Slouching Towards Oblivion

Monday, January 21, 2013

1,384,171

1,384,171 is the number of Americans who have been killed by guns in the last 43 years.

One million-three-hundred-eighty-four-thousand-one-hundred-seventy-one.

Since 1775 (237 years), having fought dozens of battles, skirmishes and outright wars; putting many millions of American uniformed people in harm's way - the estimates look like this:

CONFLICT - TIME SPAN - DEAD AMERICANS
War of Independence (1775-1783) 25,000
Quasi-War (1798-1800 ) 20
Barbary Wars (1801-1815) 35
War of 1812 (1812-1815) 20,000
1st Seminole War (1817-1818) 30
2nd Seminole War (1835-1842 ) 1,500
Mexican-American War (1846-1848) 3,283
3rd Seminole War (1855-1858) 26
Civil War (1861-1865) 623,026
Indian Wars (1865-1898) 919
Spanish-American War (1898) 2,446
Philippine War (1898-1902) 4,196
Boxer Rebellion (1900-1901) 37
Mexican Revolution (1914-1919) 35
Haiti Occupation (1915-1934) 146
World War 1 (1917-1918) 116,708
World War 2 (1941-1945) 407,316
Korean War (1950-1953) 36,914
Vietnam War (1964-1973) 58,169
El Salvador (1980-1992) 20
Beirut (1982-1984) 266
Persian Gulf Support (1987-1988) 39
Invasion of Grenada (1983) 19
Invasion of Panama (1989) 40
Persian Gulf War (1991) 269
Somalia (1992-1993) 43
Bosnia (1995) 12
Afghanistan / Iraq (2002-2012) 6,616

For a grand total of 1,317,130

In just 43 years we've killed 67,041 more Americans than all of our "enemies" have managed to kill in 237 years of armed conflict.  Who looks at this and then says to himself, "So, yeah - I guess what we need is a lot more opportunity for Americans to kill each other"?

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