The cold, cold common ground - updated

We have had more deaths from civilian guns just from 1968 than from all the military deaths from wars in the history of the United States. Most gun deaths are suicides or homicides; statistics show very few instances of gun deaths are defensive. We lose twelve times more children, under 15, to firearms, including pre-school age children, than the next 25 richest nations combined, according to statistics compiled by the American Bar Association. (This is a correction from a lower number posted here earlier, of child deaths five times that of the top 23 richest nations.)

• The rate of death from firearms in the United States is eight times higher than that in its economic counterparts in other parts of the world.

Kellermann AL and Waeckerle JF. Preventing Firearm Injuries. Ann Emerg Med July 1998; 32:77-79.

• The overall firearm-related death rate among U.S. children younger than 15 years of age is nearly 12 times higher than among children in 25 other industrialized countries combined.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 1997;46:101-105.

•  The United States has the highest rate of youth homicides and suicides among the 26 wealthiest nations.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Rates of homicide, suicide, and firearm-related death among children: 26 industrialized countries.
MMWR. 1997;46:101-105.

Krug EG, Dahlberg LL, Powell KE. Childhood homicide, suicide, and firearm deaths: an international comparison. World Health Stat Q. 1996;49:230-235

This is unnecessary, this is avoidable.

The source for the statistic started out with PBS news commentator, Mark Shields, making a statement to PBS Newshour host Judy Woodruff on the December 21st 2012 broadcast. Politifact then fact checked his statement.

"Shields told host Judy Woodruff, "You know, Judy, the reality is -- and it's a terrible reality -- since Robert Kennedy died in the Ambassador Hotel on June 4, 1968, more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country's history, from the Revolutionary through the Civil War, World War I, World War II, in those 43 years. ... I mean, guns are a problem. And I think they still have to be confronted."

Is the death toll that high? Let's examine each half of his comparison.

Deaths from warfare

We found a comprehensive study of war-related deaths published by the Congressional Research Service on Feb. 26, 2010, and we supplemented that with data for deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan using the website icasualties.org. Where possible, we’ve used the broadest definition of "death" -- that is, all war-related deaths, not just those that occurred in combat.

Here’s a summary of deaths by major conflict:

Revolutionary War	4,435
War of 1812	2,260
Mexican War	13,283
Civil War (Union and Confederate, estimated)	525,000
Spanish-American War	2,446
World War I	116,516
World War II	405,399
Korean War	36,574
Vietnam War	58,220
Persian Gulf War	383
Afghanistan War	2,175
Iraq War	4,486
Total	1,171,177

Another 362 deaths resulted from other conflicts since 1980, such as interventions in Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Haiti, but the number is not large enough to make a difference.

Gunfire deaths

The number of deaths from gunfire is a bit more complicated to total. Two Internet-accessible data sets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allow us to pin down the number of deaths from 1981 to 1998 and from 1999 to 2010. We’ve added FBI figures for 2011, and we offer a number for 1968 to 1980 using a conservative estimate of data we found in a graph in this 1994 paper published by the CDC.

Here is a summary. The figures below refer to total deaths caused by firearms:

1968 to 1980	377,000
1981 to 1998	620,525
1999 to 2010	364,483
2011	32,163
Total	1,384,171

We should note that these figures refer to all gun-fire related deaths -- not just homicides, but also suicides and accidental deaths. In 2011, about one-quarter of firearm-related deaths were homicides, according to FBI and CDC data. Using total firearm-related deaths makes the case against guns more dramatic than just using homicides alone.

When we rated a previous Facebook post, we lowered an otherwise True claim to Mostly True because it said that "nearly 100,000 people get shot every year." We found that the number of gun deaths and non-fatal injuries added up to 104,852, but we concluded that the term "get shot" could suggest victims who got shot by someone else rather than by their own hand. We don’t see a similar problem with the way Shields’ comment was phrased -- namely, "died from gunfire."
Our ruling
Since Shields’ comparison was otherwise accurate, with about 1.4 million firearm deaths to 1.2 million in war, we rated his claim True."