Myth: 1,000 people die each day from guns

Fact: 25% of this unreliable figure¹ includes “direct war deaths”, and another 14% are suicides. The bulk of the rest come from violence prone and near lawless localities.

Fact: The source for these raw data admits “A complete dataset on people killed in conflict— directly or indirectly—does not exist. All published figures are estimates based on incomplete information.”²

Fact: Indeed, the definition of “gun” seems to be very broad: “… revolvers and self-loading pistols, rifles and carbines, assault rifles, sub-machine guns, and light machine guns.” Light weapons are “… heavy machine guns, hand-held under-barrel and mounted grenade launchers, portable antitank and anti-aircraft guns, recoilless rifles, portable launchers of anti-tank and antiaircraft missile systems, and mortars of less than 100mm caliber.” And they admit to the problem of a broad definition: “The Survey uses the terms ‘small arms,’ ‘firearms,’ and ‘weapons’ interchangeably. Unless the context dictates otherwise, no distinction is intended between commercial firearms (e.g. hunting rifles), and small arms and light weapons designed for military use (e.g. assault rifles).”³

This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info