"There are three types of lies. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics."
This is from "truthorfiction.com":
quote:
This email is obviously the humorous creation of a gun enthusiast.
We don't know when it was written but not all of the statistics appear accurate.
According to the U.S. Department of Health Services there were about 780,000 licensed physicians in the United States in 2008, so that figure seems good.
Finding statistics that everybody agrees with regarding deaths caused by doctors is a little more difficult. Dr. J. Mercola released a book in 2000 titled Doctors are the Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Causing 250,000 Deaths Every Year. His breakdown, however, largely focuses on errors in hospitals and includes 12,000 deaths by unnecessary surgery, 7,000 due to medication errors in hospitals, 20,000 due to other errors in hospitals, 80,000 from infections in hospitals, and 106,000 from the negative effects of medications.
Regarding gun owners, figures from 2002-2001 from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives said there are 294 million gun owners in the U.S., a much higher figure that that quoted in the email.
According to the National Rifle Association there were 776 accidental deaths from firearms in 2000, a lower figure than in the email.
That's all interesting to know but the premise of the email is weak and, as we said, mostly aimed toward humor. Comparing doctor deaths to accidental firearm deaths is meaningless, especially because doctors are dealing with people who are sick in the first place, some of whom are at high risk for death or have gone through high risk medical procedures.
And continuing on with statistics...
Wikipedia states that gun ownership per capita in the USA is 90 per 100 residents. In Canada the number is 31.5 per 100 (same rate as Sweden). But even so we do tend to use them with much less frequency up here. It's hard to aim properly when you're freezing your nuts off.
I love these threads.
Mark