In recent years, guns have killed approximately 33,000 Americans per year, but that number surged by nearly 7,000 in 2017.
According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control, guns killed just shy of 40,000 Americans in 2017, the highest number in 22 years.
The CDC’s WONDER public health database shows that 39,773 people died from firearms last year. That works out to a gun death rate of 12.0 per 100,000 people — higher than the rate of death from car accidents of 11.5 per 100,000 people, once the leading cause of fatal injury.
The increase in the gun death rate, at least in 2017, was driven by suicides. Sixty percent of gun deaths last year were self-inflicted. [...]
The surge in firearm suicide was not spread evenly among states, according to an analysis by the Educational Fund To Stop Gun Violence. Places with higher rates of gun ownership saw the biggest increases in the gun suicide rate. In Kansas, the rate of gun suicides ballooned 65 percent from 2008 to 2017. Vermont, West Virginia, and Missouri all saw their firearm suicide rates increase by nearly 60 percent over that same period. [...]
The overwhelming majority of Americans who ended their lives with guns last year were white (91 percent) and male (87 percent).
My thoughts on this should be clear by now. Americans have to stop voting for people who want them dead.
White men vote for Republicans in overwhelming numbers and the result is record numbers of dead white men. White Americans are killing themselves by voting for politicians who will do everything in their power to ensure that more of them are killed in one way or another.
Whether its rolling back safety regulations, cutting health care, cutting taxes for the rich, cutting food stamps, putting more guns on the street, or supporting more wars -- the collective result of conservative policy is more dead people.
In addition to the nearly 40,000 people who were killed by guns last year, a record number of over 70,000 Americans were killed by drug overdoses in 2017.
Caesar has brought them death and they love him for it.