Gun Violence & Crash Violence
December, 2015
On December 19, 2015, the day of the Democratic Presidential debate, the Washington Post published a front page story on fatality rates of guns and vehicles converging.
“Guns and traffic accidents each killed about 34,000 people in the U.S. last year, or about 93 people per day.
The rate at which Americans are killed in traffic accidents has dropped by more than half since the late 1960s. That decline can be attributed to a combination of improved technology, smarter regulation, and improved care in the hospital.” See
The Post article misses three important factors: 1. Under counting traffic deaths, See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/blog-officerdie… 2. The Great Recession which we are still slowly coming out of 3. The 8% rise in crash deaths in 2015 See
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812217.pdf
A related Post article notes racial factors in gun deaths but not the effects of the Great Recession on both gun deaths and vehicle deaths.
“The Brookings Institution’s Richard Reeves highlighted one stunning example of this in a recent blog post: Among whites, 77 percent of gun deaths are suicides. But among black Americans, 82 percent of gun deaths are homicides.” See
We can, and need to, do better than this.
