Since a lot of you fishermen are also gun owning hunters, and almost everyone has a doctor or more, I thought you might be interested in the following stats. A fisheries biologist working for a NW Indian Tribe has become an e-mail friend of mine, and he just e-mailed this astounding set of statistics to me that compare the safety of guns and doctors. To wit:

Number of physicians in the US: 700,000. Accidental
deaths caused by
> physicians per year: 120,000. Accidental deaths
per physician/year
> 0.171 (statisitics by the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services).
Number of gun owners
in
> the US: 80,000,000. Number of accidental gun deaths
per year (all
age
> groups): 1,500. Accidental deaths per gun owner:
0.0000188.
> Statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times
more dangerous
than
> gun owners. FACT: Not everyone has a gun, but
everyone has at least
> one Doctor. .........

I have always been agast at reports and my own observations of carelessness in the medical profession (in addition to taking a huge amount of Americans income to do this work); but these stats make me want to gag, if they are correct! However, I still think I would be more comfortable with a doctor holding me at surgery knife point than a crazy lowlife hunter or fisher holding a gun at me. Maybe

RT

[ 07-26-2001: Message edited by: RT 1 ]