Mortdooley wrote on Feb 27
th, 2023 at 10:12pm:
AusGeoff wrote on Feb 27
th, 2023 at 1:05am:
Illegal drugs kill far more people than guns every year.
Agreed. From CDC statistics 1 February 2023:
Deaths per 100,000 population:
14.7 from firearms.
Deaths per 100,000 population:
32.1 from illicit drugs.
But that doesn't mean we should simply ignore the excessive
number of deaths from firearms merely because there are other
more or equally deadly sources. That's faulty logic.
Deaths per 100,000 population:
13.7 from vehicle accidents for example.
It's obviously an almost impossible task to prevent massive numbers of
vehicle deaths, but firearm deaths could be reduced substantially over,
say, a decade by rewriting the 2nd Amendment, and tightening up gun
and owner legislation to limit the number of guns in US society, and who
owns them.
A 2021 BBC report using data from the FBI and the Las Vegas Police pointed
out that eleven of the thirteen deadliest mass shootings in the past 30 years
in the US occurred between 2001 and 2021—implying that mass shootings
are becoming more frequent and more deadly.
A 2016 paper from the University of Alabama compared 171 countries from
1966 to 2012 and concluded that the US accounted for only 5% of the world’s
population, but 31% of its mass shootings.
—
World Population Review, 2023.