Issue Position: Gun Policy Based on Facts not Fear

Issue Position

The facts: of the 30,000 gun deaths per year, more than half (18,000) are sui­cides. The num­ber of acci­den­tal deaths is about 1000. Each year there are about 3000 deaths caused by med­ical error, about 15,000 deaths caused by acci­den­tal falls, and over 40,000 acci­den­tal deaths caused by automobiles.

In com­par­i­son, civil­ians use firearms to defend them­selves from crim­i­nals between 800,000 and 2.5 mil­lion times per year. About 8% of those (between 64,000 and 200,000) involve stop­ping a sex­ual assault.

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