The horrifying stats behind the Arizona Uzi shooting by a 9-year-old girl
By now you’ve probably heard about the horrifying story of the nine-year-old girl who accidentally shot a gun instructor at a shooting range in Arizona.
Accidental shootings make up about 1.8% of all gun deaths in the US—and 5% of fatal non-suicide shootings—according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As with overall firearm death trends, the numbers are falling (see chart above.)
Here’s where most of the accidental shootings have taken place in the US:
Perhaps it’s no surprise that US states with the lowest rates of accidental shootings also happen to have the most rigorous firearm laws, based on the scoring system by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (pdf):
Extraordinary then, that the State of Georgia recently passed a Guns Everywhere Bill that makes it legal for licensed gun owners carry guns everywhere: in bars, churches, some government buildings and schools.
Posted in: Infographic of the day
I enjoy getting these in my inbox most of the time – this one is a little strange though. The title reads “The horrifying stats…” – where are those horrifying stats? If anything, the stats seems to be completely contrary to the title.
“As with overall firearm death trends, the numbers are falling (see chart above.)” – That sounds pretty great to me, definitely not horrifying. Quite encouraging actually.
“Perhaps it’s no surprise that US states with the lowest rates of accidental shootings also happen to have the most rigorous firearm laws” – That’s like saying “Bear attacks are, unsurprisingly, lower in areas where bears do not live”.
I would also be curious to see the statistics further divided between legally owned vs. illegally owned firearms as I would wager that it would skew the decidedly non-horrifying stats towards criminal activity rather than the average law abiding U.S. citizen.
Good points all, John. I perhaps should’ve included some other more scary stats: US cops shoot and kill a person a day. In Germany it’s eight a year, in the UK it’s none (figures taken for more recent year available). In Ferguson, police shot twice as many people in two weeks as police did in six years in Japan (population 127 million). Putting race issues aside, it’s likely US police shoot more because they believe victims may be armed with one of Americas 300m handguns currently in circulation.