We Are Astonishingly Safe From Terrorism

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Steven Rattner has collected 10 charts to describe 2015, but the most interesting one is actually for 2014: It shows terrorist deaths in Western nations versus the rest of the world. For all the fear that terrorism inspires in us, the entire Western world accounted for only 0.1 percent of all terror fatalities in 2014.

That number will go up in 2015, thanks to Paris and San Bernardino, but will still be no more than about 0.5 percent. Bottom line: Don’t listen to Donald Trump. Over the last 15 years, those of us who live in rich countries have been astonishingly safe from terrorists.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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