I wanted to look up the statistics for myself and see what the numbers are, given a room size scaled around 1 person dying from firearm related injury.
I chose people dying from firearm injuries because I had a hard time finding a statistic for all people who were shot.
If you are aware of better sources for my numbers (or a math error on my part), please let me know. I primarily used sources from the US government, but I recognize that those sources might not be completely transparent right now.
Also, I don’t mean for this to undermine the intention of the author here. Every issue mentioned is absolutely a problem in america, regardless of arbitrary comparisons.
Also also, transgender people are valid and deserve rights regardless of how many people are shot per year.
Say you’re in a room with 2,584,401 people. 206,752 don’t have insurance. 273,947 live in poverty. 542,724 are illiterate. 596,996 suffer from mental illness. And every day at least 1 person dies from firearm related injury. But 21,192 are trans so you decided ruining their lives is a priority.
I appreciate the effort to improve the methodology. But the numbers feel too big to be grasped easily, compared to the original.
Maybe the time frame can be changed? If we bump it to “1 person will be shot to death this year” it would make it a room full of 7080 people and 58 are trans
So… 1350 x 12 = 16,200, meaning a person below that is probably just literally homeless or nearly totally reliant on family or friends or the state for housing and food, as they have literally less than 0 money for food, on average, without some kind of assistance.
I would argue the actual US poverty line needs to be drawn at between where 200% and 300% of the current poverty line is.
Huh. So 45,625 killed by guns each year, about 1/10th of 1% but since people live longer than a year, I wonder what the lifetime risk is? Surely nowhere near risk of being killed by a car but probably much higher than the 1/10th of 1%.
I wanted to look up the statistics for myself and see what the numbers are, given a room size scaled around 1 person dying from firearm related injury. I chose people dying from firearm injuries because I had a hard time finding a statistic for all people who were shot. If you are aware of better sources for my numbers (or a math error on my part), please let me know. I primarily used sources from the US government, but I recognize that those sources might not be completely transparent right now. Also, I don’t mean for this to undermine the intention of the author here. Every issue mentioned is absolutely a problem in america, regardless of arbitrary comparisons. Also also, transgender people are valid and deserve rights regardless of how many people are shot per year.
The population of the US was 341,140,964 on 12/31/24.
92% had health insurance in 2024.
10.6% lived in poverty in 2024.
79% were literate in 2013. (Hopefully there is a more recent source for this somewhere)
23.1% suffered from mental illness in 2022.
132 died from firearm-related injury daily in 2022. This is the number from the CDC, which is more generous than gunviolencearchive.
The number of injuries (including deaths) from the gunviolencearchive puts the daily count at 87 (I am rounding up despite 2024 being a 366 day leap year).
0.82% identified as transgender.
I appreciate the effort to improve the methodology. But the numbers feel too big to be grasped easily, compared to the original.
Maybe the time frame can be changed? If we bump it to “1 person will be shot to death this year” it would make it a room full of 7080 people and 58 are trans
I agree, that is absolutely a better representation of the data
Should be “206,752 with no insurance” in your original comment btw. Looks like you did 92% instead of 8%
Thanks! I fixed it
Thanks, I was stuck 330M americans… so almost a million get shot ever day (per the original)… that can’t be right
I appreciate you providing sources, genuinely, though I will point out the way the US officially measures poverty is laughable bullshit.
https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/dd73d4f00d8a819d10b2fdb70d254f7b/detailed-guidelines-2025.pdf
Yep, thats right, you live alone, and make or otherwise recieve more than $15.6k a year?
Not in poverty.
Also, the average paid rent in the US is ~1350 a month.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-rent-by-state
So… 1350 x 12 = 16,200, meaning a person below that is probably just literally homeless or nearly totally reliant on family or friends or the state for housing and food, as they have literally less than 0 money for food, on average, without some kind of assistance.
I would argue the actual US poverty line needs to be drawn at between where 200% and 300% of the current poverty line is.
Huh. So 45,625 killed by guns each year, about 1/10th of 1% but since people live longer than a year, I wonder what the lifetime risk is? Surely nowhere near risk of being killed by a car but probably much higher than the 1/10th of 1%.