Death rate from handgun, long guns and knife wounds

Peter Proctor wrote:

An equivalent wound is ( by definition ) an equivalent wound .
Absent LET effects, it doesn't matter much where it came from.

Oh, so your statement was a tautology? By "equivalent", you meant of
equivalent lethality?

Hole, I meant an equivalent hole. Pretty simple concenpt, actually.
Surprised I have to explain it so many times...

Because it's ambiguous and the meaning you seem to be using is
not germane to the discussion. The important question is what the
result of substituting knives or long-guns for handguns in shootings
and stabbings. Will there bo more deaths, fewer deaths or about the
same number? To this end one should look at the overall death rate
from knife injuries and compare it with that for gunshot injuries.
Guns turn out to be four times as lethal as knives. Of course, part
of this difference could be due to the intent of the attacker, that
is, knife wound mortality could be low because many attackers
deliberately inflict superficial wounds. So we should also compare
mortality for multiple penetrating wounds to the torso, which would
seem to indicate some serious attempt to kill. For these sorts of
wounds guns are still 3-5 times as lethal. Finally we can check with
mortality rates for wounds to the same body structure (e.g penetrating
heart wounds). We see the same pattern once again.

Further, because of their
nature, it is considerably easier to shoot yourself with one kept loaded than
it is with a handgun. But you probably don't understand how that could be

Nope. Enlighten me. How is it easier to accidently shoot oneself in
the trunk with a long gun?

E.g..: With the exception of external hammer guns, a long gun is
inherently cocked when there is a round in the chamber. So, all that is
between you and an accidental discharge is a safety and a 3-6 pound trigger.
A revolver or a double action autoloader requires typpically a 12-15 pound
pull to discharge in double action.

You didn't answer the question I asked.

The rate was declining faster before handgun ownership increased.
Canada had a similar decrease without the handguns. Other factors
would seem to be much more important.

I haven't seen your figures, but from other threads, I gather that you have
had some difficulty getting statistical support for some of your contentions.

You are mistaken.

Here, again, are the numbers

Table 2.1 of Kleck's "Point Blank" shows that handgun sales jumped
dramatically around 1965 --- from around 0.5M per year to 1-2M per year
afterwards. This is presumably the reason for the increase in the
percentage of households owning handguns from 16% in the early sixties
to 25% in the late eighties. (Table 2.2 of Kleck)

Table 7.1 of Kleck shows that the fatal gun accident rate declined
from 2.4 per 100k population in 1933 to 1.21 in 1965 and then to 0.57
in 1987. That is a decrease of 1.19 before handgun ownership
increased, and a decrease 0.64 afterwards. The rate of decrease was
slower after 1965 than before.

Greg Booth said:

From Phil Ronzone's rkba.002 (US rates converted to rate per 100,000)
from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United
States: 1989 (109th edition.) Washington, DC, 1989.
and Canadian rates from the Canadian Centre for Health Information.

Year   US accident rate   Canadian accidental rate.
1969  1.139               0.63
1970  1.174               0.61
1971  1.136               0.66
1972  1.163               0.47
1973  1.235               0.56
1974  1.222               0.55
1975  1.103               0.49
1976  .944                0.39
1977  .900                0.43
1978  .811                0.38
1979  .890                0.30
1980  .858                0.31
1981  .813                0.25
1982  .755                0.23
1983  .722                0.17
1984  .704                0.24
1985  .689                0.25
1986  .662                0.20
1987  .574                0.23
1988                      0.23
1989                      0.29
1990                      0.25
1991                      0.24
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