Something to think about...

[soberups]

An interesting letter in the Australian Shooter Magazine this week:

"If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the past 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

"The firearm death rate in Washington, DC is 80.6 per 100,000 for the same period.

That means you are about 25 percent more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. capital, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the U.S., than you are in Iraq."

Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington DC.

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[PDXGS]

D'oh!

 

[s_ribs]

Ha ha, that's pretty funny!

 

[Doubletap]

I totally agree.. We declare DC a sovereign nation..don't allow immigration..and start over.... Make the capitol somewhere nice and Conservative...

 

[timbernet]

Pretty funny, but the numbers sound off...

If it is 60/100,000 -- and there are 160,000 troops -- how does it end up at 2112 deaths?

Not to mention deaths via IEDs, etc...

I would love it to be true, but it just seems fishy...

 

[Riot]

Sad, but true...

 

[jhc5]

Just found this link online... seems this has been circulating for a while now. D.C. crime is bad, but I'm not sure this example is comparing apples to apples. (http://dc.about.com/b/2008/03/12/firearm-death-rates-in-washington-dc.htm)

Pretty funny, but the numbers sound off...

If it is 60/100,000 -- and there are 160,000 troops -- how does it end up at 2112 deaths?

Not to mention deaths via IEDs, etc...

I would love it to be true, but it just seems fishy...

I don't think the original statistics being quoted are correct, but the math goes like this:

- ~ 160,000 troops in Iraq for the last 22 months
- 2,112 deaths equals 96 deaths per month
- in D.C., there are 80.6 deaths per 100,000 people
- to compare Iraq numbers to D.C. numbers, you need to know the number of Iraq deaths per 100,000 troops, so you divide 96 by 1.6, because 160k/100k is 1.6. This gives you 60 deaths per 100,000 troops in Iraq.

 

[CEF1959]

This thread is just goofball math.

There have been an average of about 605 annual US miltary fatalities in Iraq for the five years from 2004-2009, with a force averaging about 140,000 troops. http://www.icasualties.org/

There have been an average of about 165 annual homicides in DC annually for the same period, with a population of about 591,000. That's about 31 per 100,000 population per year. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm

Stated differently, if you are American military in Iraq, you have a 1 in 231 chance of being killed in any given year. Someone in DC has a 1 in 3225 chance of being killed in any given year.

That makes Iraq about 14 times more deadly for Americans than DC.

 

[jhc5]

That sounds much more reasonable.

 

[powersbj]

Im guessing the iraq numbers are not counting the civies, where as the DC #s are... Perhaps you should compare DC Police officers deaths to US troop deaths.

Whats the Civilian fatalities in Iraq? I thought it was over the 50k mark....