Weekly reminder

This will very likely be my last weekly reminder. It has been drawn, as per the link each week, from a project overseen by Slate.com that tracked media reports of gun deaths. Slate has now, sadly, shut the project down. So this will, I expect, be the last for me, too. Just read it and weep.

As of December 31, at least 12,042 people had been killed by gunfire in the US since Newtown, at least 98 of them in Massachusetts. Put a different way, that is more than a Newtown a day, every day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.

And I will note one last time that the reason "at least" is emphasized is that the majority of gun deaths are by suicide. Suicides are rarely reported in the media and when they are, the means are often omitted.

Using the most recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for yearly deaths by guns in the United States, it is likely that as of January 8, 2014, roughly 35,871 people have died from guns in the US since the Newtown shootings.  That is, on average, 92 people dead by gun. Every. Single. Day.

Guns are a scourge.