Page 10 - January 2020 IIssue new year

The Spectrum of Death: Perspective on News Coverage

Armed Forces Casualties on gun related.
Airplane Crashes B
Assaults Armed Forces - In the major combat op- R

erations in the Middle East and Afghani- O
The fatality data below refer to the Unit- stan, the armed forces, all branches, W

ed States. have suffered 6,918 casualties from 2000 A
Weather - The National Weather Ser- through mid-2017. The figures include R
vice reports a total of 9,714 deaths from all causes, both those suffered in combat D

weather causes for the 17 years of 2000 and those due to non-hostile incidents.
to 2016. The weather events include a U

comprehensive range, including hurri- Air Plane Crashes - Crashes of all air ve- N
canes, floods, tornadoes, blizzards, heat hicles, including helicopters and private I
waves, wind and so on. This covers di- planes, as well as commercial jets, have V

rectly attributed deaths. We can project taken 9,925 lives in the U.S. from 2000 E
an equal, or even greater, number of an- to mid-2017. Of the total, 1,264 involved R

cillary deaths, for example heart attacks six or more casualties in the incident. S
from the physical or psychological stress The NTSB report excludes casualties on I
of the severe weather, but not directly at- the ground, so the totals here exclude the T

tributed to the weather. deaths of individuals in the World Trade Y
Center and at the Pentagon, but do in-

Mass Shootings - A compilation by the clude the passengers on the planes. 2
group Violence Against Guns lists 1,086 0
deaths in mass shootings, including ter- Assaults - Tragically, assaults took the 2

rorist, from 2014 to 2016. Mass shoot- lives of 15,872 individuals, in just one 0
ings, for their compilation, include inci- year, 2014, as reported by the Center

dents with 4 or more injuries or deaths. for Disease Control, based on the data
in the comprehensive compilation of all
Police Fatalities - Violence Against Guns deaths in the universal reporting system.

also identifies that 259 police officers More than two-thirds of these fatalities
have died from gun attacks for the same resulted from firearms, and the victims

three years. The National Law Enforce- averaged the too young age of 35.
ment Officers Memorial Fund identifies
a higher number, 416, for the three years. This first group of causes of death did

The later includes traffic-related and and do take a heavy toll of lives lost.
other causes, while the former focuses And as exemplified by the young aver-

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