Just ran across this:
(CNSNews.com) - New facts in the gun control debate: A federal report says the rate at which Americans are killed by guns has dropped significantly in recent years - 21 percent since 1993. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 32,436 people died from firearm-related injuries in 1997 (more than half of them suicides), compared with the 39,595 who died of gun injuries in 1993. The CDC estimates that 64,207 people were treated for nonfatal gunshot wounds in 1997, down 40.8 percent from 104,390 treated in 1993. "There were about two nonfatal firearm injuries in 1997 for every [firearm] death. To see both of these coming down together really indicates that we're making good progress at reducing the number of firearm injuries in the United States," said Lee Annest of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. The falling gun death rate coincides with the falling rate of violent crime, and the CDC said the lower the age bracket, the larger the decline in the gun-death rate. The CDC report was based on death certificates and a sampling of hospitals across the country. It did not look at why gun deaths and injuries have dropped so dramatically in recent years.
I'm pretty convinced that the liberal intelligencia will attribute this dramatic decrease on the plethora of meaningless gun laws and will extrapolate this degree of "success" to what could be achieved in a truly gun-free society. Any guesses as to the true reasons? It would be truly interesting to have these statistics broken down between "shall issue" and "shall not issue" states.
(CNSNews.com) - New facts in the gun control debate: A federal report says the rate at which Americans are killed by guns has dropped significantly in recent years - 21 percent since 1993. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 32,436 people died from firearm-related injuries in 1997 (more than half of them suicides), compared with the 39,595 who died of gun injuries in 1993. The CDC estimates that 64,207 people were treated for nonfatal gunshot wounds in 1997, down 40.8 percent from 104,390 treated in 1993. "There were about two nonfatal firearm injuries in 1997 for every [firearm] death. To see both of these coming down together really indicates that we're making good progress at reducing the number of firearm injuries in the United States," said Lee Annest of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. The falling gun death rate coincides with the falling rate of violent crime, and the CDC said the lower the age bracket, the larger the decline in the gun-death rate. The CDC report was based on death certificates and a sampling of hospitals across the country. It did not look at why gun deaths and injuries have dropped so dramatically in recent years.
I'm pretty convinced that the liberal intelligencia will attribute this dramatic decrease on the plethora of meaningless gun laws and will extrapolate this degree of "success" to what could be achieved in a truly gun-free society. Any guesses as to the true reasons? It would be truly interesting to have these statistics broken down between "shall issue" and "shall not issue" states.