Reuters and numbers
Over at the Media Blog they note that Reuters asserts:
More than 30,000 people die from gunshot wounds every year, through murder, suicide and accidents.
They note that Reuter’s number hasn’t changed for 6 years (from an article in 2000). Quips Nathan Goulding:
This means that one of two things is true. Either, the rate of people killed by guns has not increased over six years — very good news. Or, Reuters is relying on six year-old data. Whichever is the case, Reuters is simply opining on gun control, and is using the recent school shootings as an opportunity to do so.
Well, this got me to thinking it was time for a trip to the CDC website. Some numbers (they only had data for 2000 to 2002 on the site).
|
Year |
Total Firearm Deaths |
Suicides by firearms |
|
2000 |
28,663 |
16,586 |
|
2001 |
29,573 |
16,869 |
|
2002 |
30,242 |
17,108 |
Deaths weren’t more than 30,000 people are shot to death in murders, suicides, and accidents in 2000 or 2001 per the CDC. And Reuters doesn’t mention that well over half of gun deaths each year are suicides. And they don’t mention the 700K to 2M times per year that guns prevent violence.
And Reuters used the number provided to them by anti-gun “researcher” David Hemenway. You remember him? He said guns cause road rage.
October 24th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
And not all deliberate shootings are murders…
October 25th, 2006 at 1:35 am
MarkM is correct. They conveniently lump all homicide into murder. And everyone knows there are four kinds of homicide–felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
Thanks go to Ambrose Bierce for the inspiration on that line.