Why Gun Control?

Proponents of gun control will usually latch on to some emotionally charged gun violence event to justify removing as many guns as possible from the environment. But to put gun violence in perspective and to help us decide if their true intent is really to save lives, I've assembled some statistics.

Usually, the first reaction to an incident of gun violence is to call for "Assault Rifle" bans. The FBI keeps statistics for murder rates by weapon type, but they lump the vague term "assault rifles" in with all rifles:

Okay, so maybe it would be more effective to ban hammers and knives than assault rifles. Once people understand this of course, simply banning military-style rifles seems pointless. Therefore, an outright firearm ban is clearly needed to have any impact. Let's look at how many people die from guns compared to other preventable causes of death in the United States each year:

This second table does not tell the whole story, however. Once you factor in the number of lives that might have been saved by using guns defensively, it makes even less sense to focus on firearms (and ignore the others) if what you really care about is saving lives, since gun control always takes many more guns from law-abiding citizens than it does criminals.

*Note: The Preventable Medical Mistakes estimate only includes deaths that were due to provider carelessness or failure to follow protocols; it does not include unforeseeable reactions to treatment or other problems for which the doctor would not normally be held responsible. You might be able to make a better case for gun control if these doctors were using firearms to kill their patients, but that doesn't appear to be the case.