REAL and ACCURATE Firearm Statistics

[Lotus222]

With all of the knee-jerk panicking, politicizing, hypothesizing, and incredibly-horrendously inaccurate information flying from the media and politicians in all directions ...I wanted to find some real truths. I did some digging on the Center of Disease Control's website for the year 2010 & 2011's causes of death statistics in all areas and how they relate to those caused by firearms. The information that I gathered is pretty accurate - minus a couple of assumptions from statistics that were not counted by the CDC. Feel free to do a little research and chime in on any mistakes that I may have made or to just make sure the information is as correct as possible. To the ill-informed, the results may be quite shocking.

Mortality (Source: CDC) National Vital Statistics Reports
Source: 2011 Preliminary Data http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdf
&
FASTSTATS - Deaths and Mortality

Total deaths from all causes in the year 2011...............2,513,171

Leading Causes of Mortality and number of deaths in US:
- Diseases of heart (I00-I09,I11,I13,I20-I51).......................596,339
- Malignant neoplasms (C00-C97)......................................575,313
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases (J40-J47).....................143,382
- Cerebrovascular diseases (I60-I69).................................128,931
- Accidents (unintentional injuries) (V01-X59,Y85-Y86)2,3.....122,777
- Alzheimer's disease (G30)............................................. ..84,691
- Diabetes mellitus (E10-E14)............................................73 ,282
- Influenza and pneumonia (J09-J18)4.................................53,667
- Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis \....................45,731
- Intentional self-harm (suicide) (*U03,X60-X84,Y87.0)2........38,285
- Septicemia (A40-A41).............................................. ......35,539
- Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (K70,K73-K74)................33,539
- Essential hypertension and hypertensive renal disease.........27,477
- Parkinson's disease (G20-G21)6.......................................23,107
- Pneumonitis due to solids and liquids (J69)........................18,090

- All other causes (Residual)........................................ .....512,723
- All injury related deaths............................................ ....177,154

Years for deaths shown below..........................................2011...................2010

Transport deaths (Vehicular)
• Number of transport deaths:.......................................37,2 75..................37,961
• Motor Vehicle deaths............................................ .....34,667..................35,332
• Other land transport deaths:.......................................2,59 9...................2,629

• Total number of drivers:................3,846,386

Falls
Falls deaths:........................................... ..................26,631.................26,009

Drugs, Alcohol, and Poisoning
• Accidental poisoning:........................................ .........33,554.................33041
• Drug induced deaths:........................................... ......40,239.................40,393
• Alcohol induced deaths:........................................... ..26,256..................25,692

All firearm deaths
• Firearm deaths by suicide:.......................................... 19,766..................19,392
• Firearm deaths by accident:........................................8 51......................606
• Firearm deaths caused by LEO (non-accidental):.............258...................... 412

• Firearm deaths by homicide (total):...............................11,101..... .............11,078
• Firearm homicides (gang related and included in total):......8,880 (80%)...........8,862 (80%)
• Firearm homicides (non gang and included in total):...........2,220 (20%)...........2,215 (20%)
• Firearm deaths of self defense*
and undetermined intent:........................................... ..4,224....................4,656

• Total number of legal US firearm owners (Est): 52,000,000 households

*I cannot find the total number of self-defense related firearm deaths. Nor was such a statistic included in the CDC's findings. I had to assume it was part of the "undetermined intent", but this could be wrong.

*Gang and non-gang related homicide totals are a percentage taken from the total firearm homicide numbers. 80/20 is an estimated split.

This information is still preliminary gatherings and under further review. Again, any help with this data would be appreciated. As you can see, the harm that firearms are causing this country is disproportionally shown in the media and politics. Even estimating the accuracy of some of my findings, it is clear that firearms are not a leading problem in this country. It can be assessed that poor health, mental instability (including suicide), incidental/accidental death from various means (including automobile, poison, falling, but EXCLUDING firearms) are the leading causes of mortality. Homicide is very low on the list. When looking at gun "violence" - nearly all of it is gang related. Accidental firearm related deaths are extremely low.

Clearly, there is something wrong with this countries anti-gun stance which is based on incredibly isolated events (like the recent school/theater shootings). This post will be edited further as I find more facts and information. I apologize for not knowing HTML to make this more legible. Hopefully I can edit that later, too.

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[Lotus222]

Reserved.

[G26Raven]

• Total number of drivers:................3,846,386
.

Not sure where you got your number of drivers, but your figure is off by millions. According to the Department of Transportation,

"There were 190,625,023 licensed drivers in the United States in 2000. That is an increase of 23.73% since 1980 and an a 12.39% increase over 1990. As the average age of licensed drivers shifts upward, we see that the 35-39 and 40-44 year old age groups contain the largest share of drivers."

Source: Licensed Drivers - Our Nation's Highways - 2000

This is a worthwhile effort, but you need to be very careful that you get it right.

[Lotus222]

Thanks, Raven. That number seemed low, I think I took it from a crash statistic, originally. I have disclaimed this information as preliminary, and really do appreciate any criticisms, feedback, corrections, or additional data.

The correct info about US driver statistics is here:
U.S. Highway Statistics - Google Public Data Explorer

Source: February 2012 Traffic Volume Trends – Travel Monitoring and Traffic Volume – Office of Highway Policy Information (OHPI) – FHWA

Apparently there is roughly 210 million licensed drivers.

[Crowman]

Choose Your Own Crime Stats - YouTube

[Lotus222]

Also, (to the mods) is there a way that I can edit the original post? I didn't realize they would be put on lockdown after a short period of time.

[pittypat21]

*I cannot find the total number of self-defense related firearm deaths. Nor was such a statistic included in the CDC's findings. I had to assume it was part of the "undetermined intent", but this could be wrong.

Justifiable Homicide by Private Citizens
FBI — Expanded Homicide Data Table 15

Justifiable homicide by Law Enforcement
FBI — Expanded Homicide Data Table 14

[chuckusaret]

The anti gun groups never make mention of the justifiable homicides but without fail include those numbers with their total deaths by guns.

[Lotus222]

Justifiable Homicide by Private Citizens
FBI — Expanded Homicide Data Table 15

Justifiable homicide by Law Enforcement
FBI — Expanded Homicide Data Table 14

Awesome, thanks. Now I need to check over the FBI statistics and compare them with that of the CDC's.

[FearSheeple]

There was a thread I think on here recently, about each of the mass killings in the past several decades, what weapons they involved and also what drugs the criminal was on/off of. I for the life of me cannot find it, but it seemed to have some great statistics about how many of the criminals committing these acts were on some form of anti-depressant.

Perhaps But, good statistics that should be included in here. I'll try to find it.