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We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
NORTON META TAG
08 October 2015
Fact-checking a comparison of gun deaths and terrorism deaths 5OKT15
GRIM statistics for a "developed, First world, civilized" country, don't you think? All these gun deaths brought to you by the nra and the people stupid enough to keep electing politicians who are bought off by them. From +PolitiFact .....
By Linda Qiu on Monday, October 5th, 2015 at 11:55 a.m.
A viral image
compares the number of gun-related deaths and terrorism-caused deaths in
the United States in the past decade. (Photo from NowThis)
In the wake of the Oct. 1 shooting at Umpqua Community
College in Oregon, President Barack Obama tasked the media to put the
number of gun violence-related deaths into perspective.
"Have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who've been
killed through terrorist attacks in the last decade and the number of
Americans who've been killed by gun violence, and post those side by
side on your news reports," he said
in his address on the shooting. "We spend over a trillion dollars, and
pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist
attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that
explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could
potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?"
Obama's underlying point was to highlight the lack of resources and
legislative action taken on gun violence. Some have questioned the merit
of such a comparison -- for example, critics have pointed out that cigarettes kill more people than guns. We're not weighing in on that debate. Rather, we're looking just at the data. Multipleoutletsobliged (though eachcame up with slightlydifferent numbers). Several readers asked us to check out one specific comparison widely shared on Facebook and Twitter. It was created by NowThis, a New York-based news company that produces content specifically for social media.
The image says that 24 Americans have been killed by terrorism in the last decade, while 280,024 Americans were killed by guns.
While NowThis’ numbers aren’t perfect, the overarching point is
accurate. There have been far more deaths from gun violence than from
terrorist attacks. Walking through the math
Let’s start with the tally for terrorist-related deaths. NowThis
senior editorial producer Versha Sharma told PolitiFact that the 24
figure refers to the number of U.S. citizens killed by terrorist attacks
on U.S. soil, and does not include deaths abroad.
Sharma acknowledged that this could have been made clear in the
graphic. But she maintained that it’s more apt to compare domestic gun
deaths to domestic terrorism deaths. Counting terrorist attacks abroad,
she said, would make it an apples to oranges comparison.
The number comes from the nonpartisan think tank the New America Foundation’s count of lethal jihadist attacks on U.S. soil
from 2005 to 2015. It includes for example the four people killed
during the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 and the 13 deaths from the
Fort Hood shooting in 2009.
To get to 280,024 gun deaths, NowThis compiled data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System and the Mass Shooting Tracker, a crowd-sourced project that tallies deaths and injuries in mass shootings.
According to the CDC, the number of violent gun deaths between 2005
and 2013 (the latest year on record) was 279,976. That includes
suicides, homicides, and police-related shootings. Mass Shooting Tracker
counts 389 mass shooting gun deaths in 2014 and 375 so far in 2015.
There are, however, a few issues with these numbers.
For starters, a spokesperson for New America told us it would have
been more accurate to include lives lost to both jihadist and
non-jihadist extreme violence (47 deaths from 2005 to 2015) for a total count of 71 deaths from terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
Secondly, Mass Shooting Tracker, as the name implies, only tracks
deaths from mass shootings, defined by the group as when four more
people are shot in an event. If we look at all gun-related deaths as the
CDC does from the past two years, the numbers are much higher.
According the nonprofit project the Gun Violence Archive, there were 12,562 gun deaths in 2014 and 9,959
in 2015 thus far. That’s a grand total of 301,797 firearm-related
deaths in the past decade, compared to 71 deaths from domestic acts of
terrorism.
Gun violence incidents collected/validated from 1200+ sources daily – source links on each incident report.
1: Actual number of deaths and injuries
2: Number of INCIDENTS reported and verified
Numbers on this table reflect a subset of all information
collected and will not add to 100% of incidents.
www.gunviolencearchive.org www.facebook.com/gunviolencearchive
Data Validated: October 08, 2015
Charts and Maps
Charts and Maps
More charts and maps to come in 2015.
If we factor in terrorist attacks overseas, the comparison is still
stark. From 2004 to 2014, 303 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks
worldwide, according to State Department reports. During that same time
frame, 320,523 Americans were killed because of gun violence. Here’s a
breakdown: Our ruling
A viral image says the number of Americans killed by terrorism in the
last decade is 24, while the number of Americans killed by guns in the
last decade is 280,024.
NowThis, the creators of the image, told us they only counted lives
lost to domestic jihadist attacks, though the image doesn’t specify
that. If we look at deaths due to all extremist attacks on U.S. soil,
the number goes up to 71. A more accurate count for gun deaths between
2005 and 2015 is 301,797.
Though the image’s numbers are slightly off, that doesn’t undercut
the point: guns have claimed many more lives than terrorist attacks. We
rate the claim Mostly True.
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