In a recent article, Louis Jacobson (@loujacobson) fact-checked the information published by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof). Reacting to the murder of two journalists in Virginia, Kristof cited the calculation set by Mark Shields three years ago on PBS: “since Robert Kennedy died in the Ambassador Hotel on June 4, 1968, more Americans have died from gunfire than died in all the wars of this country’s history”. On politifact.com, Jacobson updated the figures and validated the assertion of Kristof. Based on a study of the Congressional Research Service and reports relating to most recent conflicts, he shows that 1,396,733 Americans were killed on the battlefields. Governmental reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that there have been 1,516,863 gun-related deaths since 1968 (included suicides).
The visualization above is a simple contribution to the understanding of this reality.
CC-BY-SA Data visualization freely reusable with a link to this post.
