This blurb is found at various sources all over the internet:

“Doctors:

(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year are 120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171.
(Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services.)

Now think about this:

Guns:

(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. Yes, that is 80 million.
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.0000187.

Statistically, doctors are 9,144 times more dangerous than gun owners.

Remember, “Guns don’t kill people, doctors do.”

FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.

Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!

(Out of concern for the public at large, our statistician withheld data on lawyers for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention.)”

Now, even though I really like the idea conveyed by this quote, it does have some shortcomings. It compares accidental deaths caused by doctors and guns only….what about purposeful deaths? I would like to think doctors still produce a larger number, but the fact remains, this quote fails to cover that variable.

I found another quote from ‘Freakonomics’ by Chicago economics professor Steven Levitthat makes a better comparison:

“In a given year, there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential swimming pools in the United States. (In a country with 6 million pools, this means that roughly 550 children under the age of ten drown each year.) Meanwhile, there is 1 child killed by a gun for every 1 millionplus guns. (In a country with an estimated 200 million guns, this means that roughly 175 children under ten die each year from guns.) The likelihood of death by swimming pool (1 in 11,000) versus death by gun (1 in 1 million-plus) isn’t even close.”

What do you think?