There is one thing that, when you consider the facts, cannot be honestly disputed: America has a gun violence problem. In a piece for the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof reminds us that more Americans have died as a result of gun violence that all of our wars.
Here’s the number of people who have died in each war, according to the Congressional Research Service:
- Revolutionary War: 4,435
- War of 1812: 2,260
- Mexican War: 13,283
- Civil War: 750,000
- Spanish American War: 2,446
- World War I: 116,516
- World War II: 405,399
- Korean: 36,574
- Vietnam: 58,220
- Persian Gulf: 383
- Afghanistan: 2,363
- Iraq: 4,492
- Lebanon, Granada, Panama, Somalia, and Haiti conflicts: 362
TOTAL: 1,396,733
Compare that with the number of people who have died from gun violence in the United States.
Here’s the number of people who died from gun violence in America from the Center for Disease Control:
- 1968-1980: 377,000
- 1981-1998: 620,525
- 1999-2013: 464,033
- 2014: Estimates show 33,183
- 2015 to date: 22,122
TOTAL: 1,516,863 deaths
This means we’ve effectively killed more Americans ourselves than have died in all of our wars combined. There’s no way to persuasively argue that America doesn’t have a problem with gun violence.
