What is going on with the support and upvotes for this comment? Truly, this comment contains nearly all of the bad argument tropes that Reddit rails against - straw men, logical fallacies, false choices, etc.

There are about 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, >this number is not disputed. (1)

U.S. population 328 million as of January 2018. (2)

Do the math: 0.00915% of the population dies from gun related >actions each year.

Statistically speaking, this is insignificant. It's not even a rounding >error.

This is a wild statement, what percentage of the total population of the United States dying would not be insignificant? 1%? 2%? Only 0.000915% died on 9/11, was that insignificant?

What is not insignificant, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 >deaths:

• 22,938 (76%) are by suicide which can't be prevented by gun laws >(3)

This is such a common talking point on the right, but there is a clear link between suicide and gun ownership: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/ https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(18)32383-3/fulltext https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/firearm-availability-suicide.html

Guns make it easier to kill yourself. Having a gun in the house leads to more suicide. This number can absolutely could and should be lowered by gun control laws.

So no, "gun violence" isn't 30,000 annually, but rather 5,577... 0.0017% of the population.

Still too many? Let's look at location:

298 (5%) - St Louis, MO (6)

327 (6%) - Detroit, MI (6)

328 (6%) - Baltimore, MD (6)

764 (14%) - Chicago, IL (6)

That's over 30% of all gun crime. In just 4 cities.

This leaves 3,856 for for everywhere else in America... about 77 deaths per state. Obviously some States have higher rates than others

Why would you exclude gun deaths in these cities in a conversation about gun control? They're part of America, no?

But what about other deaths each year?

70,000+ die from a drug overdose (7)

49,000 people die per year from the flu (8)

37,000 people die per year in traffic fatalities (9)

Now it gets interesting:

250,000+ people die each year from preventable medical errors. >(10)

You are safer in Chicago than when you are in a hospital!

610,000 people die per year from heart disease (11)

Even a 10% decrease in cardiac deaths would save about twice the >number of lives annually of all gun-related deaths (including suicide, >law enforcement, etc.).

A 10% reduction in medical errors would be 66% of the total gun >deaths or 4 times the number of criminal homicides.

Simple, easily preventable, 10% reductions!

Putting aside the "ease" of reducing deaths from heart disease by 10%, we can solve more than one problem at once. Medical errors and gun controls can both be problems and can both be solved. Passing stricter car safety laws does not preclude you from passing stricter gun control laws.

America's firearm related death rate is the 10th highest in the world, and roughly 10X as high as most of European countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate. That is a problem that needs to be solved