First of all I think those americans who qualify for any benefits or entitlements offered by this Government , should receive them;
When we give Corporations multiple tax breaks and never audit there books and computer files that's Corporate welfare and should be eliminated ;
Millions upon billions are untapped tax resources that this nation has never received any revenue because they buy votes & Republicans ;
Wall street has been exposed by this administration;

   Guns save lives. Alice in Wonderland

Since 1968, "more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country's history."

— Mark Shields on Friday, December 21st, 2012 in the PBS NewsHour

PBS commentator Mark Shields says more killed by guns since '68 than in all U.S. wars

By Louis Jacobson on Friday, January 18th, 2013 at 11:27 a.m.



Commentator Mark Shields said more Americans have been killed by gunfire since 1968 than in all the wars in the nation's history. Is that correct?


Since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., supporters and opponents of gun control have thrown out statistics to support their point of view.

Here’s one that caught our eye, offered by liberal commentator Mark Shields on the Dec. 21, 2012, edition of the PBS NewsHour.

Shields told host Judy Woodruff, "You know, Judy, the reality is -- and it's a terrible reality -- since Robert Kennedy died in the Ambassador Hotel on June 4, 1968, more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country's history, from the Revolutionary through the Civil War, World War I, World War II, in those 43 years. ... I mean, guns are a problem. And I think they still have to be confronted."

Is the death toll that high? Let's examine each half of his comparison.

Deaths from warfare

We found a comprehensive study of war-related deaths published by the Congressional Research Service on Feb. 26, 2010, and we supplemented that with data for deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan using the website icasualties.org. Where possible, we’ve used the broadest definition of "death" -- that is, all war-related deaths, not just those that occurred in combat.

Here’s a summary of deaths by major conflict:





Revolutionary War
4,435

War of 1812
2,260

Mexican War
13,283

Civil War (Union and Confederate, estimated)
525,000

Spanish-American War
2,446

World War I
116,516

World War II
405,399

Korean War
36,574

Vietnam War
58,220

Persian Gulf War
383

Afghanistan War
2,175

Iraq War
4,486

Total
1,171,177



Another 362 deaths resulted from other conflicts since 1980, such as interventions in Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Haiti, but the number is not large enough to make a difference.

Gunfire deaths

The number of deaths from gunfire is a bit more complicated to total. Two Internet-accessible data sets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allow us to pin down the number of deaths from 1981 to 1998 and from 1999 to 2010. We’ve added FBI figures for 2011, and we offer a number for 1968 to 1980 using a conservative estimate of data we found in a graph in this 1994 paper published by the CDC.

Here is a summary. The figures below refer to total deaths caused by firearms:

1968 to 1980 377,000
1981 to 1998 620,525
1999 to 2010 364,483
2011 32,163
Total 1,384,171


We should note that these figures refer to all gun-fire related deaths -- not just homicides, but also suicides and accidental deaths. In 2011, about one-quarter of firearm-related deaths were homicides, according to FBI and CDC data. Using total firearm-related deaths makes the case against guns more dramatic than just using homicides alone.

When we rated a previous Facebook post, we lowered an otherwise True claim to Mostly True because it said that "nearly 100,000 people get shot every year." We found that the number of gun deaths and non-fatal injuries added up to 104,852, but we concluded that the term "get shot" could suggest victims who got shot by someone else rather than by their own hand. We don’t see a similar problem with the way Shields’ comment was phrased -- namely, "died from gunfire."

Our ruling

Since Shields’ comparison was otherwise accurate, with about 1.4 million firearm deaths to 1.2 million in war, we rated his claim True.

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Thanks, but the left has no interest in facts. Their only interest is having their own way while everyone else shuts up. I merely try to make them uncomfortable. I just read a headline that Yale students are voting out the First Amendment. (I don't think they realize it will stifle THEIR speech as well as the rest of us, IF they actually are going for this. One can't believe a single word he reads in this day and age. I once so enjoyed newspapers. Now I don't even buy them for hobby use. Don't read them on line either. Since one can't believe a word they print, why buy??