In church yesterday, the pastor encouraged us to contribiute to the Peace & Global Witness Special Offering. A brochure was included in our service’s bulletin.
In the brochure, there was a list of “Conflicts Around The Corner”. The VERY FIRST item listed was Gun Violence...with a sub-paragraph stating “Over 30,000 Americans were killed by firearms in 2013.(1)” The footnotes on the last page for “sources” indicated footnote (1) came from a 2013 US CDC study.
It was all I could do to sit thru the rest of the service WITHOUT pulling out my phone and looking that up. After church, I researched it and found the number to be accurate. However...
The one thing the brochure forgot to mention...21,000 of those gun deaths were SUICIDE!
Needless to say, I will not be sending them a check.
And, it probably won’t do any good to point out the misleading numbers to the pastor either. Probably some ‘council’ way up stream form him puts this kind of garbage out. Worth a shot though. Oh, maybe I should use different terminology.