Friday, April 06, 2007

Safety By the Numbers

NRA advises that accidental deaths-by-gun are low on a list:

The National Safety Council's new data on accidental firearm fatalities shows that the number of accidents continues to decline. In fact, over the past ten years the number of accidental fatalities has dropped by almost 70 percent!

To put things in perspective, here are the accidental fatality rates per 100,000 for certain categories:

Accidental Poisoning: 7.1
Falls: 6.0
Choking: 1.6
Drowning: 1.2
Firearms: 0.2

In other words, it's 30 times more risky to clean your gutters than to clean your gun.

(Corrected by a math-enabled commenter!!)

1 comment:

Rick Lugari said...

In other words, it's 12 times more risky to clean your gutters than to clean your gun.

Not to be nit-picky, but that makes it 30 times more risky. An even more powerful example.