Opioids Are A Significantly Worse Problem Than Guns!! Yet No Call For Banning, Confiscation!!

US rate for gun deaths is up for the second straight year

Associated Press Friday, November 03, 2017

Credit: AP photo

FILE - In this July 7, 2014 file photo, Chicago police display some of the thousands of illegal firearms confiscated during the year. In a government report released on Friday, Nov. 3, 2017, the U.S. rate for gun deaths has increased for the second straight year, following 15 years of no real change. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)

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NEW YORK — The U.S. rate for gun deaths has increased for the second straight year, following 15 years of no real change, a government report shows.

Roughly two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides and those have been increasing for about 10 years. Until recently, that has been offset by a decline in people shot dead by others. But there's been a recent upswing in those gun-related homicides, too, some experts said.

Overall, the firearm death rate rose to 12 deaths per 100,000 people last year, up from 11 in 2015, according to the reportreleased Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Before that, the rate had hovered just above 10 — a level it had fallen to in the late 1990s.

In the early 90s, it was as high as 15 per 100,000 people.

In the past two years, sharp homicide increases in Chicago and other places that have been large enough to elevate the national statistics. According to the FBI's raw numbers, the tally of U.S. homicides involving guns rose to nearly 11,000 last year, from about 9,600 the year before.

Overall, there were more than 38,000 gun deaths last year, according to the CDC. That's up from about 36,000 in 2015, and around 33,500 each year between 2011 and 2014.

The latest CDC report means the nation is approaching two decades since there's been any substantial improvement in the rate of gun deaths, said Dr. Garen Wintemute, a prominent gun violence researcher at the University of California, Davis.

The rate for the first three months of this year was about what it was for the same period last year. Hopefully, it's a sign it will level off again, Wintemute said.

Most gun deaths tend to happen in warm weather so it's too early to know what is happening this year, said Bob Anderson, the CDC's chief of mortality statistics.

The CDC also reported a continued increase in the death rate from drug overdoses, which hit 20 per 100,000 last year, up from 16 the year before. Heroin and other opioids are driving the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history.

Our Deadly Southern Border Country. Another Reason For The Wall

Mexico was second deadliest country in 2016

By Elizabeth Roberts, CNN

Updated 12:48 PM ET, Tue May 9, 2017

Source: CNN

No way out: Drug cartels recruit kids for life 03:59

(CNN)It was the second deadliest
conflict in the world last year, but it
 hardly registered in the international
 headlines.

As Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the news agenda, Mexico's drug wars claimed 23,000 lives during 2016 -- second only to Syria, where 50,000 people died as a result of the civil war.

"This is all the more surprising, considering that the conflict deaths [in Mexico] are nearly all attributable to small arms," said John Chipman, chief executive and director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which issued its annual survey of armed conflict on Tuesday.

"The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan claimed 17,000 and 16,000 lives respectively in 2016, although in lethality they were surpassed by conflicts in Mexico and Central America, which have received much less attention from the media and the international community," said Anastasia Voronkova, the editor of the survey.

In comparison, there were 17,000 conflict deaths in Mexico in 2015 and
15,000 in 2014 according to the IISS.

Rising death toll

Voronkova said the number of homicides rose in 22 of Mexico's 32 states
 during 2016 and the rivalries between cartels increased in violence.

"It is noteworthy that the largest rises in fatalities were registered in states
 that were key battlegrounds for control between competing, increasingly
fragmented cartels," she said.

"The violence grew worse as the cartels expanded the territorial reach of
 their campaigns, seeking to 'cleanse' areas of rivals in their efforts to
 secure a monopoly on drug-trafficking routes and other criminal assets."

Related story: Drugs, money and violence: The toll in Mexico

Mexican drug cartels take in between $19 billion and $29 billion annually
 from US drug sales, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Rivalries between the cartels wreak havoc on the lives of civilians who
have nothing to do with narcotics. Bystanders, people who refused to
 join cartels, migrants, journalists and government officials have all been killed.

Not on news agenda

Jacob Parakilas, assistant head of the US and the Americas Programme
at London-based think tank Chatham House, said part of the reason for
 the relative lack of attention paid to Mexico in the international media is
"it's not a war in the political sense of the word. The participants largely
don't have a political objective. They're not trying to create a breakaway
state. It doesn't come with the same visuals. There are no air strikes.

"Also this has been going on since the beginning of the modern drug trade
 in the Americas. It's not news in that sense. And Mexico is one of the most
dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist. They are intentionally
targeted in Mexico, which puts a dampener on the ability to report on this."

Drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is facing trial in New York.

There have, however, been significant arrests in relation to the Mexican
 drug trade in recent times.

Damaso Lopez Nunez, a high-ranking leader of Mexico's Sinaloa drug
cartel, was arrested on May 2 in Mexico City and could face charges in
the US, authorities said.

His arrest follows January's extradition of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman,
who is accused of running the Sinaloa cartel -- one of the world's largest
 drug-trafficking organizations.

He awaits trial in New York on 17 counts accusing him of running a
criminal enterprise responsible for importing and distributing massive
amounts of narcotics and conspiring to murder rivals.

World conflict deaths fall

The number of conflict fatalities globally edged down last year, from
 167,000 to 157,000, according to the IISS.

This was the second successive annual drop -- 180,000 people were
 killed in 2014.

The number of deaths in Syria fell from 55,000 in 2015. But there were
 1,000 more deaths in Afghanistan last year than 2015 and 4,000 more
in Iraq.

Voronkova from the IISS said: "Civilians caught amid conflict arguably
suffered more than in the preceding years. Between January and
August, 900,000 people were internally displaced in Syria alone."

The internal displacement figures were 234,000 for Iraq and 260,000
 for Afghanistan.