You are right. That is kind of a click-bait headline but hear me out. I have some statistics that will leave you scratching your head and going, Hmmmmmm.
In June of this year, Israel bombed Iran in order to damage Iran’s nuclear weapon production pipeline. Iran retaliated, firing missiles and drones back at Israel. During the 12 day conflict, Iran killed 29 Israelis.
I dug up some numbers to put that in perspective.
In the 12 days that it took Iran to kill 29 Israelis,
- About 31 Missourians died in vehicle crashes.
- There were about 43 gun deaths in Missouri.
I thought maybe the numbers skew this way because there are more people living in Missouri than in Israel. Nope. In fact, the population of Missouri is only about 2/3 of the population of Israel (6.3 million in Missouri vs. 9.5 million in Israel).
It was big news that 29 Israelis died. Why didn’t the 74 Missourians make big news?
Did you know that about 24 of those gun deaths were suicide? Only about 17 were homicide.
I am not trying to minimize the tragedy of Israeli deaths. Nor am I ignoring the tragedy of 900-1200 Iranians who died in the conflict. I am asking why deaths half a world away make news while deaths right here at home get ignored.
And more to the point, what can we do to significantly reduce the number of people dying here at home from vehicle crashes and guns?
Here are the Israelis who died.
You can read a short biography of each victim in this article, These are the 28 victims killed in Iranian missile attacks during the 12-day conflict: From a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor to a 7-year-old Ukrainian cancer patient, the following are those slain in some of the 36 Iranian ballistic missile impacts. (The name of one of the 29 victims has not been publicly released.)
I tried to find the names of Missourians who died from vehicle crashes and guns in the same 12-day period. Except for a very few, all of the names were unavailable for privacy reasons. We cannot even properly mourn these people; we literally reduce them to faceless, nameless statistics.
Why?
Sources:
- MoDOT: Missouri Roadway Fatalities Continue to Trend Downward says that “954 fatalities occurred on Missouri roadways in 2024.”
- USA Facts: How many people die from gun-related injuries in Missouri each year? says that “an estimated 1,300 people [died] in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available.” Of those, 56% were suicide, 40% homicide, and 4% other.
