Without sources for these statistics they are of no greater worth than the information provided by the Weekly World News, so I will not discuss them further.

What I do have in front of me are the preliminary death figures for 1999 provided by the Centers for Disease Control. Here's what they show:

Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms: 10,818
Assault (homicide) by other and unspecified means: 6,013
Legal Intervention (presumably death by officer of the law): 394

Intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of firearms: 16,573
Intentional self-harm (suicide) by other and unspecified means: 12,468

Accidental discharge of firearms: 832
Discharge of firearms, undetermined intent: 320

Now, the CDC did not publish figures regarding deaths by physician error. The only remotely close description that I could find was Complications of medical and surgical care: 2,813. This could include a myriad of things like post-op infections, organ failure, etc so that is a dilluted figure.

Please folks, do not use statistics to back up your beliefs unless you have a source.

Damn, I hate UBB code.

[ 07-26-2001: Message edited by: Heywood Jablomie ]