Banning Guns or Saving Lives?

What is the purpose of the anti-gun lobbyists? Is it to ban guns or save lives?

Before we put a ban on guns, there are a few other steps we should take to save even more lives!

Here are a few brief statistics on deaths in the United States. The data can be found at the CDC and Vital Statistics website for verification. (Note: these statistics do not include abortion, if they did the numbers would be much, much higher, in fact about 11 million deaths higher!)

Cause of death for 2004 (most recent data available):

Total Deaths 2004 2,398,365
#1 = Heart Disease 654,092
#2 = Cancer 550,270
#3 = Stroke 150,147
#4 = Lower Resp. 123,884
#5 = Accidents 108,694

What are the leading causes of heart disease?
Mostly poor lifestyle (bad diet, lack of exercise, smoking, drinking alcohol, and illegal drug usage.)

What are the leading causes of cancer?
Tobacco (mostly lung cancer associated with smoking)

What are the leading causes of strokes?
High cholesterol, hypertension, smoking, and illegal drug use.

What are the leading causes of accidents?
Vehicles, in particular speed associated with the crash (speed kills).
Part of the 108,694 includes 29,569 deaths by guns.

So if we really want to save lives, then the first step would be to promote a healthy lifestyle, eat right, exercise, stop smoking/drinking/drugging.

That would take care of the top 3 or 4 reasons for death.

Simple lifestyle changes can save the most lives! Not banning guns! Gun deaths only account for around 1% of all deaths.

If these anti-gun groups are really about saving lives, then don’t go after the 1% cause, go after the top causes that constitute over 60% of all deaths in the United States!