Each day, how many motor vehicles do you see or actually use?
You probably couldn't keep track.
Now, how about guns. How many do you see or actually use during the same period?
For most people, not that many. If any at all.
And yet, in 10 states gun deaths actually outpace motor vehicle deaths.
According to a new analysis of 2009 federal government data (the most recent year for which state-by-state information is available for motor vehicle and firearm mortality) by my organization, the Violence Policy Center, the 10 states that experienced this counter-intuitive shift are:
While motor vehicle-related deaths are on a steady decline as the result of a successful decades-long public health-based injury prevention strategy, gun deaths continue unabated -- the direct result of the failure of policymakers to acknowledge and act on this ubiquitous and too often ignored public health problem.
Experts agree that the formation of the federal National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 1966 coupled with a sustained decades-long effort to develop and implement a series of injury-prevention initiatives have saved countless lives. Numerous changes in both vehicle and highway design followed the creation of NHTSA. Experts also cite the increase in the use of seat belts beginning in the mid-1980s as states enacted belt-use laws as well as a reduction in alcohol-impaired driving as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and other organizations changed the public's perception of the problem and laws were enacted to increase the likelihood that intoxicated drivers would be punished. Graduated licensing laws are credited with helping to reduce the number of teen drivers crashing on our nation's roadways. Between 1966 and 2000, the combined efforts of government and advocacy organizations reduced the rate of death per 100,000 population by 43 percent which represents a 72 percent decrease in deaths per vehicle miles traveled.
And while the health and safety regulation of motor vehicles stands as a public health success story, firearms remain literally the last consumer product manufactured in the United States not subject to federal health and safety regulation.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is charged with enforcing our nation's limited gun laws, yet it has none of the health and safety regulatory powers afforded other federal agencies such as NHTSA (or the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency).
As Dr. David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Youth Violence Prevention Center, notes in his 2004 book Private Guns, Public Health: "[T]he time Americans spend using their cars is orders of magnitudes greater than the time spent using their guns. It is probable that per hour of exposure, guns are far more dangerous. Moreover, we have lots of safety regulations concerning the manufacture of motor vehicles; there are virtually no safety regulations for domestic firearms manufacture."
Such an approach to injury prevention has been applied to every product Americans come into contact with every day -- except for guns. And as is the case with motor vehicles, health and safety regulation could reduce deaths and injuries associated with firearms.
Comprehensive regulation of the firearms industry and its products could include: minimum safety standards (i.e., specific design standards and the requirement of safety devices); bans on certain types of firearms such as "junk guns" and military-style assault weapons; limits on firepower; restrictions on gun possession by those convicted of a violent misdemeanor; heightened restrictions on the carrying of loaded guns in public; improved enforcement of current laws restricting gun possession by persons with histories of domestic violence; more detailed and timely data collection on gun production, sales, use in crime, involvement in injury and death; and, public education about the extreme risks associated with exposure to firearms.
America is reaping the benefits of decades of successful injury prevention strategies on its highways, but continues to pay an unacceptable, yet equally preventable, price in lives lost every year to gun violence.
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Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
How exactly does he propose to regulate the gun industry to make guns incapable of being used for suicide?
So it isn't so much that firearm deaths increased as it is that motor vehicle deaths decreased.
Further, since we are comparing all firearm deaths to all motor vehicle deaths, we can further break these numbers down:
Unintentional deaths with firearms: Nul (no change)
Suicide deaths with firearms: 454 (increase)/per capita 9.04 (increase)
Homicide deaths with firearms: 108 (decrease)/per capita 2.15 (decrease)
The same economic issues which are causing people to drive less are causing more people to be depressed because of having lost jobs and financial issues, in turn causing an increase in suicides. Nothing has really changed in regard to Colorado or national motor vehicle laws or firearm laws in the past several years which could account for these differences in rates.
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-president-of-the-united-states-pass-h-r-822-national-right-to-carry-reciprocity-act-of-2011
We deserve equality no matter where we live.
I spent eleven years riding around in an armoured truck with a loaded handgun on my hip and loaded shotguns in the rack.
Nobody was ever hurt with any of the firearms.
Several were seriously hurt and one killed in MV accidents.
This column is absolutely dishonest, because it includes suicide..........
And because it suggests solutions that have nothing to do with prevention.
BTW, guns are dangerous. They aren't much use if they aren't dangerous.
Why do cops carry them?
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/05/bruce-krafft/comparing-car-and-gun-fatalities-is-misleading-and-irrelevant/comment-page-1/#comment-279891
Also please note that the states with the highest gun homicide rates "per capita" are also two with the strictest gun carry laws. The District of Columbia and California. The states with shall issue or constitutional carry laws have some of the lowest rates.
I lived in Israel for many years and we have the most armed populace in the world, in Israel. We also had some of the lowest gun homicide rates anywhere. This is per capita mind you not totals, I want to be fair in my reporting, unlike Josh.
Fully in favor of that.
Most shoots that are not purely accidental are committed because of hate. People who are drunk hate themselves, but often hurt others, though unintentional, in the process of their hate.
People who kill people with guns because it is so easy to do. SYG and CWC make it far too easy than it needs to be.
First part, correct. Since it is the intentions of criminals to kill or murder to get what they want. The second part, car accidents. While a good portion of them are just that, accidents. But the ones that involve drunk driving or texting while driving, I submit to you this theory. That they are intentional accidents. While not done fully intentionally, but intentionally brought about to take place. The drinking to the point of drunkenness is intentionally done. Texting while driving is even more so intentionally done. They intentionally participated in the activity that resulted in the accident, therefore they might as well have done it intentionally, as if they used a gun instead of a car.
The SYG does not make killing easier nor legal. It only does away with the "Scared Rabbit Law" aka Duty to Retreat, where it states that if attacked it is your duty to retreat at all possible BEFORE any self defense can be applied.
A life without SYG was fine for the founders, so it should be still fine today. If a killer doesn't have to justify why he shot someone, then we have no need for any kinds of laws whatsoever.
Hi, Josh... I live in Oregon. 345 of those "gun deaths" were suicides. Pay attention, please: Suicide is not caused by guns. Suicide is not caused by "exposure" to guns, either (whatever that means). Suicide is caused by things like the illness of clinical depression. But I wonder how many of those suicides were... car owners? Maybe you could use that in your next article.
"It is probable that per hour of exposure, guns are far more dangerous."
Like I said before: Prove it. Do you have any data for police officers and sheriff's deputies that spend equal time on the job being "exposed" to both motor vehicles and firearms? I would like to see that in your next article, too. Have fun, later...
Remember, he is th type to claim innocence for the person using a gun in any crime because it's all the guns fault. But the car is completely innocent because a drunken driver kills people.
Maybe you're onto something. Maybe car ownership is the cause of suicides. We should look further into that and see just how many people that committed suicide owned cars and what make and models. Maybe we can say that owning a Ford will cause you to commit suicide.
Tell you what, Josh... Explain to me how Vermont, a state that does not require a license to conceal carry a weapon, has so little violent crime, whereas Washington, D.C. has one of the highest in the country and NO ONE can own a gun there unless they are law enforcement? If you take away guns from the people who get them legally, the people who get them illegally will have free reign. Do the math: The time it takes for a mugger to put a gun to your back and steal your wallet is less than one minute; The average response time of a 911 call is over 7 minutes. Who do you want protecting you: The police, or your good friend Ruger and .45 of his closest friends?
The reason is that SYG is so maligned is that proportionally, it will be used in favor of white people, and unfavorably against other people.
There is simply less violence every year in this country.