I recieved this email forward, and though I suspect it was written as a joke, I had to reply. Anything with statistics (I did not fact-check the original message) is bound to get people to support it if it sounds good.
FACTS TO PONDER:
(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000
(B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171.
Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of Health Human Services.
Now think about this:
Guns:
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000.
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .000188
Statistics courtesy of the FBISo, statistically, doctors are approximately
9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
Remember, "Guns don't kill people, doctors do."
FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT
ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.Please alert your friends to this alarming threat.
We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!
Out of concern for the public at large, We have withheld the statistics on lawyers
for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention!
So this is what I had to say...
But... People use guns (often stolen!!) to kill people on purpose, while doctors are generally trying to avoid killing people.
From Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research:
Surveys of gun owners suggest that approximately 500,000 guns are stolen each year from private citizens.1 In addition, in 1998 and 1999, more than 27,000 firearms were reportedly stolen from licensed gun dealers and more than 3,700 firearms stolen from common carriers who transport guns.2 Obviously, these stolen guns go directly into the hands of criminals. ( read more)
Nobody's gonna steal your DOCTOR to kill you or somebody else, but you'd better believe your gun is fair game.
Not only that, read this, taken from the University of Michigan website:
When researchers studied the 30,000 accidental gun deaths of Americans of all ages that occurred between 1979-1997, they found that preschoolers aged 0-4 were 17 times more likely to die from a gun accident in the 4 states with the most guns versus the 4 states with the least guns. Likewise, school kids aged 5-14 were over 13 times more at risk of accidental firearm death in the states with high gun ownership rates. The findings indicate that gun availability is associated with accidental death by shooting [4].
Most guns involved in self-inflicted and unintentional firearm injuries (that is, in suicides and accidents) came either from the victim's home or the home of a friend or relative [5] .
...A number of studies [7] , [8 ], [9 ], [10 ], suggest that even kids who are trained not to touch guns can't resist, and that parents have unrealistic expectations about their kids' behavior around guns....Pellet and BB guns are high powered and can easily hurt your child. BB guns can also kill . They should be used only under adult supervision. The Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) recommends only kids 16 years of age or older use BB guns.
(read more)
So there is a little more to it than statistics about accidental deaths by firearms.
-Carla
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