Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: Just a reminder - Guns kill 31,000 Americans each year [View all]NewMoonTherian
(883 posts)to place guns at the top of the list. You provided context that does not honestly reflect reality.
If it was your intent to provide true context, why not include smoking, which causes about 14 times as many deaths in the US as firearms? But most of those deaths are among smokers themselves, so maybe that's not quite fair. Let's just use secondhand smoke, which only kills about 1.5 times as many Americans as guns. But, then again, if we're throwing out self-inflicted smoking deaths, we'd better also throw out self-inflicted firearm deaths. Suicide alone accounts for more than half the figure, so let's be generous and put non-self-inflicted firearm deaths at 16,000. So in that respect, tobacco now outstrips firearms by about 3 times.
Should we discuss the legitimate uses of tobacco versus firearms? Does anybody have stats for defensive cigarette uses?
There does happen to be a pro-tobacco lobby that uses congressional influence to try to lift restrictions on the tobacco industry. Are you as vocal in your outrage against them as you are against the gun lobby?
(Smoking stats taken from CDC fact sheet)