Sort of interesting, but the whole setup is oddly misleading:
"Smoking and firearms are among the leading causes of avoidable premature death in the United States"
The statement is true for smoking but it takes some work to make it true for firearms. And then it describes tobacco and firearms as "both are legal yet lethal" - it borders on nonsensical to pair them that way (I guess possessing both can be legal, but it's worded to imply that the use of both, in the ways that resulted in death, is legal).
I'd love to see fewer firearm deaths, but it just seems odd to try and link a really high cause of deaths with one that is an order of magnitude smaller, while skipping over others that are very preventable causes of death. You are, for example, many times more likely to die from poor diet than from being shot. I mean, using their framing, automobiles are "legal yet lethal" and auto deaths are the cause of about as many deaths as firearm deaths - and that includes suicide (i.e. intentional) deaths.
I think the paper is purely political. Alcohol causes 140k deaths per year, and if there were any scientific goal here they would have included alcohol before including firearms.
Not to mention obesity, which overlaps nicely with county maps of tobacco use, firearms ownership, alcohol abuse, unemployment, abortion bans, and places that used to own slaves.
Still, I'd say calling a color-coded overlay of those things "political" is actually too kind.
To me this reads visually as a weak attempt to get some viral traction for posting something like those covid infection / vaccination maps, which wealthy city-dwellers clucked over while reveling in the schadenfreude of The Redneck getting his Just Desserts.
It's not political, so much as a kind of snuff porn indulged in by certain people. Nor has it lost its paternalistic "public health" overtones in this remix.
[edit] don't get me wrong, I'm all for bringing the backwards South into the 21st Century and putting an end to its reactionary BS that has no place in a modern democracy. My point is that shaming them has no effect whatsoever; it's just a sop to prop up the sense of superiority that's unhelpfully been cultivated by coastal elites.
Alcohol abuse affects people around you, as does abuse of any drug. Drunk driving kills more people than secondhand smoke. And alcohol has a multiplicative effect on violence and other forms of substance abuse as well.
Tobacco, smoked outside, is a minor pollutant no worse to people nearby than the SUVs driving by on the street, and certainly not as bad as what's in most Americans' well water or fast food packaging.
And if mass shootings were the only deaths that ever occurred from firearms then they'd be much less of a problem...[1,2] (there were >20,000 gun homicides in 2021, versus about 300 deaths from falling off ladders. There have been 351 mass shootings so far in the US [3])
If you dishonestly expand the definition of a word, you can create any statistic you want.
Meanwhile, roughly as many people are killed in automobile accidents as there are gun deaths (of any kind, including suicide) every year.
Statistically, you likely don’t know a single person killed by a gun or a car. I absolutely do not.
Now, heart disease? Statistically you’re unlikely not to know someone who died from it.
In reality, you’re not going to be a random victim of gun violence. Gun homicides primarily consist of internecine violence between criminal elements who primarily use handguns.
Finally, there’s been a large rise in gun homicides over the last few years coinciding with a large rise in violent crime in general. Solve the crime issue, you solve the gun homicides.
Dishonest is your original assertion: that mass shootings must be the only type of gun violence in America (implicit by your comparison, rather then referring to any actual statistics).
And then you do it again: "what about automobile accidents?" Well that's a good question! Except (1) a great deal of effort is spent on reducing them, and (2) there are less drunk-driving related crashes then gun homicides in the US[1] - 13,384 in 2021.
And now you're onto just standard whataboutism about everything else. Maybe all causes of death are serious! Maybe one of these causes though has not only a historic lack of attention, but has been the unique recipient of legislation specifically designed to prevent the CDC even looking into it![2]
Because of everything you've listed, you know what's unique? No one is doing anything about gun-related death or injuries. Regulations are actively rolled back, and people like you work to shutdown any possible discussion of the problem. Literally no one is stopping you talking about cars, or heart disease, yet I seriously doubt you'd be bothering to "whatabout" those in any of the numerous studies which get posted.
The Dickey Amendment was specifically because a certain set of activists would do "research" for the purpose of creating a record to support gun control.
> “We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths. We’re doing the most we can do, given the political realities.” (P.W. O’Carroll, Acting Section Head of Division of Injury Control, CDC, quoted in Marsha F. Goldsmith, “Epidemiologists Aim at New Target: Health Risk of Handgun Proliferation,” Journal of the American Medical Association vol. 261 no. 5, February 3, 1989, pp. 675-76.)
The CDC wasn't banned from looking into it. They have looked into how guns may lead to deaths [0][1][2]. The were banned from using it to promote gun control.
Regulations are going to and fro. Some of them are getting rolled back, while others are progressing. Most of the ones that are getting rolled back have been useless at their intent. Or they violate the constitution. Or both!
I think that's true, at least officially, but IIRC the ATF came about in the 1800s as part of the Treasury Department, i.e. "managing" those things in the sense of taxation/revenue first more than policing, the latter now belonging at least as much to the DEA and FBI maybe? I might be misremembering though. :)
There's another quality that allows to group cigarettes and guns together. They are both completely optional lifestyle choice. While cars and diet might be way harder to opt out given how cars are needed to get to work and stores and the most unhealthy diet is the cheapest and fastest one.
Even “optional” gets a little fuzzy when all these things are likely to be a cultural phenomenon; as in, influenced by your parents/family.
It’s like saying that Christianity continues to be the most popular choice of religion in the US. Sure it’s optional, but there’s a bit of inertia involved.
There's always some way to group things together, but I find it unhelpful in this case.
Even grouping all firearm deaths together is almost always unhelpful. Ordinary violent crime with firearms is very different from a school shooting is very different from suicide by firearm.
Then grouping firearm deaths together with a highly addictive and slow-killing vice like cigarettes just adds to the confusion.
1. The suicide difference between the Mountain & Basin West vs the Great Plains surprises me. I would have expected Wyoming and Nebraska would have been more similar.
2. The gradient across Texas is interesting, particularly the lack of both suicide and smoking death in the southwest part of the state compared to the northeast.
3. Rural Nevada counties, except the northernmost two, utter lack the suicide rate that is seen in nearly all of Arizona.
4. It's not helpful to conflate these three causes of death. Seems like it would be better as separate maps
5. It's not helpful to color-code these maps as a binary choice between "has problem" and "does not have." I wonder how much subtlety is hidden by not using a gradient.
6. Unlabeled graphs are a sin. What is the definition of "hot spot?" And why is it hidden from the casual reader?
I think I read somewhere recently that the majority of Americans were in favour of stricter gun reforms, yet no real change I laws seem to happen and all the current presidential candidates over in the US seems to not even dare touch the subject. I find it reprehensible and puzzling how they’ve got this weird relationship with guns, but it’s interesting how often people are using a certain interpretation of their constitution as to why they need all those guns, or thinking that it’s the safest option that everyone has guns to protect themselves against the “bad guys” than just making it really difficult for the average citizen to get a firearm.
Most people that are in favor of stricter gun laws don't understand the current laws that already exist and just hear buzzwords like "gun show loophole"
If you ask most people if they support "background checks" you're going to find that almost all people support that, things change a bit when you explain the difference between the existing background checks and the proposed "universal background checks".
Most people don't understand the difference. And to be quite frank, the organizations running the polls might not understand either, or it's in their best interest to not explain
Polled pretty high when asked as "Do you think ___ is a good idea" and ___ was "Background checks for gun purchases at gun shows or other private sales."
I'm in rural Australia and have several firearms, they're tools for feral animal control, my neighbour shoots ULR targets at 5,000 yards (not a typo), and 12 year olds can join a gun club.
(ie. recheck any odd notions you might have about gun bans in Australia)
Stricter gun laws, more complicated laws aren't the answer - simple clear uniform gun laws, equally reinforced will do the job.
Unfortuneately the very nature of the (un)United States seems predestined to never enact uniform laws wrt firearms let alone maintain an up to date central register of information etc.
Seems like, just with many issues in the US, it's become another "The other side is against it, so we're for it!" problem... "Our kids are getting shot up in school, but the Democrats want to ban guns, so we're pro guns, there must be other solutions! Maybe Ivermectin also creates bullet-proof kids!".
The opposition also becomes saboteurs because any wins they give the ruling party means the ruling party gets to look better, and hell no, we can't have that, we have to destroy them!
Funnily enough when lockdowns started, the billions of bailout got bipartisan support. It seems like both sides knew a hungry populace would go for their heads, whatever the label after their name is. EDIT: then again, Dems are a more conscionable bunch (which makes fighting against a win-by-whatever-means-possible bunch hard), they knew people needed the money. The hypocrisy was GOP saying money doesn't grow on trees, until it does...
> Seems like, just with many issues in the US, it's become another "The other side is against it, so we're for it!" problem...
I'm confused by your comment. Your main thesis is worded as though it applies to all U.S. political groups, but the rest of your post seems specifically anti-Republican.
At the moment I can't think of Democrats sabotaging things that would be good for the American public to benefit themselves politically; care to find examples for me? Then we can put the examples of Republicans doing that on one side of the scale, and the examples of Democrats doing that on the other side, and call them equally bad... ;-)
Democrats could reform specific legal immigration systems, for instance revamping the H1B program, to be less nonsensical. But the incentive is to lump that reform in with other kinds of immigration reform.
Same could be said about taking a more piecemeal and less legally inventive approach to healthcare reform back under the Obama administration. They passed exactly as much as they thought they could squeak through the legislative process. A plan with 2/3 consensus could have been pursued but they decided to burn all the political capital they could instead. Enter Trump shortly later... a "fighter".
Republicans only care about gun rights when Democrats are in office. Same with Democrats about abortion. Neither do anything to reinforce either right when they control a majority of the branches of government.
>Neither do anything to reinforce either right when they control a majority of the branches of government.
Unfortunately "control a majority of the branches of government" isn't enough to get legislation passed. You need control of house, senate, and presidency. The senate is particularly difficult because of filibusterers, so you need 60% votes, not a simple majority.
Read: they aren’t willing to spend the political capital. Which shows how much they truly value the issue. Much easier to bolster the status quo. Bonus: when that issue is under attack, you can rally the troops by saying “see? They’re coming after us!”
Obama said Sandy Hook was the worst day of his presidency, and his biggest regret was not being able to change US gun laws[1], being blocked by congress. He did spend a lot of the Dem's political capital in the first term fighting for better healthcare/Obamacare.
I don't think it's true that a majority of Americans want stricter laws. We generally want more authority to carry without restriction, as seen in the rise of states that allow for concealed carry without a license. The laws are nonsensical, since there's many times more firearms in the country than people. Nevermind that we share a porous border with a country known for powerful drug cartels.
At any rate, I'm a 10th generation American, and the sense of responsibility for protecting life and liberty with firearms is deeply embedded in my culture. It's not weird, we're the oldest democracy for a reason, the people are armed and stubborn.
At this point, what state governors and legislatures do has little to do with what the people of that state - let alone of the country generally - want. Let's look at real data.
This time it's 64%. Yes, it is true that Americans want stricter gun laws. Your made-up reasons why Americans oppose gun control are Not Even Wrong when in fact there is no such opposition.
Well, it's cause a rounding error of Democrats aren't going to vote for an otherwise ok candidate if they don't support tougher gun control laws, while a non-rounding error of Republicans supports would probably not support a Republican candidate if they did support more gun control.
Put another way, I think it's fair to say that the majority of people who care about enacting stricter gun control, also do not put it in say... the top 5 issues, especially at a national level (loosening gun control laws might be otherwise). The converse position is true on the other side. I don't think there are many gun fans who would say... "repeal the NFA" as a top 5 'must have' position. But "national semi-auto ban"... well, that's like a top 5 position right there.
Put another way - would you have preferred Obama to enact ACA, or stricter gun control laws?
There are 2 schools of thought on the constitution. Living constitutionalists believe that the constitutional adapts or changes and can be fluid based on "modern" beliefs and the interpretation changes to allow for that. Originalists believe the text is strict and not up for debate and that the contract of the constitution is fixed. Most of what we are seeing is based on these 2 ideas in conflict.
Some things shouldn't even be up to debate to begin with. It was never about number of deaths, it was always about basic human dignity. Without weapons, you are at the mercy of others. With weapons, you have power. I'd say not being a powerless subject of the powers that be trumps literally any number of deaths.
You need a supermajority to amend it, and even if the 64% number in another post is accurate, you need a supermajority of elected representation, which don't map directly to population. Specifically, states that are less populous have the same number of senators, and typically are against more gun control. Lastly, even if you had a supermajority of representation favoring more gun control, you have to get them to agree on the same type of more gun control, so realistically you won't see an amendment until something well north of 80% favor more gun control.
Just secede. The scale of the US doesn't make sense. The culture has many schisms. Give people who want guns their guns, give those that don't their peace of mind.
Living constitutionalism doesn't quite make sense to me, insofar as it means that the constitution means whatever we want it to say, which results in it not actually being a check on the government's powers. This isn't to say there isn't some ambiguity in the constitution, and that ambiguity can be beneficial. But the living constitution theorists tend to read more ambiguity in than actually exists.
This includes saying things like: constitutional review didn't exist until Marbury v Madison. This ignores that it was a thing under the various state constitutions, with it not being called out specifically, and that it falls naturally under the fact that SCOTUS has the power to decide all cases and controversies, and Stare Decisis combines with that to say that if SCOTUS decides one way on a constitutional issue, they'll continue to decide the same way on that issue, so if a lower court judge decides the other way, they'll get reversed when it gets appealed, probably summarily in a one line opinion of the Court.
Strawman. I never claimed or suggested what are you asserting.
The design appears to be working well looking over the 240 years since the US' Constitution was ratified. A broad consensus of the states, _not of the people in the US as a whole_, is required to effect large scale, national changes.
The intent is to avoid tyranny by the majority. And you don't even need a majority, depending on how things would have been written. If each state gets a vote proportional to it's population, you could have something pass with substantially less than a majority of the national population, just by convincing a majority of the population of the states that becomes a majority to vote a given way (just shy of 25% (50% of state votes controlled by 50% of the votes in the states)).
The intent is to make it changeable, but not too changeable. The constitution is the supreme law of the land, and it's not beneficial if it can be changed at a whim.
It’s because we don’t have a choice. A stacked Supreme Court that says any gun law has to be a gun law that would’ve been cool in 1776 has made any progress impossible without violent revolution
Laws don’t magically get repealed. Somebody has to challenge it in court and show that it damages them/infringes in their rights. The NFS might fail if challenged (I don’t think it’s been challenged since Bruen), given the Bruen decision. But it’s not in the GOP’s interest
to find a challenge, as that would almost certainly definitely turn off swing voters.
First, apologies for the wall of text. I started off thinking I was just going to write a few sentences and here we are.
This topic is a bit more complicated than an outside observer would be able to pick up on without perhaps doing a bit more research. One common misconception people from other countries seem to have is that all the change is being made at the federal level. In fact, quite a lot of legislation is produced from smaller jurisdictions, and gun legislature changes frequently, and becomes more strict over time especially in heavily populated areas like Chicago, Seattle, New York City, their respective counties, etc. Keep in mind, the US is larger geographically than all of Europe, so there's a lot of diversity in issues and ideals across the states.
Gun reforms at the federal level are complicated. There is a large portion of the US (at least geographically) that is vehemently against a gun reform, or additional legislature on the subject. And not that this conversation has been about the subject of a nationwide gun ban, but often enough that's where these conversations lead so I'll just take it there -- there's a real concern that a national ban of guns would increase the frequency of gun related violent crimes. Guns are such a large part of the culture here, and so many people have them, and would likely not return them in a ban scenario but rather hide them, that the people committing violent crimes would be more unopposed than ever. We would hope that the people committing such crimes wouldn't suddenly become more ambitious. Couple that concern with the general lack of confidence in our police force. Generally in an active shooter situation, the police are arriving on scene 5+ minutes after casualties have already started piling up. Or in the case of someone threatening your life, the police can't really do anything about it -- often your best bet is just to file a restraining order... which of course doesn't stop a person from assaulting you.
A common thread amongst gun advocates seems to also be that restricting the ability for law abiding citizens to acquire guns is not an effective counter to gun related crimes. If there's one thing that the Mexican drug cartel has made clear, it's that if there's a market for the trafficking of illegal objects, they can be smuggled en masse into the country and be sold to people that are clearly willing to break the law. I think this argument holds some merit, and I say "some" because of course there are gun crimes committed with legally acquired guns.
My disclaimer of bias is that I am a legal gun owner, but I am for gun control legislation. I am agreeable to things such as required universal background checks on gun purchases. Background checks are already required by the federal government for store gun sales, but background check requirements from private sales (person to person) vary from state to state. I am not against a national gun registry. I am not against the restriction of types of firearms that are used disproportionately to commit violent crimes as long as there is a probation period where the new restrictions are measured for efficacy. What I am personally against is what I see more commonly instituted, which is legislation that is purely reactionary and pushed by people with a lack of knowledge on the subject. I talk to too many people about gun control that are familiar with the terms "bump stocks" and "binary triggers" and wanted them banned, but they couldn't even tell me what these things were when asked. I talk to too many people that think I could just go to a gun store and buy a full auto machine gun, which is also false and would be federally illegal. This is just to say, gun control is a topic of much ignorance (from both sides of the fence.) I think it is equally ignorant to be universally against gun control measures, but unfortunately I think their ignorance is at least somewhat valuable in fighting off the ignorance from the other side. I wish that our elected officials were more likely to talk to experts on a topic before proposing what they might propose, but the unfortunate truth is that they don't, and often need reining in.
> I think it is equally ignorant to be universally against gun control measures
Someone "universally against gun control measures" here. I'd be interested in knowing how I'm as ignorant as people who want to regulate things based on scary buzzwords, vaguely describing items that they generally lack any knowledge of.
I'd assert it's possible to hold this position, yet also be quite well informed about the history, mechanics, laws, and social consequences surrounding firearms and their accessories. For example, one could simply consider retaining the individual agency that this part of the Bill of Rights has preserved for us as being of higher utility than any of the downsides that additional (or existing) legislation purports to address. My personal view is a bit more nuanced than that (in fact, I agree with most of your post), but wanted to point out that one could start with different base axioms/heuristics, examine the same data, and end up with a different end perspective via perfectly rational (i.e., non-ignorant) reasoning.
Should private citizens be allowed to own rocket launchers with munitions? This is a hyperbolic argument, but so is "universally against gun controls".
It's already possible to do this, though with numerous, onerous restrictions (that I'd advocate against, obviously). For example, if you wanted to own a functional RPG launcher, that would be an NFA-registered DD, and each explosive projectile would be a separate additional NFA tax stamp. You'd also need an active FEL (Federal Explosives License). There's numerous other conditionals that apply, e.g., you wouldn't need the latter for inert projectiles for your RPG, or if the explosive charge was less than 0.25oz.
I don't personally agree that it should be a lower vertical for a citizen to purchase an RPG with real explosive projectiles, but I think I understand your perspective at least. You're either sensitive to a loose interpretation of the words "shall not be infringed," or you believe that those are the kinds of tools citizens would need to overthrow a hostile government (we'd need much more than RPGs but I assume your stance holds strong here all the way up the munitions ladder.) I just personally don't want to be carrying a 10mm pistol on my hip at the grocery store wondering if I'll even get a chance to draw before my skin melts off of my boiling body by an RPG explosion. Once the bad guys have RPGs, it suddenly seems a bit silly to carry anything else.
As to your previous message:
> I'd be interested in knowing how I'm as ignorant as people who [...]
To be fair, ignorance is sometimes subjectively influenced by the ideals of the person judging. I see it as ignorant to completely ignore the topic of gun crime in our government. You see it as an acceptable loss, to be written off. We disagree here.
It would seem like pairing alcohol with cigarettes would be more worthwhile, as alcohol is much deadlier, being involved in about half of suicides, half of vehicle and other deaths, half of gun deaths, etc.
This is a bit of a meta comment, but it's interesting that slapping data from WONDER onto a choropleth, with some paragraphs describing the map in words, amounts to research from authors with these titles. I am not saying this research isn't worthwhile, but I am saying there are members of the public doing research at this level or higher and just publishing it on Medium, Observable, or their blogs. Perhaps weekend volunteer researchers should seek university affiliations so they can get published in prestigious journals.
Honest questions that just popped in my head. Are there not color conversion filters that convert colors into more readily seen colors? What is a resource one would use to select color palettes from when designing in general but keeping color blind people in mind?
I wish the map could represent gun ownership and smoker rates as well. Am I just seeing that there are a lot more smokers in the red areas? Or is it the same rate of smokers as many other states, just these have more smoking-related deaths? Did they normalize the data for that already? I feel like there's not enough information here to really interpret the visualization.
The distribution along the basin and range parts of the country are very interesting. Just eyeballing it, it looks like there is a significant altitude component.
Is it just the second and third-order effects of higher transportation costs, or is it something to do with barometric air pressure?
The basin and range distribution is particular to firearm suicides.
Those are rural places, with limited access to healthcare, cultures of shame around mental health, limited economic opportunities, and high rates of gun ownership.
I have no way to know causality, but my guess is that the social factors are far more important than the barometric pressure.
Most of those social factors you've listed are things that are influenced by base transportation costs, so I wonder if there are similar patterns in other places with gun ownership and varying topography: Australia, Canada, Russia, Southeastern Europe...
I don't know about you, but humidity and mosquitoes combined with no money for air-conditioning would certainly move me closer to the suicidal/violent addict end of the "versions of me" spectrum.
I dislike they’ve confounded suicide and assault, yet again. The point of collecting and presenting data like this is to understand the problem and those two sources of “gun violence” (a political weasel word) have very different reasons for existing. Because of this the solutions must look different but without seeing the categorical error only one broad solution will be presented. Chances are it will do little or nothing because it is not actually a solution to the individual issues.
Interesting that this was created by a Florida professor but Florida is the only southern state where it is mapped almost entirely "white"; completely different than the other Southern states that are red indicating high mortality.
I live in Central Florida, so let's split the difference? ;)
I agree with you mostly but if you look at the Opportunity Atlas (https://www.opportunityatlas.org/) all of Florida looks pretty bad. But I suppose that doesn't all correlate to gun violence?
Confront anyone with this kind of correlation and you'll be accused of being an elitist snob who hates America. In America we are addicted to lethal things.
Not really. In general if you watch one of the largest news networks in the US you've highly propagandized to the point of being completely disconnected from reality.
News likes to use statements like "The most violent city in America" and then happen to leave off the qualifier of "only if you count cities with over 1 million population". When you start including per capita statistics of smaller towns.
There are certain very specific parts of Chicago where violent crime rates are astronomical, but if you are worried about widespread violent crime, your best bet is to avoid the southern states.
I was intrigued to read the details but this is just a press release with the actual research paper locked behind a paywall unfortunately. I can't find the paper anywhere.
Forget what it does to freedom. The failure of prohibition and its complete turnaround really underscores the failure of the war on drugs. Don’t criminalize addiction and the cartels and violence probably deflate.
There definitely should be a scientific limit for addictiveness, meth versus cigarettes for example. I dont quite care if somebody can scientifically stop taking an addictive substance with reasonable self-discipline but it becomes a problem and elimination of the freedom status if its too addictive that it effectively takes over your brain.
Capitalist society has intentionally trained the general population to believe in free will and the strength of the human mind, such that population members say "I'm better than being brainwashed by ads" and allowing corpos to get away with a lot, lot, lot more manipulative psychological than should be legal.
Believing that smoking addiction is a mind-over-matter problem is one major extension of this.
It’s a correlation but the correlation probably wouldn’t be so high. The north east is plenty dense compared to the south east (iirc). I think this really shows a cultural difference amid population and probably other things.
I’ve outside of this heard the South has in someways never really bounced back from the end of slavery. Could be a kind of cultural scar or lack of “infrastructure”. Like how Lincoln’s reconstruction plans never happened and his successor went a quite different direction.
I moved from one of the states that was totally clear in this map, to eastern Texas when I was younger and the social scars from the civil war still exist and by the way some people talk even to this day, you'ld think the war had ended last year. It was complete insanity to me.
You might want to take another look at that map and then look at where the big cities in florida and texas are located. The smoking blob pretty much stops at the major cities in Texas and the population centers of Florida are white as California.
It's a political paper that helps reduce trust in science. The way that the non targeted areas were pure white, was clearly designed to accentuate an arbitrary point -- there is no purely scientific definition for "hotspot". A non-political paper would have shown a proper gradient, for all regions.
"Smoking and firearms are among the leading causes of avoidable premature death in the United States"
The statement is true for smoking but it takes some work to make it true for firearms. And then it describes tobacco and firearms as "both are legal yet lethal" - it borders on nonsensical to pair them that way (I guess possessing both can be legal, but it's worded to imply that the use of both, in the ways that resulted in death, is legal).
I'd love to see fewer firearm deaths, but it just seems odd to try and link a really high cause of deaths with one that is an order of magnitude smaller, while skipping over others that are very preventable causes of death. You are, for example, many times more likely to die from poor diet than from being shot. I mean, using their framing, automobiles are "legal yet lethal" and auto deaths are the cause of about as many deaths as firearm deaths - and that includes suicide (i.e. intentional) deaths.