A Mass Shooter Is More Likely to Kill You Than an International Terrorist

Quit spreading the malicious lie that guns are not a problem

It’s become disgusting how people who would otherwise consider themselves decent human beings are instantly willing to justify the slaughter of innocents by insane mass shooters. But that’s the current reality of the gun debate in the United States.

Let’s face it, we’re all tired of talking to them. Gun activists will look you right in the eye and tell you blatant lies. They will intentionally misrepresent statistics and scream stupid things like, “the first thing Hitler did was take all the guns away.”

Nobody is proposing taking “all the guns.”

Another of their go-to misrepresentations is to claim that mass shooters represent a “few bad apples.” They insist it’s wrong to punish law-abiding citizens because of the actions of a small minority. However, international terrorists represent a small minority of the world’s population, and our society certainly has no reluctance in dedicating resources to try and stop them.

Firearms kill thousands of Americans annually

Gun activists are well aware that the total number of people who die in the United States because of mass shootings is relatively small. They flaunt this number with the mistaken belief that it provides some kind of proof that gun violence is not a major problem.

However, this is a blatant misrepresentation of reality. First of all, gun activists are intentionally dividing the total number of gun deaths in a way that provides them with smaller numbers. The total number of gun related deaths is staggering.

There were 39,740 deaths from firearms in the U.S. in 2018. Sixty-one percent of deaths from firearms in the U.S. are suicides. In 2018, 24,432 people in the U.S. died by firearm suicide. Firearms are the means in approximately half of suicides nationwide.

In 2018, 13,958 people in the U.S. died from firearm homicide, accounting for 35.1% of total deaths from firearms. Firearms were the means for about 74% of homicides in 2018 — UCDavis Health

Keep in mind that the number of gun related deaths is in the tens of thousands.

Mass shootings represent regular acts of domestic terrorism

When gun rights activists try to manipulate the numbers, they’ll often place their focus on the number of people who are killed in mass shootings. However that disregards a huge percentage of the pain inflicted by these preventable acts of domestic terrorism.

Why should we disregard the suffering of people who were injured in these attacks but not killed? Why should we disregard the psychological torment of those caught in the attacks? Why should we disregard the psychological suffering of those that lost friends, relatives, or children in these needless assaults?

To get an accurate impression of the cost mass shootings have on our society, you need to look at the frequency of the shootings and not just reduce them to the number of casualties.

By the end of 2019, there were 417 mass shootings in the U.S., according to data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which tracks every mass shooting in the country. Thirty-one of those shootings were mass murders — Jason Silverstein, There were more mass shootings than days in 2019

How many people have the rest of their lives utterly destroyed for every mass shooting? How many people suffer for every child that is lost to a community? Do 1,000 people have their lives destroyed by every death? Is it 5,000? Why don’t gun rights activists care about these numbers?

Americans killed by terrorism

You are not likely to find one gun rights activist who will demand that international terrorism is not a problem. However, the number of actual deaths by Americans due to terrorism is statistically insignificant when compared to firearm related deaths.

Since 9/11, jihadists have killed 107 people inside the United States. This death toll is similar to that from far-right terrorism (consisting of anti-government, militia, white supremacist, and anti-abortion violence), which has killed 114 people. The United States has also seen attacks in recent years inspired by black separatist/nationalist ideology and ideological misogyny. Individuals motivated by these ideologies have killed twelve and seventeen people respectively and those with Far-Left views have killed one person — NewAmerica.org, Part IV. What is the Threat to the United States Today?

There is a lot to unpack in that paragraph. First, it’s important to recognize that there have only been 107 domestic soil deaths related to international terrorism since 2001. That averages out to about 5 deaths a year. It’s also interesting to note that white supremacists kill more Americans than international terrorists, and that far left violence is basically nonexistent.

However, if you share this information on social media, you’re likely to be labeled as a “troll” or get your account banned even though these statistics represent verifiable facts.

American deaths related to international terrorism on foreign soil are similar. The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism issued a fact sheet that showed from 1995 to 2016, only 179 Americans lost their lives due to international terrorism, or about 9 per year.

If gun rights activists claim that mass shootings don’t represent a “major problem,” why are they fearful of international terrorists? Gun deaths number in the tens of thousands. Terrorism deaths measure in single digits.

Terrorism budget

The United States takes international terrorism very seriously. In fact, the counterterrorism (CT) budget is one of the largest components of our total military spending.

Stimson’s research suggests that total spending that has been characterized as CT-related — including expenditures for governmentwide homeland security efforts, international programs, and the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria — totaled $2.8 trillion during fiscal years 2002 through 2017. According to the group’s research, annual CT spending peaked at $260 billion in 2008 at the height of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This represents a 16-fold increase over the 2001 total. In 2017, as war funding declined, total CT spending amounted to $175 billion, nearly an 11-fold increase from the 2001 level — Stimson, Counterterrorism Spending: Protecting America While Promoting Efficiencies and Accoutability

$2.8 trillion is a huge amount of money to spend on stopping a relatively insignificant number of deaths. It’s important to point out that even in the 5 years prior to 2001, there were only 238 American deaths (less than 50 annually), due to international terrorism (START Fact Sheet). Compare this to the 40,000 annual gun related deaths we see today, and it’s easy to conclude we’re spending our money in the wrong place.

Guns and white supremacists should be our primary focus

The statistics are readily available. The number one danger to the American way of life is from guns and white supremacy. International terrorism is not responsible for anything close to the loss of life caused by far right groups.

However, our government simply does not seem to take these groups seriously.

Now, after the office has been renamed and reorganized to the Office of Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention, there are only eight staff and a budget of $2.6 million. So the staff has been cut in half, and they’ve lost 80 to 90 percent of their funding — House Hearing, 116 Congress, Confronting Violent White Supremacy (Part II): Adequacy of the Federal Response

Think about these numbers the next time you encounter some rabid gun rights activist spreading their lies in public or on social media. The simple reality is that Americans with guns are much more likely to kill your children and have a devastating effect on your life than international terrorists. In fact, the disparity is so large that the danger of international terrorism is almost completely statistically irrelevant.