US gun deaths beat war dead

Washington : More Americans have died from gunshots in the last 50 years than in all of the wars in American history. Gun-related incidents have claimed more than 1.5 million American lives since 1968.

By comparison, conflicts resulted in 1.2 million service members killed in a dozen wars since 1775, according to estimates from the Department of Veterans Affairs and iCasualties.org, a website that maintains an ongoing database of casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The rate of U.S. gun deaths rose in 2016 to 12 per 100,000 people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. That is up from 11 for every 100,000 people in 2015 — an additional four deaths per day. Before that, the rate had hovered just above 10 — a level it had fallen to in the late 1990s.

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.