Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Gun Deaths in Colorado

As promulgated by the VPC, and reported in Pravda By The Platte, it is claimed that in 2009, some 583 gun deaths, and 565 motor vehicle deaths were counted.
Now I know that Denver has about 50-80 murders a year, and that's the biggest contributor to the number, but I wondered where the others were coming from so I checked the FBI's numbers:
                  Population      Violent Crime      Murder and manslaughter
State Total
  5,024,748      16,976                  175
Keeping in mind that about 2/3 of murders are committed with guns, this leaves some 116 attributable to firearms. Next, one notes that of any given total of gun deaths, a large percentage of these are suicides, some 55% in fact. This would add 141 to the total to make 257, well short of the advertised total.Toss in the 2% attributable to accidents, and the total rises to 262. This leaves some 321 dead bodies unaccounted for.

Does the VPC know something the rest of us don't? Have the police checked the "gardens" in their back yards or investigated the funny odor coming from their crawl spaces? Inquiring minds want to know.

The car stats come from the nadir of the recent "depression" during which a lot of people had no jobs and therefore weren't out on the streets going back and forth to work.

Update: I guess you can play all sorts of games with the numbers. Assuming that the 583 gun deaths number is correct, 55% of those are expected to be suicides, or 320. This leaves 263. Subtract off 141 murders and non-negligent manslaughter, and you get 122. Some of these are legitimate shootings including the police and citizens shooting goblins. Don't have stats on that, but it sounds about right. It is also noted that 2009 was a record year for suicides, 940 by various means, so that number may well be higher.

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