The Topic of this blog is American Gun Violence.
Not American Gun Murder, that is a subset.
Not American Suicide by Gun, that is a subset.
Not American Injury or Maiming by Gun, these are also subsets.
The term "American Gun Violence" covers all of that, but by homogenizing the subsets for our own interest or experience, we are minimizing the others. We are also giving those that we are having a conversation with, something to fixate on as they try to disprove or follow along with something we may have brought up as a point.
When we talk of these things it is best to use the term "American Gun Violence," and then converse on the subsets as they arise. We don't want Americans invested in this topic fixating on any one aspect. That draws the conversation out as we explain, and if you have to explain, you are lost.
Nowadays I mention up front that American Gun Violence includes these other aspects before delving in any deeper. It strengthens my position and becomes a basis for the outrageous yearly numbers we Americans create.
For instance; the number I relate in these conversations is the total number of people physically affected by American Gun Violence each year.
For 2019 that number was 69,072. *
That is 189 people per day shot and killed in the US. That number includes all forms of bodily death and injury perpetrated on Americans in 2019 by statistic. A number that is outrageous and also seldom used. We somehow feel that displaying the number of dead people every year will turn some heads and gain favor, but it doesn't.
We play the disingenuous shell game with the murder and suicide number, negating the fact that the people on the other side of the topic are as educated and as observant as we are.
When someone does this type of thing to me, I get indignant.
They must think I'm a fool.
Enter the modern age of the internet and the good people of the GVA.
If anyone wants to see the yearly statistics of American Gun Violence, all they need to do is go to : gunviolencearchive.org (GVA)*
There, anyone can find the statistics for nearly any subset you can imagine except race and religion.
If you want to be morbidly entertained you can go to their active display of Gun Violence perpetrated in the last 72 hours. Refresh, and it changes in front of your eyes to display actual, verifiable gun violence incidents from every State and County in the entire United States. Their searching algorithms pull this information from municipalities and news sources all over the country in real time. You can even follow each incident to the address it happened at and sometimes even the names and witness accounts of each incident. Dozens and dozens and dozens each day of the year.
Before looking through the site I would recommend checking out their links to their mission statement and methodology. This is a completely non-partisan statistics gathering site that does not embellish in any way. No editorials, no discussion, no ideas, just actual, factual numbers that we Americans create on a daily basis, and they have subsets you may not even have realized were a subset at all.
This is where I get my 69072 number. Ive put the Suicide # plus injury # and murder # all together in one number. The result is Outrageous.
This is a number to consider. A number that pales the murder and suicide number.
A number equal to the population of a decent sized American city full of dead and injured people.
The injury number is rarely brought up or added to the deaths number but I consider it the most important to the conversation.
Why?
Not just because I am included in this number. No.
Because most of these people can still talk, think and vote, and we are pissed.
Live Love
Mac/
Not American Gun Murder, that is a subset.
Not American Suicide by Gun, that is a subset.
Not American Injury or Maiming by Gun, these are also subsets.
The term "American Gun Violence" covers all of that, but by homogenizing the subsets for our own interest or experience, we are minimizing the others. We are also giving those that we are having a conversation with, something to fixate on as they try to disprove or follow along with something we may have brought up as a point.
When we talk of these things it is best to use the term "American Gun Violence," and then converse on the subsets as they arise. We don't want Americans invested in this topic fixating on any one aspect. That draws the conversation out as we explain, and if you have to explain, you are lost.
Nowadays I mention up front that American Gun Violence includes these other aspects before delving in any deeper. It strengthens my position and becomes a basis for the outrageous yearly numbers we Americans create.
For instance; the number I relate in these conversations is the total number of people physically affected by American Gun Violence each year.
For 2019 that number was 69,072. *
That is 189 people per day shot and killed in the US. That number includes all forms of bodily death and injury perpetrated on Americans in 2019 by statistic. A number that is outrageous and also seldom used. We somehow feel that displaying the number of dead people every year will turn some heads and gain favor, but it doesn't.
We play the disingenuous shell game with the murder and suicide number, negating the fact that the people on the other side of the topic are as educated and as observant as we are.
When someone does this type of thing to me, I get indignant.
They must think I'm a fool.
Enter the modern age of the internet and the good people of the GVA.
If anyone wants to see the yearly statistics of American Gun Violence, all they need to do is go to : gunviolencearchive.org (GVA)*
There, anyone can find the statistics for nearly any subset you can imagine except race and religion.
If you want to be morbidly entertained you can go to their active display of Gun Violence perpetrated in the last 72 hours. Refresh, and it changes in front of your eyes to display actual, verifiable gun violence incidents from every State and County in the entire United States. Their searching algorithms pull this information from municipalities and news sources all over the country in real time. You can even follow each incident to the address it happened at and sometimes even the names and witness accounts of each incident. Dozens and dozens and dozens each day of the year.
Before looking through the site I would recommend checking out their links to their mission statement and methodology. This is a completely non-partisan statistics gathering site that does not embellish in any way. No editorials, no discussion, no ideas, just actual, factual numbers that we Americans create on a daily basis, and they have subsets you may not even have realized were a subset at all.
This is where I get my 69072 number. Ive put the Suicide # plus injury # and murder # all together in one number. The result is Outrageous.
This is a number to consider. A number that pales the murder and suicide number.
A number equal to the population of a decent sized American city full of dead and injured people.
The injury number is rarely brought up or added to the deaths number but I consider it the most important to the conversation.
Why?
Not just because I am included in this number. No.
Because most of these people can still talk, think and vote, and we are pissed.
Live Love
Mac/
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