10-29-2002, 11:28 AM
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#8
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Guest
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Just thought some hard numbers would be appropos.
Anyway, the latest actual statistics (for Y2000) read as follows:
Leading causes of death:
Heart Disease:■ 710,760
Cancer:■ 553,091
Stroke:■ 167,661
Chronic lower respiratory diseases:■ 122,009
Accidents:■ 97,900
Diabetes:■ 69,301
Influenza and pneumonia:■ 65,313
Alzheimer's Disease:■ 49,558
Kidney diseases:■ 37,251
Septicemia:■ 31,224
Suicide: 29,350
Liver disease:■ 26,552
Hypertension/renal disease:■ 18,073
Homicide (all causes):■ 16,765
Pneumonitis:■ 16,636
All other combined:■ 391,904
Total deaths by gunshot: 28,663
Circumstances of gunshot deaths:
1.■ Suicide: 16,596 (53%)
2.■ Homicide: 10,806 (38%)
3.■ Accident: 774 (2.7%)
4.■ Police: 258 (0.9%)
5.■ Unknown: 229 (0.8%)
As a percentage of the total U.S. population:
-- Gunshot homicide deaths (10,806) : 0.0036%
And for comparison purposes:
-- Death by alcohol (19,358): 0.0062% [excl. alcohol-related accidents]
In other words, you're almost twice as likely to die of alcohol poisoning than by gunshot-homicide.■
I know the news makes it sound like we are dropping like flys from guns, but the mass media can't really do much with these numbers, so you don't see them often unless you go looking for them.
The Source is here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr50/nvsr50_15.pdf
That is the Center for Disease Control, which is also responsible for tracking all cause of death type statistics in the USA.
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