grylnsmn
Regular Member
Link
They are getting their data from the CDC's WISQARS system for 2009, and using that data to claim that there needs to be federal consumer safety regulation of firearms.
Here's the problem: While, on the face of it, they are right that there were more firearm deaths than motor vehicle deaths, their proposed solution wouldn't help that in any significant fashion.
Let's look at the breakdown of the data:
Firearm-related deaths
Total: 836
Unintentional: 13
Homicide: 272
Legal Intervention: 16
Suicide: 527
Undetermined: 0
Motor Vehicle-related deaths
Total: 827
Unintentional: 826
Homicide: 0
Legal Intervention: undefined
Suicide: 0
Undetermined: 0
I don't know why there is a 1-death discrepancy between the reported total motor vehicle deaths and the sum of all the listed categories.
This breakdown (which you can do for yourself) shows how flawed their "study" is, and how it is unrelated to their conclusions. First of all, if you remove the "Legal Intervention" deaths (as they are presumably in the public interest, being ruled justified shootings by police officers), the number of firearm deaths immediately drops below the number of motor vehicle deaths. However, the number is still not properly comparable.
For their conclusion (that federal consumer product safety regulations should apply to firearms) to hold up, we need to look only at the unintentional deaths, as consumer product safety regulations don't cover intentional uses of products. In that, we find a massive difference (13 compared to 826). Moreover, most of those deaths are not attributable to flaws in the product itself, but to operator errors. (Admittedly, the same would hold true for motor vehicles; most accidents are caused by operator error, not product safety issues.)
Since they released this report yesterday, I expect we'll be hearing more about it. I just wanted to preemptively provide the raw data that they used so we all have the data to refute the inevitable claims.
They are getting their data from the CDC's WISQARS system for 2009, and using that data to claim that there needs to be federal consumer safety regulation of firearms.
Here's the problem: While, on the face of it, they are right that there were more firearm deaths than motor vehicle deaths, their proposed solution wouldn't help that in any significant fashion.
Let's look at the breakdown of the data:
Firearm-related deaths
Total: 836
Unintentional: 13
Homicide: 272
Legal Intervention: 16
Suicide: 527
Undetermined: 0
Motor Vehicle-related deaths
Total: 827
Unintentional: 826
Homicide: 0
Legal Intervention: undefined
Suicide: 0
Undetermined: 0
I don't know why there is a 1-death discrepancy between the reported total motor vehicle deaths and the sum of all the listed categories.
This breakdown (which you can do for yourself) shows how flawed their "study" is, and how it is unrelated to their conclusions. First of all, if you remove the "Legal Intervention" deaths (as they are presumably in the public interest, being ruled justified shootings by police officers), the number of firearm deaths immediately drops below the number of motor vehicle deaths. However, the number is still not properly comparable.
For their conclusion (that federal consumer product safety regulations should apply to firearms) to hold up, we need to look only at the unintentional deaths, as consumer product safety regulations don't cover intentional uses of products. In that, we find a massive difference (13 compared to 826). Moreover, most of those deaths are not attributable to flaws in the product itself, but to operator errors. (Admittedly, the same would hold true for motor vehicles; most accidents are caused by operator error, not product safety issues.)
Since they released this report yesterday, I expect we'll be hearing more about it. I just wanted to preemptively provide the raw data that they used so we all have the data to refute the inevitable claims.
Last edited: