Alcohol related non-drinker fatalities would be the relevant measure (and still too many, since it's going to be drink driving largely).
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-...
[2] https://www.lockjawladdergrip.com/blog/ladder-safety-usa-202...
[3] https://abcnews.go.com/US/mass-shootings-days-2023-database-...
Meanwhile, roughly as many people are killed in automobile accidents as there are gun deaths (of any kind, including suicide) every year.
Statistically, you likely don’t know a single person killed by a gun or a car. I absolutely do not.
Now, heart disease? Statistically you’re unlikely not to know someone who died from it.
In reality, you’re not going to be a random victim of gun violence. Gun homicides primarily consist of internecine violence between criminal elements who primarily use handguns.
Finally, there’s been a large rise in gun homicides over the last few years coinciding with a large rise in violent crime in general. Solve the crime issue, you solve the gun homicides.
And then you do it again: "what about automobile accidents?" Well that's a good question! Except (1) a great deal of effort is spent on reducing them, and (2) there are less drunk-driving related crashes then gun homicides in the US[1] - 13,384 in 2021.
And now you're onto just standard whataboutism about everything else. Maybe all causes of death are serious! Maybe one of these causes though has not only a historic lack of attention, but has been the unique recipient of legislation specifically designed to prevent the CDC even looking into it![2]
Because of everything you've listed, you know what's unique? No one is doing anything about gun-related death or injuries. Regulations are actively rolled back, and people like you work to shutdown any possible discussion of the problem. Literally no one is stopping you talking about cars, or heart disease, yet I seriously doubt you'd be bothering to "whatabout" those in any of the numerous studies which get posted.
> “We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths. We’re doing the most we can do, given the political realities.” (P.W. O’Carroll, Acting Section Head of Division of Injury Control, CDC, quoted in Marsha F. Goldsmith, “Epidemiologists Aim at New Target: Health Risk of Handgun Proliferation,” Journal of the American Medical Association vol. 261 no. 5, February 3, 1989, pp. 675-76.)
The CDC wasn't banned from looking into it. They have looked into how guns may lead to deaths [0][1][2]. The were banned from using it to promote gun control.
Regulations are going to and fro. Some of them are getting rolled back, while others are progressing. Most of the ones that are getting rolled back have been useless at their intent. Or they violate the constitution. Or both!
0: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db241.htm 1: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/hhe/reports/pdfs/2011-0069-3140.pd... 2: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6230a1.htm
Tobacco, smoked outside, is a minor pollutant no worse to people nearby than the SUVs driving by on the street, and certainly not as bad as what's in most Americans' well water or fast food packaging.
nothin quiet about it. I can walk away from second hand smoke, but I can't just shrug off a drunk driver t-boning me.
Still, I'd say calling a color-coded overlay of those things "political" is actually too kind.
To me this reads visually as a weak attempt to get some viral traction for posting something like those covid infection / vaccination maps, which wealthy city-dwellers clucked over while reveling in the schadenfreude of The Redneck getting his Just Desserts.
It's not political, so much as a kind of snuff porn indulged in by certain people. Nor has it lost its paternalistic "public health" overtones in this remix.
[edit] don't get me wrong, I'm all for bringing the backwards South into the 21st Century and putting an end to its reactionary BS that has no place in a modern democracy. My point is that shaming them has no effect whatsoever; it's just a sop to prop up the sense of superiority that's unhelpfully been cultivated by coastal elites.
[edit 2] I was a middle child.
While I agree, the one government tasks one law enforcement agency (ATF) with managing them.
Kind of like alcohol, right? (which has nearly 4x the annual deaths vs firearms)
It’s like saying that Christianity continues to be the most popular choice of religion in the US. Sure it’s optional, but there’s a bit of inertia involved.
Even grouping all firearm deaths together is almost always unhelpful. Ordinary violent crime with firearms is very different from a school shooting is very different from suicide by firearm.
Then grouping firearm deaths together with a highly addictive and slow-killing vice like cigarettes just adds to the confusion.
"Smoking and firearms are among the leading causes of avoidable premature death in the United States"
The statement is true for smoking but it takes some work to make it true for firearms. And then it describes tobacco and firearms as "both are legal yet lethal" - it borders on nonsensical to pair them that way (I guess possessing both can be legal, but it's worded to imply that the use of both, in the ways that resulted in death, is legal).
I'd love to see fewer firearm deaths, but it just seems odd to try and link a really high cause of deaths with one that is an order of magnitude smaller, while skipping over others that are very preventable causes of death. You are, for example, many times more likely to die from poor diet than from being shot. I mean, using their framing, automobiles are "legal yet lethal" and auto deaths are the cause of about as many deaths as firearm deaths - and that includes suicide (i.e. intentional) deaths.