Elizabeth Warren Exaggerates as Much as the NRA, and I don't Like It

The CDC has the 2017 statistics for death-by-injury posted on the internet.  Here are some quick statistics from 2017:

• Death by injury:                                             243,039 (74.6 per 100,000 people)
• Death by injury due to a firearm:          39,773 (16.3% of deaths by injury)
• Death by automobile:                            38,659 (11.9 per 100,000 people)
• Death by poisoning or overdose:           75,354 (23.1 per 100,000 poeple)
• Death due to a firearm:                                    39,773 (12.2 per 100,000 people)
• Death by suicide using a firearm:          23,854 (60% of deaths by firearm)
• Death by homicide using a firearm:      14,452 (36.3% of deaths by firearm)
• Death by mass shooting (at
  least 4 injured in the event):             346 (0.1 per 100,000 people)

Shocking numbers.  They also help us have some perspective on how people die and how much policies can impact these numbers.  

Elizabeth Warren tells us that she is going to save 32,000 people with new gun laws.  She says in her plan: “In 2017, almost 40,000 people died from guns in the United States. My goal as President, and our goal as a society, will be to reduce that number by 80%”.  

Maybe she is right.  Maybe she can reduce the number of suicides by firearm, or the number of homicides by firearm, but it doesn't mean she is going to save that many lives. Just because people use firearms to commit suicides and murder doesn't mean that they won't still kill themselves or someone else.

Does keeping guns out of the wrong hands through better background checks and controls for violent people have the potential to lower the number of people dying?  Yes.  Is it going to reduce 40,000 deaths to 8,000 deaths (20% of 40,000)?  That would be a miracle.

My message to Candidate Warren and her co-candidates is to quit exaggerating.  You sound like the NRA.

Here is a link to the CDC site.  And here is another interesting link to a Pew Research article on the same topic.