Neil deGrasse Tyson, beloved cosmologist, has taken to twitter in order to comment on gun violence in the home, much to the chagrin of angry Republicans everywhere.
Tyson, known as the best public representative for the scientific community since Bill Nye the Science Guy, has used his twitter account very effectively over the years in order to argue for rationalism, science, and fact-based thinking. This time, that fact-based thinking has led him to post a few simple gun violence statistics.
3,400: Americans who died by Terrorism since 2001
3,400: Americans who died by household Firearms since five weeks ago.
Of course, many twitter users attempted to derail the intended message by pointing out deaths from obesity, hammers, etc., with many of the numbers being misrepresented or just plain wrong. Tyson later followed up his initial tweet with two others:
400,000: Americans who died fighting in World War II.
400,000: Americans who died by household Firearms since 2001
And,
1.4 Million: Americans who died in all Wars fought since 1776.
1.4 Million: Americans who died via household Guns since 1968
These numbers are pretty astounding when thinking about the massive grief and loss these events caused. How can we stand idly by as household gun violence commits atrocity after atrocity?
Read more of Mr. Tyson’s twitter posts and responses on Raw Story here “Neil deGrasse Tyson infuriates conservatives by pointing out simple gun violence statistics”
