machine gun vs car
polycounter lvl 18
just started wondering, which invention has killed more people,
the machine gun, or the car?
as a figure, 3500 people are killed every month on the streets, in the US alone.
the machine gun, or the car?
as a figure, 3500 people are killed every month on the streets, in the US alone.
Replies
yah but how many people fire their machine gun all the way to and from work every day?
...um, by cars or guns?
According to this page http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/stats.html we can say roughly 41,000-43,000 people die in the US alone to car accidents each year.
According to this page on gun violence in the US:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#Homicides, the amount of gun violence drastically depends on the density of an area, in terms of how its calculated, but if we take the WORST case scenario (over urban areas over 250,000, 12.1 people killed by guns per 100,000) and apply it to the ENTIRE country (303,824,000) then we get 36,784.
So, assuming the entire country to be at the worst death-by-guns percent, and and pretending that EVERY gun killer in the US used a machine gun.. you're still more likely to die by car than by machine gun in the US today.
As for totals through all time, who knows, but I'd still put my money on cars. Slow and steady death toll versus a spikey sporadic one..
Continuing on that path, I'd say a machine gun could whoop a car, no bother.
America is a scary place
Car hands down.
Although machine guns are responsible for far less than half of combat deaths in conventional armed conflict (artillery gets the top spot), cars also only get a fraction of automobile deaths (trucks and motorcycles have to have some pretty impressive numbers on their own).
Fucking. Hilarious.
And true.
If this statistic is to be believed, http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/04/21/weekinreview/20070422_MARSH_GRAPHIC.html then you have a total of around 90 gun related deaths per day. Eliminate suicides, because those are figures that could just as well be from another cause such as pills or roof diving, and which do not have a reliable equivalent in the automotive statistics.
You have around 30 homicides/accidental deaths per day. Per month that's around 900 deaths caused by guns. Per year it's nearly 11,000.
Take these stats into account http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx and you see that the average fatalities per year for cars are in the 42,000 range.
So basically OMG CARS ARE MURDER MACHINES WE NEED TO BAN THEM!
As for the intial question of machine-gun vs car, I'm sure the car beats the machine gun by loads and loads considering handgun crime is the norm. In war the machine gun is number one obviously.
Also, guns have been around a fair while longer than cars... like a couple of hundred years... still it seems like the car might win in terms of total fatalities, if not actual relative risk factor (eg. 10% of guns may have killed someone, while only 1% of cars may have killed someone, but if there are more than 10x cars than guns then already the car has won, even though the gun is more deadly percentage wise).
I'd also want to see a remade version of Interstate '76 or '82 or even Quarantine as cars with machine guns are awesome. :thumbup:
Though, talking about machine guns and not just any gun the over-time issue isn't as relevant. I'm not sure whether or not things like the gatling gun count, but yeah, the two seem to have evolved pretty much at the same time.
I'd think the bigger thing that would throw off the statistics would be wars. if 72 million people died in WW2 , and only a fraction of that was to machine gun fire...well, that could still be significant enough of a spike to propel it above the steady rate of car-accidents. Throw in every war of the last 100 years and you've got an interesting number for someone with a longer attention span than I do to tally up.
Also, we'd have to consider that the amount of cars probably correlates to the amount of accidents--that is, I doubt there were as many car accidents in 1909 than in 1999. I'm not so sure I'd vote cars anymore.
there was just something retardedly pleasing about being able to destroy the eiffel tower of paris.
If you're going to limit the type of gun, you need to limit the type of car. level the two things being compared. You don't hear about mass graves filled with victims of auto accidents. But if they all died by pistol then we can't count them? That's cooking the books.
Guns VS cars, who has killed more? Guns hands down.
WW1 1914-1918 5,525,000 dead (a good % by bullets I bet) alone probably wracked up more kills for guns before the first commercial cars started rolling off the lines in the 1920's. Not to mention guns have been around for centuries before WW1. Toss in WW2 and a bunch of wars since.
We keep dreaming up ways to make cars safer, and guns deadlier. With cars in the hole on kill count already it will have to be a long peaceful time with a lot of crazy drunken drivers to pull ahead.
On second thought, guns don't kill people, cars don't kill people, people kill people.
So the question is: "people vs people, who kills more?"
This wikipedia article I think does shed some light on the issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_preventable_causes_of_death
You will notice that worldwide neither car accidents or gun violence (of any kind) make the top ten list. In the US alone car accidents result in 43,000 deaths every year while gun violence does not make the list.
You will also notice that 260,000 children are killed every year by vehicle accidents. Based on this I would guestimate that it is reasonable to assume that perhaps 1 to 2 million people are killed by cars every year.
In conclusion: My barely educated guess is that cars have killed many times more people than machine guns and that cigarettes and put them both to shame.
Because the question says "machine guns" it attempts to stack the deck. If its going to be limited to a specific type of gun then you can't count all automotive fatalities that get recorded, just cars. No motorcycles, mopeds, trucks, pickups, RV's, SUV's, buses, trains or farm equipment or anything else that isn't a "car".
If you count all automotive related deaths, then you need to count all gun related deaths. You can't limit one and not the other.
Artillery are guns.
And i think guns win -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
I sited WWII specifically assuming that it would be a high point for machinegun related deaths. Is there a different highwater mark that I should be considering?
Edit: and I do agree that Im doing a lot of number fudging, but there just arnt that many hard numbers to go off of so when a real number does show up, even if it isnt a great fit Ill go with that rather than a number Im pulling out of my ass.
I'm pretty sure a lot of the WW2 casualties are not specifically gun related. There are scores of them that have more to do with logistics than anything else - Food, Fuel, Clothing, medical supplies, etc, to say nothing of internment camps and other mistreatment of prisoners. I'm not saying guns aren't a significant factor, but you can't point at a war and say "these are all gun deaths" and then compare that number to auto fatalities in a modern country and say those conditions are comparable. Hell, I'm sure a number of the WW2 fatalities are automobile crashes - zipping around in a Jeep off-road isn't the safest thing in the world
Anyhow, machine guns are pretty much unheard of in non-war situations, so I'd say machine guns vs cars is cars without question. If we're comparing all automotive or traffic fatalities to all guns, then still, outside of wartime, cars win hands down, and I'd imagine the significant margin that cars have on guns in non-wartime tends to bring those numbers a lot closer than anyone would like to imagine.
And of course cigarette and alcohol related diseases and deaths put them all to shame.
edit: dammit I thought I was editing my first post.
If you want Americans killed by each cars win.
FBI crime statistics 1998-2007
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_01.html
Motor Vehicle fatalities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
MOP's argument is pretty reasonable, though data for firearm possession on the African continent is likely not tabulated, but I'd bet that there are plenty of places there where more people have firearms than cars.
Anyway keeping it with "people in the USA" since guns and cars are basically equally accessible, though not automatic weapons, it seems a bit more fair.
Best statistics I could find are from the NRA and from the Department of transportation.
Total registered highway vehicles 2006: 250,851,833
Total privately owned firearms in the US: Over 250 million.
US Department of justice estimated 223 million firearms available to the US public in 1996, this includes illegal weaponry
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/guic.pdf
So, in the US which kills more people on a regular basis? Cars.
Which kills more based on number available? Cars.
Which kills more based on population? Cars.
Taking into account war deaths: Since 1900 430,081 Americans have died in battle or of wounds sustained
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warsusa.htm
Seeing as how vehicular related deaths are constantly about 20 thousand more than murder and manslaughter, the break even point, where vehicular related deaths vs weapon related deaths in the US would be about 22 years ago.
Vehicular related death totals are hard to find pre 1975, but suffice it to say that more people have been killed in auto accidents in the us than in all the murders and direct combat fatalities in the 20th century.
aye as it states military deaths (those even likely to be caused by gun) are "only" 20 mill. the rest was civilian, which probsably means disease and bombing etc unlikely to be gunfire.
and check out these stats for fatal car accidents in india
http://morth.nic.in/writereaddata/sublinkimages/table-86816824487.htm
over 92 thousand in 2004, if numbers carried on till this year they would account for 1.25 mill
chinas is higher at 110 thousand last year
and over a million in 1998 year as a world total
so im thinking the car but not by much
It would be an epic battle of endurance and wits, but in the end I vote that the gun is destined for victory as the car's rubber hoses and gaskets would fail after a few years of quietly sitting on the field of battle.
Fixed.
A gun and a car are both placed in the middle of madison square garden. On live tv. And the world watches as both just sit there, in the ring, doing nothing.
vehicle choice could drastic change a weapons effectiveness, ie single shot powerfull weapon would be shit in a car with hard suspension. while a really powerfull weapon in a small light vehicle could have some really rockin kickback. sounds fun if it was propperly dynamic
hell, packing a bit of snow into the barrel will make a gun misfire.
gravity it had a little headstart, but what about that murderation in american pyscho they teamed up for that one
... or cars that have gravity guns that shoot chainsaws?
... or chainsaws that have guns that shoot gravity cars?!!1
i i would love to get hit by a car or bullet in an proper age, aproximately 2 hours of pain or dizzyness and you're gone or even sudden death against years of medication causes diareah, painful procedures and stuff like that, my gradfather hat a year of pain before he passed away
and im suffering a cronical disease,
dying is not a matter of how but if its dignified im matter of one self
its not funny having to tell everyone that you cant go out or visit them because you feel sick every 3 weeks