How Gun Violence is Massively Overstated as a US Mortality Risk

Executive Summary 

• Mass shootings seem to stretch the ability of most people to think rationally.
• The issues of innumeracy and risk are explored in this article.

Introduction

After a shooting that was thought to be racially motivated, the following video was produced by a major media outlet.

See our references for this article and related articles at this link.

The Video

“Silence = Consent?”

Has it been silent since the El Paso shooting? It has dominated the news cycle. 22 people were killed, but around 600,000 deaths from cancer in the US per year. That is 1,643 per day. And we have specific policies that increase cancer rates because we have deregulated so aggressively. There are known cancer hotspots in the US around petro-chemical plants, and the US regulatory bodies do next to nothing about it. There are roughly 100,000 deaths from drug interactions in the US every year. That is 273 deaths per day. Many of these deaths could be prevented, but again, our politicians are afraid to confront pharmaceutical companies.

Preventable Deaths from Guns are for Some Reason to be The Primary Focus of a Society

Why are deaths from firearms more important, even if they are a rounding error to other causes of death? Trump’s greatest impact on public heath will have nothing to do with promoting shootings, it will have to do with further deregulating health and the environment. We are at a stage of terminal stupidity where our news continually pushes us down the path of focusing on the wrong things and being innumerate. Apparently, we are supposed to drop all of the major issues such as our nuclear arsenal not being downsized, our defunct participatory government, the control of politics by money, the continual degradation of the environment — so we can focus on the last shooting which is a rounding error compared to other issues.

How Much of a Risk is Violent Crime?

Before we get to the data, the context of violent crime within the risk of overall mortality is important. This is because violent crime in the US is presented as a major risk factor when it is not.

In 2015 36,000 lives were taken due to violent crime. However, there are 320,000,000 people in the US. And roughly 20,000 of the 36,000 are suicides; something frequently left out when politically left-leaning individuals discuss violent crime in the US. This means that we are discussing roughly 16,000 murders.

For this research, we will only be looking at homicides, not suicides.

How Significant is Gun Violence in Relation to Other Causes of Mortality?

According to the CDC, the leading causes of death are the following.

• “Heart disease: 635,260
• Cancer: 598,038
• Accidents (unintentional injuries): 161,374
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 154,596
• Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 142,142
• Alzheimer’s disease: 116,103
• Diabetes: 80,058
• Influenza and pneumonia: 51,537
• Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,046
• Intentional self-harm (suicide): 44,965″

By comparison, the number of homicides is (16,000/635,260) = 2.5% of the yearly impact of heart disease.

One might say that murders are preventable, and these far higher causes of death are not preventable. However, that statement is quite untrue.

We have known for decades the relationship between poor diet and heart disease, yet there is either a McDonald’s or a Hardee’s or a Taco Bell in every nook and cranny in commercially zoned areas in the US. Children are fed horrible food in public schools because it is inexpensive, and the poorer the school, the worse the food quality. We also know quite well the relationship between cancer-causing chemicals and cancer (the second leading cause of death). Yet, the US Government allows the industry to produce cancer-causing agents and as we cover in the article How Fracking Turns Out to be a Massive Scam, the US has followed a policy of allowing cancer-causing fracking fluid to be pumped into groundwater, massively increasing the cancer risk. Furthermore, we often decry FDA restrictions on carcinogenic substances as “burdensome regulations.” Our current head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, is known primarily for suing the government white the Attorney General of Oklahoma to allow more fracking.

Conveniently, this burger can be purchased at two different major fast-food chains. However, will not only eating this type of diet leads to cardiovascular disease and obesity, of the 500 samples of ground beef tested by consumer reports, but 500 out of the 500 also contained the e-Coli virus. The reason for this? The meat industry wants it this way. The US has drastically cut back on meat testing, as the regulation was considered “onerous,” and less than 100% e-Coli levels in ground beef was considered unacceptable.

This video shows the food differences offered by schools in different countries. The US Government could feed children good food, but they don’t want to. And this has implications for millions of children, but it gets next to no coverage. 

Eating the McDonald’s “Big and Tasty” won’t do you in immediately, but over time it will. Because of this lack of immediate impact, this subject is considered quite tedious by both politically left-leaning and right-leaning individuals. Most people are perfectly fine with the government keeping a hands-off policy towards multiple high mortality issues. But with guns, apparently due to its emotional component of murder (that is immediate death, rather than a long term death), it is treated entirely differently from a policy perspective.

Therefore, the intense interest shown to violent crime is simply incongruous with the reality of how we treat people in the US. Other types of causes of death tend to get overlooked, while violent crime is a hot button issue. The prevailing wisdom seems to be the getting shot to death in a Hardee’s is considerably more tragic than if you die of heart disease because you ate at Hardee’s. This is true even though many more people will die from eating at Hardee’s than getting shot in a Hardee’s (or establishment with a similar heart disease-causing menu)

What is the most dangerous place in the US? Places like this. But not because of gun violence. 

This is another dangerous place. Cancer rates go up around petrochemical plants, with high cancer rates in New Jersey, and Houston where a great deal of the petrochemical industry is located. The US could lower these deaths by stopping these firms from dumping toxic substances, but because the deaths take a while to happen, there is little interest in reducing this.

Conclusion

Gun violence is a minor cause of mortality in the US that receives a completely disproportionate amount of attention. Far more lives could be saved if the energy put into limiting gun murders were put into the major causes of death in the US.