Let me repeat myself . . .

and make this perfectly clear. A few days ago I wrote the following:

 

There are actually slightly more firearm related deaths in a given year than traffic related deaths, but most of them -- about 56% -- are suicides. The corporate media, and the public, pay little attention to this. Good data on the question is hard to come by, but based on the National Crime Victimization Survey, guns are used defensively by civilians about 70,000 times a year. That's mostly defending against property crimes, and assaults that would otherwise not likely be fatal. 

 This is a complicated question and I don't want to be glib about it, but even though I can't put a solid number on it if you have a firearm in the house it's vastly more likely to end up being used in a suicide than defending against potentially serious or fatal violence. But people don't perceive it that way because again, they're in control of the weapon. It's a bit more likely that you might use it to scare off a burglar but whether you think that's worth it for the risk of suicide is up to you. And as you know if you've been reading the news lately, there have been a lot of killings of innocent people who a homeowner perceived as a threat. That turns out to be murder and people have paid the price for it.

 

I did not make this up, it is not stupid or crazy, it is simply a fact. There are nearly 50,000 people killed by firearms each year in the United States, and more than half of them are suicides. Suicide is frequently an impulsive act and the thing about guns is that unlike other methods of attempted suicide, which often fail, they are highly effective. The reason I'm telling you this is because I'm smart, and it's true. It's true even if you don't like it. It's true even if you believe you have a constitutional right to keep a gun in your house. It's just what's called a fact. It's the truth,