If you are in the US, and under roughly 20, the actual leading cause of death is firearms, been like that for the past 5 or 6 years.
https://www.cnn.com/health/guns-death-us-children-teens-dg
Thats from about 6 months ago.
You may also note that the article’s source at CDC:
https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D158;jsessionid=63943AC0B45AD52893397A22A027
No longer works, because this information is inconvenient for the current administration of " “pro-life” ", violence loving fascists.
Scientific American, from 2022, has this same trend, but extending the age bracket all the way up to age 24.
Firearms also pop back up over 65 because after a lifetime of fighting the evils of socialism, old Americans end up poor in medical debt and pop themselves. they even believe it’s their own fault.
But of course if they didn’t have guns everything would be fine.
That’s a bit misleading considering the vast majority of those firearm deaths are suicides. Calling it simply firearms makes it sound like murder rates are insanely high and that isn’t the case. That’s not to say firearm deaths aren’t a major problem, just that presenting it in this fashion will lead many to draw an incorrect conclusion about the data.
Suicides and murders and accidents, in each case it’s the killing efficiency of firearms that makes such high rates possible.
Yes, but there’s only one of those possible uses that immediately comes to most people’s mind when you use the term firearm death / fatality / injury / etc. If you don’t specify that all of these are included in your statistic then you are leaving the door open for wildly misleading uses of this information. That is explicitly the opposite of the intent behind statistical analysis.
I think I’m a part of most people and I’m well aware that firearms kill people a lot of ways. It’s not just school mass shootings, police brutality, and gangs. Most Americans know, or at least know of, someone who killed themselves with a gun. And many know someone who shot someone by accident.
In other words, you’re fine with leaving room for misinterpretation because you personally have enough background info to understand the context. Cool cool
I’d like to direct your attention to “poisoning,” which is even more vague.
I suppose a person with bad intentions could deliberately pull any of the individual numbers out of context and use it as “evidence” for their political point.
But anyone who reads the whole thing is going to notice that most of the categories include suicides as an unstated percentage. Especially “accidents.”
Yes, and as was pointed out elsewhere poisoning is a very misleading category as well because it includes drug overdoses which is not immediately obvious in much the same way as we are discussing with firearms.
I’m not sure what you think you’re accomplishing here though. You seem to be agreeing with me that some of these categories have the potential to be misunderstood and yet you’re presenting an additional data point that helps make that case as if it disproves what I am saying. Are you just categorically opposed to agreeing with someone else without being a dick about it?
Its only misleading if you are not capable of realizing a person can shoot themselves or another person.
Calling it simply a firearm means that a firearm caused the death.
Thats it.
If you automatically read context into that, context that is not there, that’s either a you problem or a literacy problem.
Also:
https://www.thetrace.org/2025/07/gun-homicide-suicide-data-link-study/
Over the course of five decades, the data showed that the strongest association between an increase in homicide rates and elevated suicide risk occurred in rural communities and among white populations. A one-point increase in the overall homicide rate correlated to a 3.6 percent increase in the suicide rate the following year, according to the study. The correlation was even more stark between firearm-related deaths: For every one-point rise in the firearm homicide rate, there was a 5.7 percent increase in firearm suicides.
tl:dr, firearm homicide and suicide rates are well corellated with a time lag.
We can say that a big problem is simply too much access to too many guns and say that with data as well.
“These results would suggest violence prevention is suicide prevention, and that we can reduce suicides by reducing violence in local communities.”
“We know that suicide and homicide in some ways have a lot of the same drivers,” said Dr. Emmy Betz, an emergency physician and public health scholar at the University of Colorado who specializes in firearm suicide prevention. “Poverty, lack of access to reliable housing or food, relationship stressors, and domestic violence can all increase the risk of suicide or homicide.”
The… so obvious it hopefully doesn’t have to be stated… but apparently it actually does… part, being:
It is significantly easier to kill either yourself or another person with a firearm, than without one.
Its even easier than via using a car, in the US.
Plenty of people kill themselves and others in car accidents or otherwise using/involving a car… but the above graph is as agnostic to intent, to victim/perpetrator with cars as it is with guns, but for some reason, you don’t bring that up, that doesn’t need to be specifically clarified.
If people assumed that deaths from car crashes were usually intentionally inflicted on others, as they do with firearms, then yes, I would expect you to clarify that most car crashes are accidents when citing statistics about them that are not specific enough to convey that information on their own. If you think clarity in these matters is unimportant then you are in no position to be lecturing me about the proper use of statistics. Thanks for being a dick though, that’s super conducive to meaningful discussion.
You literally just could have said:
For clarity, in this graph, ‘Firearm’ means any death caused by a firearm.
Instead of asserting disingenuousness on the part of the graph or article with more context it was pulled from, which I provided a link to.
That would be how to discuss this constructively, vs antagonistically.
Perhaps you have… evidence for your naked assertion related to the prevelance of assumptions/interpretations around specific terminology/vocabulary, in certain contexts?
As a counter to your personal interpretation… beyond having a career as a data analyst, I’ve also had a bit of and off an on hobby of shooting, at gun ranges.
I can very much tell you that the gun immersed culture has… very different (and often much more precise) understandings of all terminology that is any way related to firearms, than people who have essentially zero experience or familiarity or proper training with firearms.
And, in the US… quite a lot of people are far more dedicated to firearms as a hobby or even lifestyle than in… probably anywhere else in the world, per capita.
We do have more privately owned guns than people here, I can’t say I’m aware of any other country with that kind of a statistic… maybe Afghanistan? Syria?
Switzerland maybe? But… their gun laws work in a way that I really think in an ideal world, the US could somehow move toward, much more restrictve than the US, but much less restrictive than many other countries.
I told you that the statistic was presented in a misleading manner and clarified the correct context which is exactly what you’re now suggesting I should have done. If you inferred anything else from my original comment then that’s on you.
USA used to point to suicide rates in CCCP countries as evidence of winning in te Cold war era…but US rates are now much higher.
Also, I’m pretty sure the CDC has been outright banned from even studying the public health effects of firearm availability.
Yeah, that probably happened already.
Yeah like 20 years ago
I hope some day we can get rid of all of these.
So that other things can take their place! Woo!
Unless you’re going to eliminate all deaths, there will always be a leading cause of death.
Of course there will always be a leading cause of death. There will always be a fastest runner, a smartest person, a longest road, a most-popular book. That anyone could see this as an argument to stop writing books is incomprehensible to me.
You must be fun at parties
Woohoo! Beat poisoning … now i just have to worry about cancer
Cancer is the unbeatable end boss.
Not always. My wife just beat stage 3 colon cancer. The chemo effects, however - that’s been more trouble.
What they likely meant is that everyone will eventually get a cancer that will kill them if they live long enough.
Childhood diseases may overtake birth defects and accidents again soon.
Man, I wish there was something we could do about it. Oh well, one can dream i guess.
Lokhir of Rorikstead: an arrow to the ankle.
I’m gonna need a poison tester for another 4 years…
So I already beat everything, including cancer and heart disease, so I should be immortal, right?
Well the cancer didn’t take me at 45, so lets go heart disease!
It gets us all eventually.
This graphic is incorrect. The biggest concern at my age is rogue samurai.
Sounds like you should have spent more time studying the blade
Well I’m still alive, aren’t I?
And quicksand
Does this not vary by sex?
I wonder if poisoning counts stuff like overdose/alcohol poisoning because that one seems strange
25-44 Just out here drinking random potions that turn out to be poisoned
Spouse that’s tired of yo shit.
Source is a bit outdated now, 2018 (didn’t realize when I posted that), but it’s primarily from drugs apparently. Both prescription and non-prescription.
Yeah, makes sense then
A bit sad that they didn’t try to distinguish between accidents and suicide. But that’s probably hard to know in most cases.
A drug overdose is termed as a posioning in these kinds of formats/contexts, for whatever reason.
The vast majority of these ‘poisonings’ are not like… snake bites, food poisoning, radiation poisoning, cyanide… they are overdoses of some kind, meth, fentanyl, prescription drugs, alcohol, etc.
Back in the 90s, when you broke up with someone, you poisoned them. it was the fashion.
Hah!
I was going to post Alice Cooper’s “Posion” as a joke response, but then I watched the music video, and its basically a 45 year old describing how he can barely resist deflowering an 18 yo.
So… yeah.
I’m going with ‘rape culture’ was more the norm in the 90s.
I think I’ve heard from several people on lemmy now that most of the ‘classic rock’ musicians had pretty horrible attitudes towards children, ala what you’re now used to with republicans.
I wonder if food poisoning (microbes like e. coli, listeria, salmonella) counts. Oooooh, or Botox gone wrong??
Yes it does. We’re not talking Agatha Christie here.
Eh what? Is this factual? Cars kill way more at all stages
I highly doubt that cars kill more people than heart disease.
Edit: You’re extremely incorrect. In the US
In 2023, 919,032 people died from cardiovascular disease.
In 2023, there were 40,990 motor vehicle related deaths.
Sorry, I meant after heart disease ofc
Who came up with this graphic design?
What a terrible way to show this data, and only shows a small amount of info.
Could’ve been 6 lines if text and imparted as much.
How else would you know that between 4-5, 24-25, 44-45 and 64-45, you were IMMORTAL.
64-45
MY TIME HAS COME
Yeah… If this needed to be a graphic, a line or bar chart showing the relative rates of these handful of mortality causes would have been so much easier to read and conveyed more information.
Ive made to 41 by the skin of my teeth, im coming up on the next hard level, cancer. Im just gonna make sure i have shit ton of health potions bound to quick bar.
Poisoning? Really?
If you can make it to 45 without killing yourself then you’re rewarded with cancer.
I only have a few more years until I cross that threshold.
Looking forward to the melanoma.
And by that I mean that I hate everything about it. :)
Usually from all the poison you ingested that didn’t kill you
Probably alcohol poisoning.
Just saying.
Healthcare nomenclature is moving away from “opioid overdose” to “opioid poisoning”. This is partly to do with stigma related to substance use- overdose can feel like it assigns blame “well if they just dosed correctly…”. Also, poisoning is more accurate if you consider the fact that many street drugs have impurities, and unless you are having your drugs tested or testing them yourself, you can’t be sure that you are taking the “correct” dose (or even what you are taking at all).
I put did not put “correct” in quotations to stigmatize, but rather to highlight that there isn’t an established correct dose for street drugs. Correct in this case would mean to desired effect, and I understand why people choose to self-medicate so please don’t take offense. Be safe out there!
I wonder if that includes drug overdoses.
I guess that’s poisoning.
Also high velocity lead poisoning to the brain.
Food poisoning, overdose, severe allergic reaction, medication conflict
Around that age, you start cooking for yourself
