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Comment by namecheapTA | Hacker News Reader

Statistics still matter. The odds of dying in a car accident throughout your life are about 1 in 100. If you take out suicide and gang violence, getting shot randomly is much less likely than dying in a car. Yet I go and drive around for fun some days and don't worry one but about it.

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Guns are now the leading cause of death for people under the age of 24 in the US (and have been for several years). Yes, they exceed motor vehicle deaths.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/05/25/guns-are...

Is that including suicides?

My first thought on seeing that statistic some weeks ago was that auto deaths must be falling.

They're not.

Now do the stats for people under 24 without gang affiliation... It's incredibly misleading for the Economist to tie that stat to Uvalde when in reality, it's 16-24 year old gang members shooting each other over the drug trade and personal beefs.

Remove gun violence. Remove self defense. Remove gang violence.

The chance of someone just waking up, loading a gun and shooting you point blank for no reason are very small.

I stopped going to San Francisco and Oakland years ago, so my odds of death are not anywhere near that. I also wouldn't go to Chicago and several other cities. When I drove down Baja Mexico, I also avoided stopped at all in Tijuana. If you don't go where the murders are, it's pretty safe out there still.

1/100 is shockingly high. IMO if you accept that you've been conditioned to some pretty crazy risk. I'm going to guess a lot of that statistic comes from drunk driving, at night, with many on rural roads, though. If the risk of flying was 1/100 of death over a lifetime the airline industry would be absolutely decimated by comparison.

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