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If the point is to reduce preventable death... (and if it's not--what is the point?)


A (lengthy) response to the Washington Post (Philip Bump) article: "More Americans deaths by gun shot by March of 2019 than on D-Day":

This is an interesting--and in my opinion quite negative-- comparison that leads many to mix some measure of historic patriotism with a dangerous (statistically driven) concoction that roots only in the Contagion of Hate.

It has a strong tendency to cause us to minimize and lose sight of an incredibly significant day in history.

Why intentionally use "that" statistic when so many others are available?

No death is good--so why exclude or leap over all 10 leading causes of death of which 1) suicide -- often self inflicted gun violence (and a complicated statistic that accounts for greater than 50% of what many include as annual gun violence) -- is on the list (10th leading) but 2) said "more Americans shot to death by march 6 than died on D-Day" -- is not on the list?

See the CDC's top 10 leading causes of death: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

This is a deliberate use of statistics to incite negative emotion and encourage polarization in this country.

It's happening elsewhere also--in other countries...and "we the people" only continue to rage at one another.

None of it is productive. "We the people" will always lose.

Every day more people are dying--most of them not due to gun violence...

No death is a good death.

*Let that not get lost by those who would read something else into this incomplete thought byte.*

By all means, if there is an issue--let's take it on--but civilly and not play statistical games with numbers (or history), forgetting that perhaps there are other issues of value.

The family that loses a loved one to any cause of death is also equal in value.

What if we encouraged -- on a massive, public scale (public service announcements, health care incentives etc...) healthy living and cut down on the 635,000 + annual deaths due to heart disease and other preventable health-related disease?

What if we encouraged -- on a massive, public scale (public service announcements, daytime television etc...) -- mutual respect, tolerance, empathy and compassion?

Any homogeneous political party won't all agree on how to "run this place" so the unrealistic expectation that "the other side" must either 1) agree or 2) become "evil" is at best, quite humorous--but devastatingly damaging to "we the people."

How many candidates in the last election--and how many running in this one? The expectation that everyone must "think like me" or get voted off the island is regretful.

Human nature guarantees that we cannot mitigate risk to zero and any such expectation that due to either 1) health or 2) behavior that we can, only lends to the State of Polarization, Contempt and Hate we are witnessing today.

But if perhaps we encouraged a strong basis of human morality and personal responsibility (both for health and behavior--choices) maybe we could reduce the daily rate of death--period; which would include death by gun shot.

Something to have a think on.

What if it Just Started Raining?!

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