You are 27 times more likely to be struck by lightning that killed by a CCWer.

[GreenStormCloud]

Above figure does not apply if you are a criminal committing an assault. That number is for innocent people being shot.

From: National Lightning Safety Institute ~ http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/probability.html
Since lightning safety is their mission, and since I don't know much about that beyond what is common knowledge, I shall assume that their numbers are correct. Their numbers are on an annual basis.

Odds = 1 : 280,000 of being struck by lightning

From: Violoence Policy Center http://www.vpc.org/ccwkillers.htm
Although I do not trust the VPC, for the sake of argument I shall asssume that their numbers are correct. Since May of 2007 they claim 107 private citizens and 9 law enforcement officers, total of 106 people have been innocently killed by CCWers. Most of those cases are still pending. For the sake of arriving at a usable number, I shall assume that they are all guilty. Inclucing May of 2007 to now, Dec 30, 2009 is 32 months. That yields an average of 39.75 people killed per year, rounds to 40.

(106/32)12 = 39.75 rounds to 40 per year.

Population of the US, rounds to 300,000,000. Divide by 40 to get the chance of getting killed by a CCWer in one year. Yeilds 1 in 7,500,000.

7,500,000/280,000 yields a ration of 26.78 to 1, rounds to 27 to 1.

Lightning is 27 times more dangerous that CCWers.

[StarfarerBill]

1. One small difference: death-by-lightning is an act of Nature;

being killed by someone with a gun is often a deliberate, malicious act.

[oneshooter]

2. Ya got it wrong

Being killed by someone is often the RESULT of a deliberate, malicious act.

There, fixed it for ya.

Oneshooter
Livin in Texas

[StarfarerBill]

3. I stand by my previous statement.

[rd_kent]

8. So you stand by your ignorance?

[Euromutt]

19. Are you *really* sure about that?

Because it seems to me that your sentence can be parsed to mean that it's often a deliberate and malicious act on the part of the victim to be killed by someone using a firearm, and I rather doubt that that is what you meant.

But okay, you want a comparison to another anthropogenic event? The one-year risk of dying in an aeroplane crash is about 1:400,000. The one-year risk of being killed in a motor vehicle collision in the US is about 1:6,500. Compare that to the odds of being killed by a CCW permit holder.

[GreenStormCloud]

4. Motive or lack thereof does not change the probabilities.

CCWers are simply NOT a danger to the general public, although the VPC is attempting to paint about 5 million Americans as such.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

5. The someone doing that killing is almost always legally barred from possessing a firearm.

[GreenStormCloud]

10. Not this time. I am talking about those extremely rare times when a CCWer kills illegally. N/T

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

13. I meant illegally my fault.

[GreenStormCloud]

16. Typos happen. I botched the title of this thread. N/T

[rd_kent]

7. Not by a CCW'er its not. But good for you to ignore the OP and be obtuse.

[Ter]

31. I don't see you trying to outlaw lightning

Why?

[Schema Thing]

6. bullshit!

I'm a home invader. :evilgrin:

[Remmah2]

9. Who gets blamed?

What happens if a person stands on top of their house during a lightning storm with a shotgun?

[GreenStormCloud]

11. Probably, they get wet is all.

Now if they fly a kite pretty high with the wet string attatched to a loaded shotgun, things could get interesting.

[eqfan592]

12. K&R

Also, there's no need to add the police officers to the 107. The 107 number represents the totally number of both civilians and LEO's killed already.

I wish we could make this a sticky. The VPC is unwittingly providing hard evidence of just how safe and law abiding CCW holders truly are when compared to the general populace. I use this website on a regular basis to show people just how low the numbers really are. I've never had an instance when citing these numbers where the person, almost always somebody with little to no interest in the issue, doesn't immediately comment on how low the number us.

There are those who are of the "Even one is too many, so it should be done away with" mindset, which is irrational in the extreme (I'm willing to be Realityinseattle is one of those types) and they find this statistic to be something horrific. But to the rational among us, it's another story all together.

[taurus145]

14. So...

if I go stand in a thunderstorm with 27 CCW holders... Oops! There go the odds.

How do I figure this out? I'm a CCW holder. Does that mean I need 27 others or 26 others to even the odds?

HEEEELLLLPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!

[GreenStormCloud]

15. Stand for 228,000 years with about 27 other CCWers.

That will about even the odds.

[taurus145]

18. Let me check my planner...

[Euromutt]

20. Careful, you'll give someone ideas

Before you know it, some public health researcher will get a paper published that concludes that carrying a firearm on your person (a piece of conductive metal, donchaknow) increases your risk of being struck by lightning. The abstract will, of course, claim that variables were adjusted for, even though the actual data will show that a suspiciously large number of people who were carrying a firearm when struck by lightning were hunters and other outdoorsmen (outdoorspersons?), who are statistically a bit more likely to find themselves caught in open terrain in an electrical storm than most of the population. ;-)

[spin]

17. K&R Math is fun. (n/t)

[Big Al Mac]

21. Please explain "K & R" to me n/t

[GreenStormCloud]

23. Kick & Recommend

When a reply is added to a thread, the thread moves to the top of the forum. That is called being kicked.

Recommend means that the person has kicked on the recommended tab for the thread.

[Big Al Mac]

22. Your numbers are wrong

I hate to piss in your corn flakes but your lightning probability is the odds of ANY kind lightning damage not just death.

According to the National Weather Service:
2008 data
2009 data

There were 28 deaths in 2008 and 33 in 2009 due to lightning.

That puts the odds at 4 to 3 in favor of being fatally shot by a CHL holder than being killed by lightning.

[GreenStormCloud]

24. Still a very rare event.

I will admit that I assumed that being hit by lightning would have an almost 100% mortality rate.

[Euromutt]

25. Strictly speaking, they're not

The OP's title claim--that you're ~27 times more likely to be struck by lightning than be fatally shot by a CCW permit holder--holds up, since GSC initially made no mention of whether or not the lightning strike was presumed to be fatal. We can, however, quibble with his conclusion that lightning is 27 more dangerous than CCW permit holders, since we're comparing different ranges of outcomes; in that aspect, your comparison is the valid one.

[eqfan592]

26. Welcome to the DU :)

And good post :) But if you look back over the last 50 plus years, you'll find that the last few years were actually unusually low years for lightning deaths. Between 1959 and 1994, lightning killed an average of about 90 people per year, according to the NOAA (3239 deaths divided by 36 years).

So you're still more likely, on average, to be killed by lightning than by a CCW permit holder.

EDIT: Oh, here's a link to the NOAA data.

http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/papers/techmemos/NWS-SR-193/techmemo-sr193.html

[RealityInSeattle]

28. Math is hard for gun cheerleaders

Gun cheerleaders only know certain numbers - 6, 9, 15, 22, 38, 45, 357, 50.

If it isn't one of those they don't really know how to work with them.

[eqfan592]

29. Thanks for the bump. ;) (nt)

[GreenStormCloud]

30. You don't know the difference between math and data.

I assumed that lightning strikes were nearly 100% fatal to humans, and took the data from a Lightning Safety site. I was rather surprised to see that so many people actually survive lightning strikes.

My division and multiplication (math) in my OP were correct.

[rd_kent]

32. Did someone hear something?

[eqfan592]

27. Bump....

...just because this needs to be kept at the top.