General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Your second amendment rights are getting in the way of our rights. [View all]rgbecker
(4,831 posts)So I'll repeat it: (It concerns the death rate per licensed vehicle driver vs. for gun owner)
Let's do the math. There are, as you state, about 70 million gun owners in the US. Collectively, they are responsible for 30,000 wrongful deaths each year. So that would put the odds of any one of them misusing a firearm with fatal results at about 1 in 2,333. By way of comparison, nearly 200 million licensed automobile drivers will account for approximately 40,000 deaths annually, making the odds of causing a fatal accident 1 in 5,000. I don't imagine it's a very fair comparison, though, since drivers use their vehicles far more often than guns are used by gun owners, so, if statistics were available on the number of hours people use guns versus vehicles, the odds of causing a fatality in a vehicle per hour of use would certainly be far less. Setting that aside, though, based simply upon the number of users, gun owners are statistically more than twice as likely to cause the death of another person than a driver is, yet we require drivers to obtain licenses to operate a motor vehicle, for which they are required to pass safety and competency examinations which they have to renew periodically, while we impose no such requirements upon gun owners.