I recently received an email suggesting that it was an interesting thought.... I'll just offer the excerpt:
What does this mean? If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in theater during the last 22 months, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000. The rate in DC is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.
The conclusion?
Under the tactics of the left, we should immediately pull out of
WASHINGTON, DC!!!
I'll deal with the spin below the fold.
This asshattery is palpably false. Anyone reading this and thinking about it can just tell that something is wrong. More firearm deaths in D.C. -- despite its reputation for gun violence -- than deaths by violence among our troops in Iraq?
Are those folks over there, wrapped in body armor (when they can get it), driving armored Humvees (when they can find an armored one) really safer than average folks in D.C.?
It's a lie, folks. It's a lie that's been crafted to persuade people who'll believe any number in print (or at least any lie that supports what they'd like to believe). Since I assume that if I'm getting this spam, other people are seeing it too, I thought I'd arm you all with the information needed to put this into its grave....
Here
The 2002 firearms-related death rate in D.C. (which includes accidental deaths, suicides... does the Iraq casualty figure? I thought not...) was 13.0 per 100,000.
Not 80.6.
There. Save this, and make sure that when your wingnut relation or credulous friend sends you this bullshit, you can quote facts back to everyone on the cc: list.