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Comment by abrokenpipe | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's bad in general considering the size of the country and especially considering the fact that we have hundreds of millions of civilian owned guns (23 million sold last year, and even more sold this year already). When you compare guns to other stuff like drunk driving it shows how blown out of proportion the problem is.

- CDC stats (2018) -

US Firearm Homicides: 14,414

US deaths caused by drunk drivers: 10,511

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I would expect drunk-driving deaths to far exceed firearm homicides, and it's honestly shocking that firearm homicides are that high. I think the stats show that it's not blown out of propertion.

Why would you expect that?

Why would you expect that when drunk driving gets practically no attention at all? It's even socially acceptable and joked about within certain cultural circles.

That's exactly my point. Drink driving is not uncommon, to the point where it's acceptable to some parts of society. But no part of society believes intent to kill with a gun is acceptable, yet despite the heavy scrutiny it receives, firearm homicides are still way higher than drunk driving deaths.

I know that these numbers are not directly comparable, but given the deadly nature of automobiles in general, I expected drunk-driving deaths to be somewhere around 50000 per year.

It is estimated that 250,000 people die per year from medical errors. That doesn't mean that people should shoot their doctors...

The problem is an underfunded systems and huge workload and a bit of funding would instantly safe more lives than restricting gun ownership.

Calling for restriction is a transparent political move or is born out of ignorance in my opinion (I am not from the US).

People that would profit the most from restrictions are policemen, which are probably underpaid in the US considering their risk.

Erm, what? Firearms causing more deaths than drunk drivers seems like a very strong argument for tighter gun regulation to me.

Then why isn't there any serious discussion about tighter alcohol regulation then? The CDC says that alcohol abuse in the US results in ~95,000 deaths per year, combined with drunk driving thats over 100k deaths, thats significantly higher than all gun deaths. On top of that it's difficult to argue there is any utility to it at all beyond recreational use. Where are the cries to ban alcohol?? Wouldn't it be worth banning it even if it saved just one life???

The same reason there isn't serious discussion about voter competency tests: US politics is traumatised by the specific history of that particular kind of law.

(Though IMO you're focusing on the wrong half. Drink-driving deaths don't show that alcohol is dangerous, they show that cars are dangerous - you only have to look at the number of non-alcohol-related driving deaths to see that.)

There are more guns in the US than cars as well, so deaths per car vs deaths per gun is higher.

True, although it's really the driver at fault, and the next logical thing to blame would be the alcohol. The connection between drugs/alcohol and gun violence gets completely overlooked though so why not blame the cars.

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