“Along with schools, hospitals, churches, and government buildings, America’s businesses have become contested terrain as gun-rights groups battle reformers over the public spaces in which firearms can be legally wielded,” The Trace’s ever-so-helpful email blast proclaims (leaving the definition of “reformer” unspecified). “When state laws open retail and hospitality establishments to their customers’ guns, they also create the potential for those guns to go off inside.” Yup . . .

Guns “going off” — ’cause that’s what guns do! What The Trace does oh-so-well: seize on any firearms-related injury or death as proof that civilian disarmament must be “reformed” out of existence. Don’t ask for whom the [death and injury] toll bells, it bells for gun control. Or something like that.

So far this year, 71 people have been unintentionally shot at businesses across the United States, according to Gun Violence Archive data. Seven of the shootings proved deadly.

The locations include hotels, grocery stores, gas stations, theaters, and fast-food restaurants where Americans conduct their daily affairs. The total works out to about one person every four days. And it does not factor in the additional 28 people who have been shot — one fatally — at businesses where the presence of guns would be expected, such as gun ranges and gun stores.

The bottom line: according to the stats above, you’re 21 times more likely to be accidentally shot — or shoot yourself — in a grocery store than a strip club. Of course, there are other dangers: salmonella vs. syphilis. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

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46 COMMENTS

  2. The bottom line: according to the stats above, you’re 21 times more likely to be accidentally shot — or shoot yourself — in a grocery store than a strip club.

    That’s not how math works.

    I’m going to go out on a limb, and guess that there are more grocery stores, and greater patronage of grocery stores, than strip clubs – by an order or two of magnitude.

    *checks the google*

    Oh, shocker: there are 4,000 strip clubs in the US with an annual revenue of $3 billion, compared to almost 40,000 grocery stores with an annual revenue of $121 billion.

  3. This is one of those things where I just wonder what you can do about it. There are always a subset of idiots too irresponsible to handle even slightly dangerous things. No amount of mandatory/recurring training is going to fix that…

    • Don’t hang around with stupid people doing stupid stuff in stupid places and that problem kind of handles itself.

      • While I fully support the 2nd Amendment; including the right to carry – I have to take issue with your statement.

        “Don’t hang around with stupid people doing stupid things, in stupid places”.

        Is hardly a good response. The grocery store, is not a stupid place, it is practically essential for modern living. Stupid people? Sure, but the problem is identifying them in the nameless faceless mobs of the public.

        • You can still mitigate the chances by when you shop and how long you stay. Several chains are now offering a sort of delivery where you place an order online and drive to the store and they bring the groceries out to your car. I do this because I have 3 kids all in carseats and taking them all shopping is a pain in the dick for me. But it also limits the amount of time I spend at Walmart and the amount of people I interact with. Plus, it cuts down on impulse purchases. So it’s easily a 3fer.

        • You can identify them because they are the ones that shoot themselves or others in grocery stores or strip clubs.

    • Freedom can be very messy. Though it is not even close to be as messy as liberal logic, (insert non) liberal math, or pretty much anything attached to a liberal snowflake, whiny little socialist wanna be progressive.

      Antifa uses facist tactics to supposedly fight fascism. They want cheaper health care by making it more expensive. They tax sugar drinks in Philly and can’t figure out how it doesn’t work in raising money. Tax ammo in Washington State and same results.

      These morons have no concept of denominations of dollars. Tax a millionaire a higher percent to pay off Trillions. Will never work.

  5. I once had an “accidental discharge” at a strip clib once, but I was like….REALLY YOUNG, I had just turned 15! Don’t judge me!!!!!

      • “At my age, I need 24 hours or at least a long nap.”

        Less alcohol vastly improves the performance of ‘Mr.Happy’, Mike.

        *cough* 🙂

        (On the other hand, careful titration of ETOH to the bloodstream can work wonders for a hair-trigger. The problem is, knowing when to stop the intake is damn tough when under the effects of the ‘medicine’. Then you have a very annoyed guest on your hands…)

  6. They don’t mention the location (states or cities) where these accidents took place. Chicago, L.A., NYC? Were they too embarrassed to own up that liberals run those locations?

    • You ain’t kidding. I’m never quite sure if I’m in an Other or not…they don’t tend to have good signage. Maybe the Trace should write up an expose on it.

  8. Well my local grocery stores are a freakin’ nightmare. Maybe not getting shot but getting run over or in a fender bender. Oh and none have a “no beretta( or taurus)” sign.

    • Or people dying on the craper like Elvis! Always wanted to know that because it would be a great stat to compare other deadly activity to. If it is safer than taking a crap, well that is safe enough for me.

  10. * Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year — or about 6,850 times a day. [1] This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives. [2]

    * Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.[3]

    * As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.[4]

    * Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of “Guns in America” — a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.[5]

    * Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606).[6] And readers of Newsweek learned that “only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The ‘error rate’ for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high.”[7]

    * Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. Citizens use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year. [8] Many of these self-defense handguns could be labeled as “Saturday Night Specials.”

    https://www.gunowners.org/sk0802htm.htm

  12. This is one of those charts that you look at and think “this could gain traction” and then you look at it again and laugh because you just realized they shot themselves in the foot (pun not intended, but I will allow it). They are trying to show how dangerous guns are, right? Yet if you ask most people what they expect to see in a grocery store a gun won’t break the top 50. Yet if you ask the same question about a gun range guns would be at the top of the list as well as people shooting guns. The point is if guns are soooooo dangerous than why are just as likely to be shot at the grocery store compared to a place where hot lead is flying in a continuous stream. Hell if I owned a gun range and was trying to get hesitant people to try shooting I would reference this and say look you are just as likely to catch a round at Kroger vs here.

  13. I think we should ban parking lots in those places. How many people have had accidents in parking lots, or been hit by cars?

  14. “gun-rights groups battle reformers over the public spaces in which firearms can be legally wielded,”

    Are there any such places, at all? My understanding for many, many years has been your firearm must remain in your holster, whether concealed or not, unless you are defending against n attack. I have not yet “wielded” my EDC firearm, EVER, I carry it and that is all. IOW, I call bullshit on the entire thrust of this rag.

  15. So a bit more than 100 incidents. Well that’s pretty damn LOW given we’re a nation of 350 million with 100 million armed individuals up to about 25 million of which have CCWs.

  16. It’s interesting they didn’t seem to include the numbers from the Little Rock club shooting. Maybe these numbers are only for Caucasians.

    If they included open air crack dealerships I think grocery stores would seem pretty safe.

  17. Ok, Another report of Left-wing Liberal Progressive Propaganda tool, and agitprop….Nothing new to see folks…Spread the truth, defeat the 5 th Column, and Move-on !

  18. According to the chart, 8 people died from these incidents. Every year. 3000 adults choke to death on the food they are eating. Sounds like we need legislation to ban eating. Think of the lives we will save!

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