When President Barack Obama took the podium on Thursday night to speak about the mass shooting at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College, he blasted Congress for its inaction on gun safety legislation. “Our thoughts and prayers are not enough,” he said, visibly angry.
He also had a request for the media: “Have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who have been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who have been killed by gun violence, and post those side by side on your news reports.”
Wish granted, Mr. President. We compared gun deaths with other highly publicized causes of death in the chart below. (Note that about two-thirds of American gun deaths are suicides.) The numbers come from 2013—the most recent year that data is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
