OT: Gunowners vrs doctors

[General Pain]

What's the most dangerous of the two?

http://www.sickone.com/gundoc.html

Can any of my US friends confirm this?

[kato13]

The base numbers seem at least semi accurate. Most gun deaths in the US are suicides and they are at least a factor of 10 larger than accidental deaths IIRC.

[Webstral]

I haven't combed through the FBI stats in a few years. Last time I looked, suicidal gun deaths were roughly on par with homicidal gun deaths. Homicidal gun deaths were something like 1/4 of vehicular deaths. What does this tell us? For all the press events like Columbine get, people are taking their own lives with guns at the same rate they are taking each other's lives. People are killing each other on American highways at an enormous rate. Interestingly enough, no one is interested in highways deaths until there are several young children involved or it affects one personally.

Highway deaths are down, largely due to the improvement in safety equipment. In 2000, we were losing the casualty rate of the entire US involvement in Vietnam every year. By the mid-2000's, the death rate was down by 20%, but the accident rate was up. Go figure.

80 million gun owners is a big number. Of course, it's tough to generate meaningful stats, given that guns trade hands without being tracked by law enforcement. The last figures I saw put the number of gun owners at 50 million, who owned 200 million firearms between them. (Have fun, comrades!) This estimate is several years out of date. I keep reading that since President Obama was elected, there has been a massive run on guns and ammo, so it's conceivable that the numbers have spiked in the past several years.

If only I lived in Nevada.

Webstral

[Jason]

Except Doctors also save many, many lives each year, while guns don't really work for healing.

Just saying.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by Jason

Except Doctors also save many, many lives each year, while guns don't really work for healing.

Just saying.

I agree with the sentiment, unfortunately while their is much effort directed at removing guns from the equation, little has been done to remove the problems in the medical system that continue to result in the unnecessary death of patients. The same situation exists here in Australia.
At an ethical level I find it appalling that doctors/hospitals cause more deaths than firearms and very little is done to prevent it. Gun crime obviously is bad but how keen are you to go to hospital when there's a chance it will kill you rather than heal you?
It's always been cheaper to "get rid of the guns" than fix the medical system and governments love the cheaper option.

[pmulcahy11b]

Well, let's see -- I haven't been the victim of violent crime since high school...

Then again, I'm chronically ill with the doctors being unable to unwilling to do what it takes to figure out what's wrong with me, and possibly over-medicated...

Hmmmmm.....