Doctors vs. Guns

[Moe]

I just got these statistics from an email and thought that I'd share them with everyone. It's pretty interesting....

Number of physicians in the U. S.: 700,000
Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year: 120,000
Accidental deaths per physician: 0.171

Number of gun owners in the U. S.: 80,000,000
Accidental gun deaths per year (all ages): 1,500
Accidental deaths per gun owner: 0.0000188


As you can see from these statistics, doctors cause my accidental deaths then gun owners in the U. S. Pretty interesting huh?
:rolleyes:

[shooter921]

Use that in court! But they could also bring up the number of deaths by a gun, and I am sure they would be a lot higher.

80

[o town]

Guess that means hunters are better at hunting than Doctors are at doctoring.
The scary part is that I'm sure we either know or have observed a lot of real slobs with a gun and the numbers are still that low. Doesn't say much for the medical profession although I hunt with several Doctors and they are the best.
o town

[ckendall]

I've seen those stats before, and I even showed them to my wife, who is an ER doctor - just to kid her, because she is always warning me about how dangerous my hunting is. Anyway, we both got a laugh.

The truth is, those fatality stats - gun owners vs. docs - are not really comparable. Doctors engage in activities everyday that determine the health - or survival - of patients. Even small mistakes can result in death when a patient is in critical condition. So, that a fatality may occur in reaction to a medical decision or action, or failure to act, is a real possibility a lot of the time, most days. Its high probability; high risk. A gun owner, even assuming he/she hunts, doesn't face a set-up like that. And gun fatalities are typically the result of gross negligence, or alchohol, or something like that. If you want to make the comparison fair, look at the stats for gun-owners that shoot high volumes of ammo in crowded suburban areas, 340 or so days out of the year.

I guess I feel like the fatality stats for hunters should be the lowest, compared to almost any group. With cautious good sense and a mighty respect for the destructive force of our firearms, there is no good reason to injure another person - - and God forbid I ever do it myself!

[o town]

ck,
Good post. I was going to bring the limited exposure of hunters to fatality situations to the constant barrage that doctors face, but glad someone informed did.
o town