Last week Ilhan Omar post the following tweet about gun violence:
Supporting my colleagues’ call on Senate Majority Leader to vote on H.R. 8, 1112 & 1158.
Gun violence is an epidemic.
Every day on average 500 people die from gun violence. How many more lives will we let gun violence claim?
Retweeting: https://t.co/ty5taOLeOC— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) June 5, 2019
“Every day on average 500 people die from gun violence” Omar says. But is that true?
Heck no. It’s not even close.
Ilhan Omar is lying, again
“Every day on average 500 people die from gun violence” is a blatant lie
On average, there are approximately 30 people killed in the U.S. per day from gun homicides. https://t.co/RaR3Vwz7OG
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) June 14, 2019
I checked his math and he’s right. There were 10,982 murders by firearm in 2017 according to the FBI. That equates to an average of 30 murders per day.
Now of course if you read the wording of Omar, she just says ‘gun violence’. So let’s add in suicides by firearm.
According to the CDC, the number of suicides by firearm in 2015 was 22,018, which averages out to 60 per day.
On top of this if you want to include accidental deaths by firearms, then you have a total 489 that averages to 1.3 deaths per day according to the CDC for 2015.
I’m no math whiz, but 91 per day is a far cry different that Omar’s claim of 500 per day.
Now I don’t think it’s fair to include suicides because people who want to kill themselves don’t need a gun to do it. In fact, according to the CDC, in 2015 non-firearm suicides were slightly higher than those with firearms, coming in at 22,175. If that many people are intent on killing themselves without firearms, you won’t convince that most of those who used firearms wouldn’t find another way if they didn’t have one.
So really, the 30 murders per day is the most relevant statistic in the discussion of gun violence.
But no matter which way you slice it, with or without suicides, it’s still no where near 500 as Omar suggested.