accidental poisoning versus intentional poisoning. compare that to accidental gun deaths and intentional gun deaths. do so ver the entire population and tell me what you get.
if you're worried about people committing too much suicide rather than offing 20 kindergarteners, then limit people to one bullet at a time.
problem solved.
from the same chart/ALL ages:
accidental firearm deaths: 606
intentional firearm deaths (homicide):11,078
intentional firearm deaths (suicide): 19,392
intentional poisoning deaths (homicide) 79
accidental poisoning deaths: 33,041
what's important to notice is that in order for me to even find these stats i had to expand the table to the top 16 causes of death because homicide is the 16th most common cause of death when you look at all age groups. the bulk of homicide deaths (by any method) come from males in the age range of 15-34, which also happens to be the same age range that a young man is most likely to be involved in gang activity, crime, and black market drugs. it gets even murkier when you divide the homicides by race and geography (i'll leave that to someone else. i'm not going down that road here).
the point is that we need to interpret the data meaningfully, not cherry pick random stats to prop up the agenda du jour. if the problem is greater in a certain age group, geographic location, etc., we need to sort that stuff out before we go willy-nilly making laws that don't address the actual problems we're seeing. a knee-jerk reaction to a few spree killers is not going to address the real issues with our crime stats. our gun stats aren't high because of a handful of loony spree killers, our gun stats are high because we don't address the shitstorm of social problems we have in this country until something heinous happens to give the media a boner. if you only listened to the media, you'd never think poison killed even half as many people as guns, intentional or otherwise. where are the news stories? why isn't clorox being sued?
getting people riled is what the media does best. well rounded analysis isn't really their thing.