Staggering Statistics and Devastating Details
Dear Leading Ladies,
This is our second edition of “Staggering Statistics and Devastating Details.” This time we are focusing on guns – who has them and what happens because of their availability. We hope these facts will not only alarm you but also provide compelling “backup” when others oppose or question your position on issues. “The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts,” wrote author Sam Harris. “Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us.”
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Injury prevention & control: Data & statistics (WISQARS). Updated 1/7/2021
As of November 2020, 32% of U.S. adults said they personally owned a gun, while 44% reported living in households where gun/s are present. Source: gallup.com
The recent spike in gun purchases – 23 million in 2020 vs. 13.9 million in 2019 – is considered partially responsible for the United States experiencing its biggest one-year increase – by 4,901 – on record in murders in 2020, according to new figures released last week by the F.B.I. Sources: CNN, New York Times
An estimated 4.6 million kids in the U.S. live with unlocked, loaded guns, a fact made more frightening when you realize that even toddlers are strong enough to pull a trigger. Source: healthychildren.org
To go a little deeper into the weeds, perhaps not surprisingly, only 15% of liberals, 18% of Democrats, 19% of women, and 21% of East Coast US residents report owning guns. Source: Gallup.com
Meanwhile, only 18% of non-White Americans report personal gun ownership while 38% of whites (non-Hispanic) report gun ownership. Source: Gallup.com
In 2020, nearly 44,000 Americans died by gunshot; 24,000 of those were suicides. By comparison, there were 38,680 deaths from car crashes in the same year. Source: Washington Post
Although the national homicide rate is ⅓ below what it was in the early 1990s, “Approximately 77% of reported murders in 2020 were committed with a firearm, the highest share ever reported, up from 67% a decade ago.” Source: New York Times
The risk of homicide is 3X higher when there are guns in the home. Source: healthychildren.org
“Americans are 25X more likely to be killed in a gun homicide than people in other high-income countries.” Source: Giffords.org
In homes with guns, accidental death by shooting is 4 times more likely to occur than in homes without guns. Source: healthychildren.org
About 85% of suicide attempts with a firearm end in death. Drug overdose, on the other hand, the most widely used method in suicide attempts, is fatal in less than 3% of cases. Source: Harvard Magazine
“In the past decade, 40% of the suicides committed by kids and teens involved guns. 9 out of 10 of these suicides were with guns that the victims accessed at their own homes or from a relative's home.” Source: healthychildren.org
90% of people who attempt suicide and survive do not die by suicide later. Many conclude that suicide attempts are often impulsive decisions that will not be repeated, especially if means are not readily at hand. Source: Harvard Magazine
In fact, research confirms that when “widely used lethal means are made less available or less deadly, suicide rates by that method decline, as do suicide rates overall. In Sri Lanka, for example, where pesticides are the leading suicide method, the suicide rate fell by half between 1995 and 2005, after the most highly human-toxic pesticides were restricted.” Source: Harvard Magazine
Domestic violence victims are 5X more likely to be killed if there is a gun in the house. “Women in the U.S. are 21X more likely to be killed with a gun than women in other high-income countries.” Source: Giffords.org
This list of facts is far from inclusive. To learn more about guns and violence, watch “Trigger: The Ripple Effect of Gun Violence,” available on Prime Video; and “NRA Under Fire” and “Gunned Down” produced by Frontline and available online here. The website of former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, a victim of gun violence, is also a great source of information.
As you know, the Supreme Court will hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on December 1, 2021. The case “marks the first time the Court will rule on the constitutionality of a pre-viability abortion ban since Roe. Mississippi enacted its abortion ban in direct defiance of Roe and the nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent affirming Roe’s core holding — that every pregnant person has the right to decide whether to continue their pregnancy prior to viability,” according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the last remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi. We urge everyone to continue to monitor this case and support a woman’s right to choose.
We make a difference when we speak out, stand up, and demand change.
Only then will our hope reap results.
Therese
Judy
Mary
Beth
Leading Ladies Executive Team
ladies@leadingladiesvote.org
leadingladiesvote.org