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Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Daily Kos: Please read Eugene Robinson: Stop the gun madness

Daily Kos: Please read Eugene Robinson: Stop the gun madness:


Please read Eugene Robinson: Stop the gun madness

Georgia has featured Robinson's Washington Post column in the pundit round- up, which is good.
It is not enough.
Everyone should read it.  Consider:
In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans. Most of the deaths were suicides; a few were accidental. About a third of them — 11,078 — were homicides. That’s almost twice the number of Americans who have been killed in a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.In Britain, by comparison, the number of gun homicides in 2010 was 58. Here we’d consider that a rounding error.
Let's convert those actual gun homicides into death rates:  UK  58 deaths in an estimate population of 62.3 million
US 11,078in a population of  308,745,538
Deaths per 100,000 of population
UK 58/623 = .093
US 11078/3087 = 3.59
.093/3.59 = .0259    
The UK is increasingly diverse in its population.
It has a strong rural constituency that hunts - with shotguns, with hunting rifles.
And it has a gun homicide rate less than 3% of ours.
Or if you prefer, 3.59/.093 = 38.6
The gun homicide rate in the US is 38 times that of the UK.
Stop the gun madness
There is more. . .   unfortunately too much more . . .