Thursday, December 20, 2012

fasten your seatbelt | Bloomberg News projects guns will soon kill more in US than auto accidents

Here's the Bloomberg chart, showing gun deaths (homicide, suicide, accidents) rising as death by automobile declines, the curves projected to cross in 2015.

click to enlarge
According to the report, 2011 saw the smallest number of traffic fatalities since 1949. About 85 Americans are shot dead every day and more than 200 require emergency care for gunshot wounds. Gun owning households declined since 2004 to about one third in 2010.

From the report:
The fall in traffic deaths resulted from safer vehicles, restricted privileges for young drivers and seat-belt and other laws, he said. By contrast, “we’ve made policy decisions that have had the impact of making the widest array of firearms available to the widest array of people under the widest array of conditions.” While fewer households have guns, people who own guns are buying more of them, he [Garen Wintermute at University of California Davis] said.

No comments: