Most of the graphs & stats in the previous article focused on “Nonfatal” violence. You may counter that by saying that guns are lethal, so obviously, if a gun is involved, the person is going to die, so the majority of gun incidents would be hidden from those statistics. While there is some truth in this, as we mentioned in the last article:
“On average, 71% of homicides were committed with a firearm from 1993 to 2018.”
— Bureau of Justice Statistics – Trends and Patterns in Firearm Violence, 1993–2018[1]
But, it’s also quite wrong. Since, from the same report, if we graph the ratio of lethal incidence (i.e. murder) vs all the non-lethal ones, we can see that murder accounts for only a tiny fraction of firearm violence: [1a] [1b]
And it’s not even just lots of people surviving with serious injury. Remember from the previous article, that the vast majority of the victims of non-fatal firearm violence are completely unharmed. If we overlay that injury distribution on top of the nonfatal portion of this pie chart, we can see the breakdown of how all of this comes together.
And here’s the previous 25 years, so you don’t think I’m cherry-picking: [1c] [1d]
That homicide line is so small that it’s really hard to see, so let’s drop the non-fatals, and look specifically at homicides.
Note: The previously referenced Bureau of Justice Statistics data [1] ends in 2018. So, I supplemented it with data from the CDC to extend the data to 2020, as well as some preliminary data up to 2023. [2] Also, the BJS data was rounded to the hundreds place, whereas the CDC has the raw data, so they’re going to be a bit off from one another. But, since this makes the CDC data more accurate, I used the CDC data for all years that it was present, and only used the BJS data to extend the backend of the data back to 1993.
Aside from the impressive spike during COVID lockdown, you may also notice that these numbers are quite a bit smaller than some gun control advocates show. This is for a very simple reason: they get larger numbers by combining homicides with suicides as if they are the same thing, and calling it the deceptively generic term of “Gun Deaths”. I think it’s pretty clear that suicide & murder are completely different things. This graph only shows homicides.
However, you may still think that even these numbers are really high, but you have to remember that these are raw totals (not percentages), and they are for the entire United States. The United States population is over 330 million people. Anything that can happen to a person is going to show up a lot, when you have that many people running around.
For example, a study published in the Journal of Safety Research in 2020, [3] based upon data from the US National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), concluded that from 2007 through 2017, there were an estimated 156,040 patients treated in emergency departments in the US for golfcart-related injuries over the 11-year period; including traumatic brain injuries. So, if we divide that out, that comes to an average of 14,185 golfcart injuries treated in hospitals every year.
Obviously, these numbers are just research estimates, and we don’t have data for all the years, but just to ballpark the numbers, if we add that yearly average to the previous graph, you can see that it’s higher than most years of firearm homicide:
Car Accidents
Let’s take it a step further. There are much bigger killers in our society than guns. To put things into context, we’ll examine a few. Let’s start with car accidents.
It may surprise you to know that drunk driving kills roughly the same number of people each year as firearm homicides. [4] [5] [6]
Note: To get the data for drunk driving across the same time period as our firearm homicide graph, I had to use 3 reports, and a calculated estimate for 2023: one report covering 1982-2003 [4], another one with 1994-2021 [5], and a final one for 2022 [6]; I couldn’t find data for 2023, but was able to calculate a reasonable estimate (see below for methodology & reasoning). As for the reports, there’s some slight variance between the numbers in the two multi-year reports, because the one from 2003 is obviously very old, and the other is the latest data for 2021. This is common in official statistics like this, because even after the stats are released, they often continue to keep them up to date with new data they find, or fixing any errors they discover in old data, etc. So, the official numbers for past years can sometimes change a bit over time. In light of this, the 2021 dataset is considered to have the most accurate data, and it is used in all years that it is present. Then, the 2003 report is only used to extend the backend of the dataset to 1993 to match the homicide data. In this case, only 1 year was needed: 1993.
2023 estimate: I was not able to find drunk driving data for 2023, however the NHTSA has released overall automobile accident data for 2023, so we can calculate an estimate for the number of drunk driving deaths in 2023 using a percentage. Using the historical drunk driving data that we do have, there was a significant & consistent decline in drunk driving in the 80s, which stopped and leveled out in 1994; dropping from 52.9% down to 32.89%. But, since then, the rate of drunk driving as a percentage of all automobile accidents has been relatively consistent from 1994 all the way through 2022 (hovering around 29-32%). However, following an all-time low of 28.05% in 2019, there has been a consistent increase every year since, up to 31.81% in 2022.
So, there are a few ways which we could establish a “norm” for the drunk driving rate. A 3-year average of the most recent trend gives us 31.01%. An average of the last 10 years gives us 29.82%. An average of the last 20 years gives us 30.42%. And a comprehensive average going all the way back to the when the trend stabilized in 1994 gives us 30.72%. So, essentially, the question really boils down to: should we use 30%, 30.5%, or 31%? I chose to use 30.5% as a compromise between favoring the most recent trend, the semi-recent dip, and the full historical data. Using this rate as a percentage of the official numbers for the overall automobile deaths for 2023 gives us an estimate of 12,502 drunk driving deaths.
The modern culture is so afraid of guns that I find that people are often far more concerned with a drunk person having a gun than a car, and yet, both are equally deadly. Many people are quite convinced that bars should be Gun-Free Zones, and yet I’ve not heard anyone propose that bars should be Car-Free Zones; requiring their patrons to arrive by public transport or taxi, or that they have a designated driver who must pass a breathalyzer before the group can leave. Or, how about this? Cars are already required to have seatbelts, airbags, and other safety features, right? So, why not mandate that every car on the road has to have a breathalyzer installed in it that won’t let you start the car unless you pass it, every single time? It would save thousands of lives, so why not? Don’t you care about all the dying & suffering people who are killed or injured by drunk drivers every year?
Of course, that’s obviously not the case. You can have empathy and still believe that some measures are not worth the benefit. Most people would revolt against such measures at the inconvenience alone, not to mention the other {legal-implications & practical-limitations}. Just because something would save lives doesn’t necessarily mean that we should do it, nor that the majority of people would be willing to do it, nor that it wouldn’t do more harm than good.
Let’s expand a bit, and look at all automobile deaths: [4] [5] [6] [7]
You may object that car accidents are accidental, while homicides are intentional, and you’d be right; and to some degree that is a valid objection; the distinction between deliberate malicious intent, versus accidental harm. However, the point here is simply the existence of a non-essential luxury/convenience which directly results in the deaths of 10’s of thousands of people every year. This is in response to the common argument against guns, which claims that no one needs a gun, in other words, it is a toy or luxury whose presence results in the deaths of many people each year, and therefore the right to possess it should be revoked or at least severely restricted. However, the same argument could easily be made against cars. No one needs a car; our society could easily be restructured such that everyone took public transit, taxis, or restricted their daily activities to locations within walking/biking distance. And yet, we don’t. Even though this change would save 40,000 lives per year, most people would oppose this quite strongly.
But, to respond to the previous objection more directly, let’s compare like with like. Here is a graph of automobile deaths vs deaths from gun accidents, to help you understand just how rare gun accidents actually are: [2]
Lethality Per 100,000
Let’s come at this from a different angle, shall we? In 2017, there were 272.5 Million Highway class motor vehicles registered in the US. [8] In that same year, of the estimated 1.013 Billion firearms in the world (including: civilian, law-enforcement, & military), the United States civilian population owned an estimated 393.3 Million of them. [9] That means that American civilians own 38.8% of all the guns in the world. But also remember that the US population is only 330 million. In other words, we have more guns than people.
Since the data pools are so big, it helps to scale them down to make them easier to comprehend. The common way in which this is done, is by calculating the “rate”; taking the raw totals and converting them into the amount per “some number” of units (typically: 1,000; 10,000; or 100,000). So, if we do that here and convert our numbers into “per 100,000”, we end up with this:
Simply by the numbers, cars are far more dangerous than guns.
Suicide
Suicide is another lethal condition that is rapidly increasing, and over the last 25-year period, it has killed more people than all car accidents; and 3 TIMES more people than firearm homicides (2.95x to be precise). [2] But, that’s just the people who actually died; stats for 2022 indicate that while 49,451 people died from suicide in the US that year, 1.6 million Americans attempted suicide, 3.8 million planned a suicide attempt, and 13.2 million seriously considered suicide. [10]
Continued in Part 3 – “Guns make it easier” & Children Hurting Themselves
Update – 5/21/2024: I went back to update the statistics to the latest data, and ended up rewriting much this article. The gist is the same, but I rewrote the wording and added some new graphs.
Update – 8/29/2024: Updated the provisional suicide data for 2022 & 2023 to the finalized value for 2022, and a more recent provisional value for 2023. Also, calculated an estimate of drunk driving deaths for 2023, based on the historical rate & overall automobile deaths for 2023.
Update – 9/8/2024: Updated the provisional firearm homicide data for 2022 & 2023 to the finalized value for 2022, and a more recent provisional value for 2023.
Full Series:
Part 1 – Violent Crime By Weapon
Part 2 – Firearm Homicides
Part 3 – “Guns make it easier” and Children Hurting Themselves
Part 4 – Mass Shootings
Part 5 – Why Gun Control Won’t Work & The Gun Show Loophole
Citations
- Bureau of Justice Statistics – Trends and Patterns in Firearm Violence, 1993–2018
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/tpfv9318.pdf
Report does not contain like-for-like comparable on data for all fatal & nonfatal firearm violence. They’re all in different units; either 3-year rolling averages, or 2014-2018 merged, year-by-year, or rates rather than raw numbers, etc. It only has equivalent data for age 12+. So, we use the 12+ numbers so we’re comparing like-for-like. But, based upon tables which show both All & 12+, the difference is quite small. Most violence is 12+. Ex: In Table 1, the 12+ data contains around 98% or more of the year-by-year incidents.- [a] Table 6 – Firearm homicides against persons age 12 and older
- [b] Table 7 – Nonfatal firearm victimization against persons age 12 or older (includes: Rape or sexual assault, robbery and aggravated Assault)
- [c] Table 1 – Firearm Homicide, 1993-2018 [Has data for all & 12+]
- [d] Table 2 – Nonfatal firearm victimization against persons age 12 or older, 1993-2018
- Center for Disease Control and Prevention – CDC Wonder
Note: the CDC data is equivalent to the “All” totals in the BJS report (i.e. as opposed to the age 12+ totals). However, the BJS report rounded all of their data to the hundreds place. The CDC data is raw numbers with no rounding; so, they’re going to be off a bit from one another. Because of this, the CDC data is used in all years that it is present, and the BJS data is only used to extend the backend of the data back to 1993.
For Official Confirmed Data [1999 – 2020]:
Multiple Cause of Death, 1999-2020 Request
http://wonder.cdc.gov/mcd-icd10.html
For Provisional Data [2018 – 2023]:
Provisional Mortality Statistics, 2018 through Last Week Request
Deaths occurring through May 04, 2024 as of May 12, 2024
https://wonder.cdc.gov/mcd-icd10-provisional.html
UCD – ICD-10 Codes:
[Relevant data points for reference. Not all of these were used in the graphs. Firearm deaths excludes legal intervention by police & firearm deaths in war]- Title: Terrorism involving firearms
U01.4 (Terrorism involving firearms) - Title: Accidental Firearm Deaths
W32 (Handgun discharge)
W33 (Rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge)
W34 (Discharge from other and unspecified firearms) - Title: Firearm Suicides
X72 (Intentional self-harm by handgun discharge)
X73 (Intentional self-harm by rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge)
X74 (Intentional self-harm by other and unspecified firearm discharge) - Title: Firearm Homicides
X93 (Assault by handgun discharge)
X94 (Assault by rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge)
X95 (Assault by other and unspecified firearm discharge) - Title: Firearm Deaths of Unknown Intent
Y22 (Handgun discharge, undetermined intent)
Y23 (rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge, undetermined intent)
Y24 (Other and unspecified firearm discharge, undetermined intent) - Title: All Suicides
X60-X84 (Intentional self-harm)
- Title: Terrorism involving firearms
Common Query Parameters:
Group Results By: Year
Title: <Name of the output text file>
Additional Rate Options > Calculate Rates Per: 100,000
States: All
2013 Urbanization: All
Ten-Year Age Groups: All Ages
Gender: All Genders
Hispanic Origin: All Origins
Race: All Races
Year/Month: All Dates
Weekday: All Weekdays
Autopsy: All Values
Place of Death: All Places
MCD – ICD-10 Codes:
All
Export Results: True
Show Totals: False
Show Zero Values: True
Show Suppressed: True
Precision: 4 decimal places
- Fun ride or risky transport: Golf cart-related injuries treated in U.S. emergency departments from 2007 through 2017 – Journal of Safety Research
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022437520301237 - Traffic Safety Facts 2003 – National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
[Page 32; Page 48 of PDF]
Table 13 – Persons Killed, by Highest Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) in the Crash, 1982-2003
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/809775 - Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) – National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Trends > Alcohol
Table: Persons Killed, by Highest Driver Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) in the Crash, 1994 – 2021 – State : USA
https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Trends/TrendsAlcohol.aspx - State Alcohol-Impaired-Driving Estimates Traffic Safety Facts 2022 Data – National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813579 - Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities in 2023 – Traffic Safety Facts – Crash Stats – National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Note: does not include numbers for drunk driving deaths.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813561 - Number of U.S. Aircraft, Vehicles, Vessels, and Other Conveyances – US Bureau of Transportation Statistics
https://www.bts.gov/content/number-us-aircraft-vehicles-vessels-and-other-conveyances - Estimating Global Civilian-held Firearms Numbers – Briefing Paper – Small Arms Survey
https://www.smallarmssurvey.org/sites/default/files/resources/SAS-BP-Civilian-Firearms-Numbers.pdf - Suicide Fact Sheet [2022] – CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/pdf/NCIPC-Suicide-FactSheet-508_FINAL.pdf
