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Stats on gun violence show a problem

Given recent events I thought it would be helpful to unearth as many facts about guns in America as I could.

According to the CDC, there were 30,540 gun deaths in 2005. By 2016, there were 38,551 gun deaths, a 26 percent increase. For the first time, gun deaths surpassed motor vehicle deaths.

You are most likely to die from a gun in Alaska, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. You are least likely to die from a gun in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Hawaii. You are nearly 7 times more likely to die from a gun in Alaska than in Massachusetts. Colorado is ranked 20th with 14.3 gun deaths per 100,000 people.



The latest breakdown of gun deaths from the CDC is for 2014. Of the 33,594 gun deaths, 21,386 were suicides, 11,008 were homicides and 461 were accidental.

You are 7 times more likely to die from a gun in America than you are in Canada and an astounding 350 times more likely to die from a gun than if you lived in Japan.




An assault weapons ban was enacted in 1994 and expired in 2004. Compared with the previous 10-year period, mass-shooting deaths declined 42.5 percent during the ban. In the 10 years after the ban, mass-shooting deaths increased 239 percent. Between 2014 and 2017, mass-shooting deaths increased another 162 pecent.

It is estimated that there is at least one gun for every American (all 323 million of us). Around 25 perent of the population is a gun owner. Just 3 percent of gun owners own 50 percent of the guns.

The 5 million NRA members represent only 6.25 percent of gun owners and a mere 1.5 percent of the general public. Their outsized political power is obtained through generous campaign donations.

Only in America would you pass a weapons ban that expired after 10 years. Only in America would you learn absolutely nothing from all of these readily available statistics. Only in America would you rely on children who were the victims of a massacre that was preventable on many levels to cut through the corruption and hypocrisy, state the obvious, and (hopefully) lead our country forward.

Marshall Hall

Aspen