Keeping things in perspective

In 2011, 9,878 people died in drunk driving crashes - one every 53 minutes - National Highway Traffic Safety Administration FARS data, 2012.

In 2010, 211 children were killed in drunk driving crashes. Out of those 211 deaths, 131 (62 percent) were riding with the drunk driver. - (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “Traffic Safety Facts 2010: Alcohol Impaired Driving” Washington DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2011.)

Almost every 90 seconds, a person is injured in a drunk driving crash. - Blincoe, Lawrence, et al. “The Economic Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes 2000.” Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2002. NHTSA FARS data, 2011.

The Centers for Disease Control says 11,493 people died from gun homicides.

The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) seminal study of preventable medical errors estimated as many as 98,000 people die every year at a cost of $29 billion. If the Centers for Disease Control were to include preventable medical errors as a category, these conclusions would make it the sixth leading cause of death in America. [1]

We need to keep things in perspective. According to the above statistics; the same fervor by many in dealing with the supposed gun problem, should also be replicated in dealing with other issues. I wonder why there isn’t an outcry concerning alcohol and its ills. Not only does it cause deaths on the highway but it breaks up marriages, perpetrates spousal abuse, child abuse, lack of performance on the job, and so on. Shouldn’t cars be restricted or handed in as a result of being the instrument used in these deaths?

Why isn’t there an outcry concerning the medical problems of prescribing the wrong medications, misdiagnosis’s, blatant malpractice, etc, that one report had said could reach 200,000 deaths a year.

This statistic is the most disturbing of them all. In 2008, approximately 1.21 million abortions took place in the U.S., down from an estimated 1.29 million in 2002, 1.31 million in 2000 and 1.36 million in 1996. From 1973 through 2008, nearly 50 million legal abortions have occurred in the U.S. (AGI).[2]

The following verses are relevant for these times in America.

Psalm 11:3 (KJV)
³  If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?
Psalm 9:17 (KJV)
¹⁷  The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.

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[1] Deaths/Mortality, 2005, National Center for Health Care Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control, viewed at  http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm.

[2] http://www.abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/