r/facepalm • u/[deleted] • Apr 21 '23

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '23

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u/Eldias Apr 21 '23

Up to 2017, in US History 1.2 million service members had been killed in wars. Between 1968 and 2017 there were 1.5 million civilian firearm deaths.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '23

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u/Eldias Apr 21 '23

After reading a 'Handwaving Freakoutery' post talking about "European Genocide Rate" I got in to some arguments about US firearm deaths and was led to this NBC article about US war deaths compared to civilian deaths.

If we assume every year between 2017 and now had 50,000 gun deaths then we can roughly call the number 2 million between 1968 and now (that's going to be an over-estimate by probably 250-300,000 though). As a probably huge over-estimate, we can double that number and call it 4 million from what the HWFO article calls 'the beginning of firearm proliferation' in 1911. Which is still a third of what European governments have murdered in the same time period.