Tweet from NPR reporter Scott Simon:
And let's keep it that way.
Just heard audio from Syrian rebel who says, "We have less ammunition than what most Americans have under their bed."
And let's keep it that way.
There have been 80,000 killed in the Syrian civil war in the last twelve months, leading many observers to declare Syria a humanitarian disaster worthy of international military intervention. In 2011 there were 32,000 gun deaths in the U.S., and conservatives are calling for relaxed gun laws and more guns. Crazy.
ReplyDelete-KW
Population of Syria: 23 million.
DeletePopulation of the USA: 315,968,000.
Let's do the math, shall we?
Assuming your stats are correct 0.0101% of the US citizens died from some sort of firearm, while the Syrian civil war has claimed 0.3478% of the population's lives so far. Just to illustrate the order of difference the deaths in the USA amount (percentage wise) to 2.9039% of the percent of those in Syria. That's what we call ODDS, folks.
Now these are just numbers, and every single life lost is obviously a tragedy, but I feel they put the idea in perspective. The odds of being killed in Syria (by the actions of the warring parties) are higher by several orders.
Compare that to 32,367 automobile deaths in 2011 the last full year's stats are available, or 0.0102 (roughly the same, but slightly higher) and that a over a full THIRD of one percent of all Syrians have died (so far)
Of course the Syrian numbers are highly inaccurate and likely to sky-rocket once the fighting has subsided and monitors can enter and count the dead properly.
This Syrian figure, of course, includes executions, mass killings, gas attacks, and ethnic cleansing (both sides, but a lot of this from 'rebels'). No street crime is included, nor any car accidents.
What do the numbers tell us besides the orders of difference in the odds of being killed in these two countries?
Simple really: That you are just as likely (slighlty more, actually) to die in a car accident in the USA as getting shot to death.
Add it all up and you can see just how nonsensical the comparison is.
The last time the crime rate for serious crime – murder, rape, robbery, assault – fell to these levels, gasoline cost 29 cents a gallon and the average income for a working American was $5,807. That was 1963. In the past 20 years, for instance, the murder rate in the United States has dropped by almost half...
ReplyDelete--- Christian Science Monitor (1/9/2012)
Gun ownership in the US has been increasing concurrently with the decreasing crime rate for two decades. And, as it happens, Barack Obama is the world's #1 gun salesman by far.
Sturm, Ruger & Co. sold 1 million firearms in the first quarter of 2012 - an amazing 50 percent increase from the first quarter of 2011. The jump was so steep that the company stopped accepting orders from March to May to catch up with demand for its products.
Last month, Smith & Wesson announced a firearm-order backlog of approximately $439 million by the end of April, up 135 percent from the same quarter in 2011.
KW is a victim of the famous Butterfield Effect. To-wit:
The nation's prison population grew by 5.2 percent in 1997, according to the Justice Department, even though crime has been declining for six straight years...
--- Fox Butterfield, NYT, 1998
No shit, Fox! Get a fucking clue, man.
KW, you and Fox are victims of Ideological Blindness. It's sad, but it's curable. All you need to is buy a LIfe Membership in the NRA. IN fact, you can buy one from me.
32,000 A YEAR.
Delete-KW
32,367 Automobile deaths.
Delete“Barack Obama is the world's #1 gun salesman by far.”
ReplyDeleteBecause conservatives love to fantasize about killing law enforcement officers and politicians every time they lose a national election.
-KW
You own that fantasy yourself.
Delete@KW:
Delete"Because conservatives love to fantasize about killing law enforcement officers and politicians every time they lose a national election."
The sick irony about that is that your President hung around with people and eagerly solicited the support of people (Ayers, Dohrn,etc) who actually did kill police officers, and you bastards still make excuses for people who actually were convicted of killing police officers and who now have jobs at Ivy league universities.
You have no shame.
Project much, KW?
Delete