well gee the millions of defensive uses of a weapon sure are resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths in this country alone, arent they?
fact: less than 30,000 firearm related deaths annually, this number has been dropping for the last several years, and considering that there are now 80,000,000+ gunowners in this country with over 300,000,000 guns, the statistics do NOT show a proportionate increase in firearm related deaths that track the inflated production and sales of firearms in this country.
fact: the department of justice research showed that there are more than 1.5 million defensive uses of a gun in this country EACH YEAR. anyone with a basic grasp of mathematics will deduce that of the 270 who died during 2000 from legal interventions involving a firearm (not going to count in the homicides, accidents, or suicides), only one in 5,556 legal uses of a firearm to defend oneself results in a death. if you use the high estimate of 4,000,000 defensive uses of a firearm, that becomes one in 14,815.
firearm deaths from 1979 - 2000, from the CDC national vital statistics report
1979 - 33,019
1980 - 33,780
1981 - 34,050
1982 - 32,957
1983 - 31,099
1984 - 31,331
1985 - 31,566
1986 - 33,373
1987 - 32,895
1988 - 33,989
1989 - 34,776
1990 - 37,155
1991 - 38,317
1992 - 37,776
1993 - 39,595
1994 - 38,505
1995 - 35,957
1996 - 34,040
1997 - 32,436
1998 - 30,708
1999 - 28,874
2000 - 28,663