How much of a threat is terrorism?
In context? Very, very small.
Measured in lives lost, during an interval that includes the biggest terrorist attack in American history, guns posed a threat to American lives that was more than 100 times greater than the threat of terrorism. Over the same interval, drunk driving threatened our safety 50 times more than terrorism.
Those aren't the only threats many times more deadly than terrorism, either.
The CDC estimates that food poisoning kills roughly 3,000 Americans every year. Every year, food-borne illness takes as many lives in the U.S. as were lost during the high outlier of terrorism deaths. It's a killer more deadly than terrorism. Should we cede a significant amount of liberty to fight it?
Government officials, much of the media, and most American citizens talk about terrorism as if they're totally oblivious to this context -- as if it is different than all other threats we face, in both kind and degree. ...Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic
Numbers:
We'll choose an interval that still includes the biggest terrorist attack in American history: 1999 to 2010.
Again, terrorists killed roughly 3,000 people in the United States. And in that interval,
- roughly 360,000 were killed by guns (actually, the figure the CDC gives is 364,483 -- in other words, by rounding, I just elided more gun deaths than there were total terrorism deaths).
- roughly 150,000 were killed in drunk-driving accidents. ...Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic
So what does it tell you that government (a series of administrations, Congressional sessions) give more weight to terrorism than gun use? If you think about it, you'd have to conclude that government doesn't go after truth and balance and the security of all of us, it goes after campaign money from gun manufacturers, big Ag, and defense contractors. That produces more stability for invididuals with jobs in D.C., and greater anxiety and dependency from the "average" American.
