Guns aren’t so deadly

After reading Fred Grimm’s Jan. 27 column, Gun math adds up to a deadly sum, on accidental gun deaths in the United States, it strikes me as ironic how folks on the gun-control side of the debate use statistics to try to prove their point for more gun restrictions.

Grimm paints a horrific tale of preventable gun deaths in this country that can only be resolved by outlawing private ownership of firearms.

But here are a few statistics he isn’t telling us about. According to government statistics, there was about 606 unintentional deaths caused by guns. That’s a 0.0202 percent death rate per gun.

Compare that to the Centers for Disease Control and Presvention statistics for death by tobacco use, 529,000; medical errors, 195,000; and alcohol abuse,107,400, and you get a sense of what’s really killing people.

The fact is we live in a country where people die every day from preventable circumstances. All of which are tragedies. Yet Grimm wants to draw attention to one of the statistically lowest causes of them. And the only one that is a right protected by the Constitution.

This story was originally published January 29, 2015 at 8:28 PM with the headline "Guns aren’t so deadly."