This article originally appeared on 11.10.15
As a world-renowned scientist, Neil deGrasse Tyson is known for his passionate embrace of cold, hard facts …
And the occasional beach ball game with a comic at night. Photo of Cindy Ord / Getty Images.
… which makes him the right person to deal with a controversial issue: the abnormally high number of Americans who die from armed violence.
Umpqua Community College, Oregon, where a mass shooting occurred earlier this year. Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images.
In November 2015, he composed three tweets in which he set out the numbers.
And they are worrying.
According to PolitiFact, this actually underestimates the case a bit (US war deaths were closer to 1.2 million as of 2013).
Unfortunately, this is also true.
Estimates vary (and Tyson’s is at the forefront), but 2015 is expected to look roughly According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a total of 33,000 gun deaths are nearly 3,200 every five weeks (comparable to the nearly 3,400 Americans who have died in terrorist attacks since 2001).
Tyson’s tweets clearly remind us that we have a problem. And he will not leave alone.
The father of a Sandy Hook shooting victim holds the image of his son. Photo by Mark Wilson / Getty Images.
Awkward statistics don’t end there. Each time a firearm is legally used for self-defense, four involuntary shootings, seven assaults or murders, and 11 attempted or complete suicide by firearm occur.
Yes, sometimes people use other weapons to kill people (although firearms are the most popular). Yes, people try to commit suicide by other means (although when they do, they are much less likely to succeed). Yes, car deaths are comparable (not enough attention is paid to figuring out how to reduce car deaths and, as with gun deaths, it’s ridiculous that we accept the amount we do).
But none of that is a reason to sit back and do nothing.
A safe for weapons. Photo by BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons.
On a personal level, this means making sure that if you have weapons, they are locked and unloaded when they are stored to help prevent accidents.
At the political level, this means supporting laws that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people and opposing laws that make it easier for them to access guns and transport them wherever they want.
True: we have a problem.
But only by admitting it can we hope to find a solution.