Guns are now killing as many people as cars in the U.S.

[metalbot]

9. Funny story

In Fiji, a few years ago, the government was very alarmed at the high suicide rate among women. It turns out that the suicide rate for young, recently married women was extraordinarily high (sorry, don't have the numbers). About two thirds of the women were killing themselves by eating pesticide, and the other third by hanging. The government commissioned a study on how to reduce the suicide rate, the conclusion of which was "we need to reduce access to pesticides".

Of course, there is more to this story. It turns out that in the Fijian population, women generally marry to men from other islands. When they get married, they leave the family and friends that they've lived with their whole lives, and move into a village where they are a stranger.

But by all means, let's worry about the pesticide, because that's how 2/3's of the women are killing themselves.

Of course, a real apples to apples comparison would be "what is the rate at which people are accidentally killed by cars vs accidentally killed by guns", or "what is the rate at which people are accidentally killed by doctors vs accidentally killed by guns", but those statistics don't paint the right picture. It's so much easier to just conflate all of the "gun deaths" together as a scare tactic, which is just as intellectually dishonest as what the Republicans do on other topics.