November 19, 2015

Fact-checking a comparison of gun deaths and terrorism deaths

By Linda Qiu on Monday,
October 5th, 2015 at 11:55 a.m

A viral image compares the number of gun-related deaths and terrorism-caused deaths in the United States in the past decade. (Photo from Now This)

In the wake of the Oct. 1 shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, President Barack Obama tasked the media to put the number of gun violence-related deaths into perspective.

"Have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who've been killed through terrorist attacks in the last decade and the number of Americans who've been killed by gun violence, and post those side by side on your news reports," he said in his address on the shooting. "We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?" 

Obama's underlying point was to highlight the lack of resources and legislative action taken on gun violence. Some have questioned the merit of such a comparison -- for example, critics have  pointed out  that cigarettes kill more people than guns. We're not weighing in on that debate. Rather, we're looking just at the data. 

Multiple outlets obliged (though each came up with slightly different numbers ). Several readers asked us to check out one specific comparison widely shared on Facebook and Twitter . It was created by NowThis, a New York-based news company that produces content specifically for social media.

The image says that 24 Americans have been killed by terrorism in the last decade, while 280,024 Americans were killed by guns.

While NowThis’ numbers aren’t perfect, the overarching point is accurate. There have been far more deaths from gun violence than from terrorist attacks.

Click on Link:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/05/viral-image/fact-checking-comparison-gun-deaths-and-terrorism-/