Products that are much more dangerous than guns

Oct 5, 2020 | Featured

There are 8.4 million motorcycles in the US, and they account for about 4,614 deaths and 196,974 Nonfatal Emergency Department Visits. When you compare that there are about 400 million guns in the US, the rate of both deaths and injuries from motorcycles is astronomically higher than for guns, but there are lots of links and calculations involved so I will put it together in one link for you.

The death rate per motorcycle is 0.05% compared to 0.008% for guns (10,258 murders, 458 accidental deaths, and 23,000 suicides) — a rate that is 6.25 times higher for motorcycles.

The Nonfatal Emergency Department Visits for motorcycles is 2.34% compared to 0.0047% for guns (18,921) — a rate that is 498 times higher for motorcycles.

Given that Joe Biden and other Democrats are talking about allowing lawsuits when harm occurs from a product, you would see lawsuits at a rate that is 182 times higher for motorcycles than for guns.

Take cars. With 273.6 million cars there are 39,676 deaths and 2.45 million Nonfatal Emergency Department Visits (4.5 million injuries overall).

The death rate for cars (0.015%) and the Nonfatal Emergency Department Visit rate (0.895%) are thus both much higher than for guns. The death rate is 1.7 times higher and the Nonfatal Emergency Department Visit rate is 189 times higher.

For bicycles, there are 47.5 million bicycles, 1,024 deaths and 306,133 Nonfatal Emergency Department Visits. The death rate from bicycles is thus a little more than 1/4th the rate for guns, but the Nonfatal Emergency Department Visit rate is 136 times higher. The rate of lawsuits for bicycles would be 3.7 times greater for bicycles than for guns.

A list of the 25 most dangerous products in the US is available here. Another list for those products with the highest injury rates is available here.

In 2019, there were 10,258 murders with guns, 23,941 suicides, and 486 accidental deaths — a total of 34,685. Out of 400 million guns, that is a rate of 8.67 per 100,000 people.


johnrlott

1 Comment

  1. Robert Wing

    I believe your data is old. It also doesn’t include unregistered motorcycles, off-road, racing, quads, etc. It also doesn’t consider multiple motorcycles per household, which in some cases, like guns, is considerable. Perhaps you should update your numbers. I often use data from CPRC to debate gun control advocates, and I consider it to be reliable. However, this data isn’t and is misleading.

    Motorcycles in Households
    MIC says that households owning motorcycles rose from 6.94 percent in 2014 (the last full survey) to a record 8.02 percent in 2018, an increase of more than 1.5 million homes.
    The United States Census Bureau’s most recent estimate put the number of U.S. households at 126,224,000. The MIC Owner Survey found that 10,124,400 of those homes had a motorcycle.

Archives