Gun Owners Most Likely to Die from Suicide

The recent shootings at a civic center in Binghamton, NY, the police killings in Pittsburgh, and the father that killed his five kids in Washington state got me to thinking that maybe the U.S. has too many guns. I went over to the Nation Rifle Association (NRA) website to get some consolation. I was shocked to find people advocating for less restrictive gun laws. That didn’t seem to make any sense. Are they crazy? It turns out that yes, they are in fact, crazy.

I was amazed to find that one of the arguments for less gun control by the NRA included a story about the recent mass murders in Australia (where there is tight gun control). Their point was that the Australian mass murderers didn’t use guns to kill lots of people, but fire. Because some crazy people set massive fires, the NRA crazy people thought that justified not imposing gun controls because murderers will still kill people. And who wouldn’t want to be shot to death rather than burned to death? You have to love their logic.

But what are the facts? The statistics below are from the Brady Campaign website.

Gun Deaths and Injury - The United States Leads the World in Firearm Violence

In 2005, 30,694 people in the United States died from firearm-related deaths – 12,352 were murdered; 17,002 killed themselves; 789 were accidents; 330 died by police intervention, and in 221, the intent was unknown.

An additional 71,417 people were shot and survived their injuries -- 52,748 people injured in an attack; 3,190 people injured in a suicide attempt; 14,678 people shot accidentally, and 801 people shot in a police intervention.

In 2004, firearms were used to murder 56 people in Australia (not including the 173 people that died in the bushfires who would have preferred to have been shot, according to the NRA), 184 people in Canada, 73 people in England and Wales, 5 people in New Zealand, and 37 people in Sweden. In comparison, firearms were used to murder 11,344 in the United States (the number of bushfire murders is not know at this time in the U.S.).

In 2006, there were only 154 justifiable homicides by private citizens using handguns in the United States.

We have this argument in my very own house regularly. Shane wants to have a gun for protection, and I know that one night when I can’t sleep and I’m wondering around the house in the dark, he will wake up and shoot me thinking I’m a prowler. We don’t have a gun and we will not be getting one.

If I had just a nickle for every dead body that resulted from guns each year in the U.S., in 2005 I would've had $1,534.70. That's a lot of nickles.