As I look at these U.S. statistics on the site, it seems to me that accidents are the leading cause of death until age 45, after which cancer and heart disease take over. Homicide is the number 2 cause for the 15-24 age group, drops to number 3 in the 25-34 age group, and to number 6 in the 35-44 age group and is not even in the top 10 in age groups over that. So what you die from, statistically, depends on how old you are.
Yet even in the two groups in which firearms are figured, accidents and homicide, it is interesting to see that overall accidental causes of death to to firearms accidents is 0.5%, compared to automobile accidents (35.9%), poisoning (23.5%) and falling (17.1%). In homicides, which varies from 2nd causes in the 15-24 age bracket to 6 in the 35-44 age bracket, firearms makes up 84.4% of the cause in the 1-24 age group, 79.7% in the 25-34 and 65.8% of the 35-44 age group. Edged weapons run concurrently at 8.3%, 10.1% and 14%, respectively.
What I can conclude from these statistics is that if you are between 15 and 44, accidents remain the greater cause of death and with auto accidents being the leading cause (with accidental firearms death less than 0.5% overall--that's less than 1 %). Homicide is the next leading cause at age 15, but drops steadily through age 44 and then drops out of the top 10 altogether after that. If you are killed between ages 15 and 44, then firearms ARE by far the greatest cause, but even this drops as you age. Oddly, as you age, knives also seem to grow in percentage of deaths as guns drop, though they never exceed the firearms ratio.
The bottom line seems to be that you have far, far more chances of dying from diseases and accidents like car wrecks, poisoning or falls than you do from getting shot. Yet there are no "car control" advocates or "eating control" groups with national media trying to protect us from ourselves, at least not with enforced legislation. Cars kill many times more people in the US than guns, but if you tried to take away peoples' ability to have a car they would riot--and yet having a car is not a Constitutional right. But having a gun is.
Heart disease kills more people than probably anything. Where is the group that lobbies to force us to eat what they think we should eat and passes laws to limit what you can eat of your own choice? FDA aside, it really isn't there. What you eat isn't a Constitutional right, either. Yet nobody is trying to control that, and if they did, people would live longer.
Respiratory diseases like emphysema kills way more people than guns. Almost all of it is self-induced by smokers; that addiction kills thousands, and hikes up the insurance rates needlessly. There is a cry to ban smoking, but it sure doesn't have the push or emotional investment that gun control does, even though it kills far more people. Why not? Smoking isn't a Constitution right. It's a drug addiction.
Yet these gun control people focus mainly on taking my guns in the name of health and safety. What crap.
You have to ask why is this?
My answer:
This is about people who have certain feelings (emotions) about guns (almost always invalid ones) who want to enforce those same feelings upon on the rest of us who want or own guns and have a Constitutional right to do so. It is about emotion and establishing control over others, period, not about facts or safety. By making up numbers to indicate that guns are a problem greater than many other problems, they seek to control and impose a Utopian society upon us. In a very Spockian way, they are saying the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. But it is a misnomer. The gun control advocates actually believe their desire (need) gives them the power to control the many, who happen to have rights to own and possess firearms. Most of us on this forum know that the truth is that the rights of the individual outweigh the desires of the many, at least in this country.
The trouble is the gun control people can say anything they want to say and use any statistics they make up and the media just buys it and repeats it. There is a definite anti-gun agenda at work here and it tends to side with liberal philosophy, which tends to latch on to all things Utopian. Few people have the time or inclination to actually look up the data on guns (or anything else), so they believe whatever any reporter says however he wants to spin it.
Since cars, food, tobacco and gravity kill far more people than guns do, I think they'll have to take all of those things away from society first before they can look at my guns, especially if they intend to continue this facade that gun control is about health and safety. Lets see them issue car control laws, food control laws, outlaw tobacco and outlaw gravity first. Otherwise, their whole argument is non-sequiter.
