A commenter in the "Guns vs. Vitamins" debate below wrote:
Really, aren't there more accidental deaths due to guns than there are due to vitamins?In fact, here is what the Centers for Disease Control tells us about fatal and non-fatal injuries for 2000, the latest year for which statistics are available:
Non-fatal accidental injuries from poisoning: 334,652
Non-fatal accidental injuries from firearms: 23,237
Accidental deaths from poisoning: 12,757
Accidental deaths from firearms: 776
In other words, poisoning accidents caused 14 times as many non-fatal injuries and 16 times as many deaths as firearm accidents.
The precise point of the specific bumpersticker was not total deaths, but about "gunowners who accidentally shoot their children". According to the same CDC database, there were 1,838 non-fatal accidental shootings of children 14 and under (86 deaths), vs. 106,945 non-fatal poisoning accidents (91 deaths) -- in other words, 58 times as many accidents and about the same number of deaths. The CDC doesn't break down the numbers by the poisons involved, but the article I linked below cites the NIH's claim that
Accidental overdose of iron is the leading cause of poisoning death in children under the age of six, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Since 1986, there have been over 110,000 cases of children ingesting too much iron and over 35 deaths associated with iron overdose.I think it's fair to conclude that many more children are accidentally poisoned by their parents' vitamin pills than are accidentally shot by their parents. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 21, 2003 12:46 PM
A valiant effort, but it's doomed to fail because logic and gun control simply do not mix. Just be glad you live in Washington now, which enjoys a little more of the former and a lot less of the latter than California.
Posted by: Xrlq on July 21, 2003 01:29 PMWhat am I missing here? It seems like you are counting all CDC reported cases of "poisonings" as "poisonings by kids OD'ing on Mommy & Daddy's vitamins." It strikes me that vitamin poisonings of children probably don't account for anywhere near 100% of all "poisonings".
You also talk about "accidental shootings of children", and appear to equate them with "accidental shootings of children by their parents." Obviously, that wouldn't be accurate if that's what you're doing.
Am I misreading something?
Posted by: Spoons on July 21, 2003 02:40 PMI'll grant you that there's less gun control here but I'm not convinced there's all that much more common sense. If I'm not mistaken, Stefan's new representative in Congress is none other than Baghdad Jim McDermott.
Don't get me wrong - I like the area a lot, despite the silly streak.
-- Erik
Posted by: Erik on July 21, 2003 02:45 PMNo, of course I'm not counting all poisonings as vitamin-related. I'm simply giving that as another data point to put firearm accidents in context. And of course I'm not counting all firearm accidents as caused by parents shooting their kids, but the former is clearly an upper bound for the latter.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on July 21, 2003 03:23 PM"Drop the Flinstones ma'am and walk slowly away from the medicine chest!I've got a bottle full of One-A-Days and I know how to use them.!"
Posted by: mbruce on July 21, 2003 05:55 PMI'm not so sure they're all accidents . . . why did my parents force those $%#!@ Flintstones chewables on me all the time? . . .
Posted by: ipsofacto on July 21, 2003 08:51 PM