are due to guns, so do we. When the truth does not match up to the claim, you cannot simply appeal to emotion. That is a logical fallacy and people are right to call you out on it.

      As far as homicide and suicide? No. We do not, as a society, have to take any sort of personal responsibility for those actions. Each person is responsible for his or her own actions. There my be social factors. There may be injustice. Nevertheless, at the end of the day – short of criminal manipulation – that person chose to kill. There is no basis to make a claim that restricting guns will restrict these forms of violence.

      Of the 130,557 lives lost to accidents, the author neglected to note how many of those were gun related. Ready for it? 505. From a population statistics perspective, gun accidents really don’t occur in the U.S.

      There is a real cowardice in claims like you are making. You want to treat the symptom, not the cause. You focus on the gun rather than the violence. If you want the impact that you claim, you need to shift that focus. Be warned though, you will find that when you look at the root causes of violence – that actual root causes – you will have to face data that is highly politically incorrect.

      • Your right, data are “highly politically incorrect”. But then why are you claiming “the actual CDC numbers show that gun violence is not prevalent in the U.S. And those CDC numbers actually do count those lives you called “countless.”” and “Of the 130,557 lives lost to accidents, the author neglected to note how many of those were gun related. Ready for it? 505. From a population statistics perspective, gun accidents really don’t occur in the U.S.”? Tell me which fallacy or fallacies you’ve committed darling since you seem to know so much? The straw man fallacy, burden of proof, appeal to ignorance, begging the question maybe? HA and claiming that you know how many deaths are due to guns, when have you are we become the all-seeing, the all-hearing? No, there is a real cowardice in claims like you are making. Correct your premises before you present your invalid argument.

        And I’m assuming that you don’t want gun ownership since you have stated that it’s not our responsibility to make our communities safer. After all why do people want to own a gun, to insure their own safety right? Why do people want to restrict gun control, do insure their own safety right? It all boils down to safety, whether it’s for your own safety or for others safety. Since you don’t need or want safety in your community, even for your own self there is no reason for you to own a gun. You should be safe now :).

        • 1. Actually, I said the resulting follow-up study data will likely yield results that will be politically incorrect. I said nothing about the CDC raw data on which I’m commenting.

          2. Accusation is not substantiation. Speak to the data and the calculations. If there are logical errors, feel free to point it out. Histrionics do not warrant a response.

          3. CDC data such as this is generally accepted as Truth for the sake of the kind of analysis being done here within the epidemiological and medical communities. The caveat of potential error is well understood by any competent professional in the field. My usage is consistent with those practices.

          4. There’s no correction needed to the premise. The original poster’s article sets the premise that based on the recorded data, there is not a epidemic or prevalence of “gun violence.” I’ve not introduced anything new. Again, if you have an issue, it is with the data and that is what you should address.

          5. Actually, yes. I do know quite a bit. Especially about this kind of data analysis and logic since that is a large part of my profession for the last 30+ years. However, that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the question remains where the data and/or conclusion based upon it are wrong.

          6. I’ve never mentioned community safety nor does the original poster. The context of the article is epidemiological rather than about “safe communities,” so there’s really not a reason for it to enter into this aspect of the conversation. Just to indulge in the diversion, however, I will add that safety is far from the only reason we own guns. In fact, considering that I live in a very safe neighborhood, it’s actually rather lower on the list. Why one owns guns would be an interesting conversation elsewhere, though…

          As an observation to others who may be reading this; this is a good example why those who support gun control are losing the long game. Refuting the person rather than the data doesn’t win arguments, especially in writing. It’s also why I tell people to take the high road. I’m seriously considering using this thread as an example in at an apologetics organization with which I’m involved.

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