Celebrity advice (was: Advice to a Junior in High School?)

[Chad Netzer]

On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 21:12, Tom Plunket wrote:

> Ironically the states with the loosest gun laws also have the
> least crime.

Perhaps that is because the states with the least crime need the least
stringent gun laws. :)

> Remember that automobiles kill something like 100x the number of
> people in the US every year over guns.

You know, instead of making things up, we can use the web these days.

According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars/default.htm


In 2000, there were 43,604 automobile related deaths in the U.S.
In 2000, there were 28,663 firearm related deaths in the U.S.

BTW.  That gun death figure is down from years before; usually it is
above 30,000.  Perhaps it was the strong economy (my opinion), or
perhaps it was due to tougher gun laws (both state and federal).

See http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10.html to check for
yourself.

For more automobile data, see FARS:
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/fars.html

Also, apparently over half of the gun deaths are suicides.
http://www.ichv.org/suicideandguns.htm

And, about 40% of automobile accident deaths are 'alcohol related'.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/drving.htm

So, your figure of 100x is ridiculous on the face of it, and does not
stand up to even minimal fact checking.


-- 
Chad Netzer <cnetzer at sonic.net>