From 1968 to 2011, there were close to 1.4 million deaths from gun violence, and this is before the massacres in Aurora, Colorado; Newtown, Connecticut; and elsewhere in the past year.
But when one looks at all deaths from American wars, we discover the total is slightly less than 1.2 million!
With gun violence escalating in recent years, we had over 32,000 deaths in 2011, about equal to the losses in the three year long Korean War from 1950-1953.
From 1999 to 2010, we had about 365,000 gun deaths, almost equal to the 400,000 losses in the four years of World War II.
The years 1981 to 1998 saw 620,000 deaths from guns, about the same as in both sides of the four year Civil War.
With 2,500 to 3,000 deaths per month on the average now, it means in a year we match the totals of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, the Persian Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War combined!
Anyone looking at these statistics would have to be troubled by the fact that we are the most violent Western nation by far, and yet there are those who believe nothing can or should be done about this tragedy!