Friday, August 13, 2010

The same could be said about cars

All occupations have hazards, and with somewhere around 70,000 Instructors, there may be an accident from time to time, in a two year period, two NRA Instructors have wounded students, the one referred to in the article, and one in Michigan. Yes both were avoidable, but that is why we call them accidents.

NRA states that about 750,000 people a year take training from an NRA Instructor, and their safety record far surpasses LE training.

Dennis ask "What Can We Learn?", well Instructors are human too, and once in a great while screw up.

Of course Dennis is also simple minded, in that he thinks guns are complicated mechanisms and the slightest mistake will result in an accident. He really shouldn't drive.

In 2009 the US Fleet was 246 million cars in 2009 33,963 people died in auto accidents, down from 37,261 in 2008 (Of course over 14 million people being unemployed it only makes sense that fewer people were on the road everyday)

There were nearly 6,420,000 auto accidents in the United States in 2005. 2.9 million people were injured and 42,636 people killed.

In 2006 Gary Kleck estimated there were 288 million guns in the USA with about 4 million added each year (Taking in account 2009 sales near 14 million, it would be safe to safe to say well over 300 million guns)

2006, there were 30,896 deaths from firearms, distributed as follows by mode of death:
Suicide 16,883;
Homicide 12,791;
Accident 642;
Legal Intervention 360
There were around 200,000 injured

So there are 50 million more guns, than cars, yet the injury rate is 15 times higher with cars, the accidental death rate is over 50 times higher with cars

The number of unintentional deaths from firearms declined 80% from 1997 to 2002 Likely due to all those Instructors giving safety training.

So what can we learn?, We learn we are a lot safer in a class with an NRA Instructor, than we were getting there, or going home; and Dennis is grasping at straws.

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