Logic vs Emotion

This is an old Zoltar Speaks! blog post.

I just randomly went and looked up some statistical information…

USA population is roughly 324,000,000

Privately owned firearms in USA is roughly 350,000,000

Number of households in the USA is roughly 126,000,000

Number of households in the USA that have a firearm is roughly 53,000,000

Number of firearm related incidents (not all resulted in death) in 2016 was roughly 58,881

Number of firearm related deaths in USA in 2016 was roughly 38,000 (depends on the site you choose)

Percentage of existing firearms used in firearm related incidents in 2016 was 0.017%

Percentage of existing firearms by household used in firearm related incidents in 2016 was 0.111%

Percentage of individuals using firearms in firearm incidents in the USA in 2016 was 0.018%
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Here are some 2016 murder statistics from the FBI…

Total Murders: 15,070

Murders using firearms
Total: 11,004
% Of Total Murders: 73.02%

Murders using handguns
Total: 7,105
% of Total Murders: 47.15%
% of Firearm Murders 64.57%

Murders using rifles
Total: 374
% of Total Murders: 2.48%
% of Firearm Murders: 3.40%
[UPDATE: May 2, 2019] Assault styled rifles are a smaller percentage of this.

Murders using shotguns
Total: 262
% of Total Murders: 1.47%
% of Firearm Murders: 2.38%

Murders Using Other Firearms
Total: 186
% of Total Murders: 1.23%
% of Firearm Murders: 1.69%

Murders Using Firearms Not Stated
Total: 3077
% of Total Murders: 20.42%
% of Firearm Murders: 27.96%

Murders using knives
Total: 1,604
% of Total Murders: 10.64%

Murders using other weapons
Total: 1,806
% of Total Murders: 11.98%

Murders using hand/fists/feet
Total: 656
% of Total Murders: 4.35%

We are going to make a reasonable assumption about the numbers included in the “Murders Using Firearms Not Stated”.  Using the same usage percentage relationships we see in the other firearm usages, we can reasonably calculate what these firearms were using this method.  Add up the following totals (handguns, rifles, shotguns, other) then calculating the percentage of each in relationship to the sum of their total.

Handguns + Rifles + Shotguns + Other = Total
7,105 + 374 + 262 + 186 = 7,927

Now we can calculate the percentages
Handguns (7,105/7927) x 100=89.63%
Rifles (7,105/374) x 100=4.72%
[UPDATE: May 2, 2019] Assault styled rifles are a smaller percentage of this.
Shotguns (7,105/262) x 100=3.31%
Other (7,105/186) x 100=2.35%.

Now we are going to take these percentages apply them to the total of the “Murders Using Firearms Not Stated” and add resulting values to the other firearm totals so we can use those values for later calculations based on totals.

Murders using handguns = 7,105 + (3077 x .8963) = 7,105 + 2,758 = 9,863
Murders using rifles = 374 + (3077 x .0472) = 374 + 145 = 519
[UPDATE: May 2, 2019] Assault styled rifles are a smaller percentage of this.
Murders using shotguns = 262 + (3077 x .0331) = 262 + 102 = 364
Murders Using Other Firearms = 186 + (3077 x .0235) = 262 + 72 = 334

We’ll use these calculated values below.

From the FBI data we can calculate that in the year 2106 there were 0.003% of existing firearms used in murders, here is the calculation (11,004 /350,000,000)*100=0.003%.  Also we can calculate that in the year 2016 (using the calculated number of rifles 519), 0.000148% of existing firearms used in murders were rifles [UPDATE: May 2, 2019] Assault styled rifles are a smaller percentage of this, here is the calculation (519 /350,000,000)*100=0.000148% . So we now have an anti-firearm movement (anti 2nd Amendment movement) that wants to ban or limit availability of firearms to 100% of the people based on the illegal use of 0.003% of firearms, or better yet based on the illegal use of 0.000148% of firearms – this is not logical.

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An Aside:
In 2016 there were 35,485 fatalities in 32,539 separate vehicle related incidents, that’s 1.09 people killed per vehicle crash.  There are roughly 265,000,000 registered vehicles in the USA. I couldn’t find the number of vehicles directly involved in those incidents so I don’t know the percentage of single vehicle vs multiple vehicle there was. Derive what you like from that.

National Center for Health Statistics suggest that there were more than 64,000 drug overdose deaths in 2016 and there 22,018 firearm related suicides which is about half of the suicides. Derive what you like from that.
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Additionally…

I recently read something elsewhere that bothers me. The comment was in regards to banning semi-automatic rifles. Essentially what was stated was If a class of weapon is proven to be to dangerous in the hands of the public and the risk is ongoing, then these weapons should be banned. This sounds a lot like the person is genuinely concerned with dangerous things in the hands of the public that create public safety hazards and these kinds of things should be banned. That’s my understanding of the argument.

Is this a reasonable argument? Nope, it’s absolutely ridiculous.

In the data I presented above for 2016 it shows that there we calculated that there were 374 murders using rifles, for the sake of argument I’ll assume that all of the rifles used were semi-automatic.

Here is what’s bothering me, people using arguments like this have a strange set of double standards. There were 374 people murdered with semi-automatic rifles; therefore, there were 374 instances where individuals abused their right to own a firearm. There are 350,000,000 firearms in 53,000,000 separate households and these anti-gunners social justice warriors want to strip the rights of the 100% of 324,000,000 individuals because 374 people took 0.00001% of the existing firearms and murdered someone. Okay, let’s expand that a bit, there were 11,004 murders using firearms, let’s assume all those were semiautomatic firearms. So now we have 11,004 people that took 0.003% of the firearms and murdered someone. Now these exact same people completely ignore the fact that there were at the very least 32,539 separate people that abused a moving vehicle (a 2 ton weapon) and killed 35,485 people. There are 263,600,000 vehicles in the USA, so that’s 0.012% of the vehicles that were abused and killed nearly 35,500 people. These same anti-gunners say that even though vehicles are not a constitutional right they are a “necessity” and should not be banned and we just accept the fact that nearly 35,500 people were killed by vehicles.

The double standard should be obvious but here it is in numerical form: 0.003% of the population is killed by 0.00001% of the existing firearms – firearms are evil and should be banned; 0.01% of the population is killed by 0.012% of the vehicles – this is acceptable losses.

Remember the paraphrase above, If a class of weapon is proven to be to dangerous in the hands of the public and the risk is ongoing, then these weapons should be banned.

How about this; If a class of vehicle (one with wheels) is proven to be to dangerous in the hands of the public and the risk is ongoing, then these vehicles should be banned.

After all, remember the mantra; Not One More Death!

Everyone must suffer the ban equally to save lives, it’s a public safety thing.

Think of the children being slaughtered in vehicle crashes!