An Unemotional Look at Mass Shootings

If you’re like me, you were/are very upset about the recent shooting that occurred in Orlando a few days ago. Fifty people were shot and killed by a gunman with a Sig Sauer MCX assault rifle. It was the deadliest mass shooting in American history. You’re probably angry, sad, and confused about why nothing seems to be getting done to prevent things like this in the future.

If you’re not like me, then you probably think I’m just some whiny, leftist crybaby with no grasp of the Constitution.

Recently I posted a joke on Twitter that I think expresses my thoughts and feelings on gun control and the way America has chosen to respond:

While many understood where I was coming from, I did receive some criticism from people who are not whiny, leftist crybabies with no grasp of the Constitution like me.

I was told that my knowledge of the gun laws proposed by the senate was minimal, and that if I had taken the time to do the research I would realize that none of the proposed gun control laws would actually stop these kinds of shootings from happening. When I brought up the simple fact that children died because of a similar incident at Sandy Hook, I was told that the problem with anti-gun sissies like me was that we spend too much time thinking about our emotions and not enough time thinking logically about the facts.

That’s a fair point. Due to a rare medical condition, I do have a heart and it tends to get all achy when groups of people are killed for absolutely no reason. Fortunately this condition seems to be affecting fewer and fewer Americans each year.

Anyways, I have decided that I am done with being an emotional, communist wimp. From now on I am only going to look at things logically. No more talking about my feelings. From now on it’s 100% straight up facts and data.

So let’s take a look at the data, without all of those pesky emotions.

At the time of this writing, 9:40am on Thursday, June 23rd, there have been 150 mass shootings in 2016 according to gunviolencearchive.org. This is a great number because it is even and round which makes it easy to work with.

Here are some cold, hard facts about having 150 mass shootings so far in 2016:

1. We are currently in week 26 of the fiscal year, which means that we have had an average of 5.8 mass shootings per week this year.
2. Since we are approximately half way through the year, we can estimate that there will be 300 mass shootings by January 1, 2017. Aren’t even, round numbers fun?
3. If I had a nickel for each of the 150 mass shootings, I would only have $7.50 so this clearly is not even that big of a deal. That’s not even enough to buy a movie ticket in Orlando according to Fandango. To purchase an adult movie ticket in Orlando, I will need 30 more mass shootings this year in order to afford the $9 it takes to see the latest blockbuster, and that’s not even including the price of snacks.

Let’s take a look at some other numbers. Sweet, unemotional numbers.

The shooting in Orlando was the biggest mass shooting in American history, with 53 people being injured and 50 fatalities. For the sake of argument, let’s imagine that all 150 of the mass shootings in 2016 also resulted in 50 fatalities. The data is very interesting:

1. 50 fatalities x 150 mass shootings = 7,500 total fatalities in 2016
2. According to census.gov, the current population of the United States is 323,835,640 (you can imagine how excited I am to see another even, round number). If we assume 7,500 total fatalities in 2016, that only comes out to 0.2%, which is almost nothing and might as well be zero fatalities from a statistical point of view.
3. We can assume that each of the 7,500 mass shooting victims…sorry, “victims” is too emotional of a term. Let’s call them “samples”. We can assume that each of the 7,500 mass shooting samples had two parents. That’s a total of 15,000 parents that now have a family size equal to X-1, where X equals their original family size, as a result of a mass shooting in 2016. Again, this is working solely off of hypothetical data. Yes, it is possible that some of these mass shootings resulted in family sizes equal to X-2, X-3, or even X-50 in the most extreme case of a family reunion going awry. Fortunately we have not seen a case of 50 family members being gunned down (sorry, that’s too emotional….let’s say “subtracted”) all at the same time.
4. According to taxpolicycenter.org, Americans pay an average 19.8% of their annual income in taxes, based on data collected in 2015. According to this CNN article from 2015, the average American earned an annual salary of $53,657 in 2014. Let’s assume that we receive the typical 3% annual raise. We can assume that the average American in 2016 will earn $56,924. If the income tax rate stays at 19.8%, we can assume that the average American will pay $11,271 in income tax. Multiply that by the 7,500 samples that were subtracted in a mass shooting, and you can see that America is losing $84,532,500 in tax revenue. To put this in perspective, that’s enough to pay all 100 United States senators for 4 full years if we look at the average annual salary of a United States senator as $174,000. 100 state senators x an annual salary of $174,000 = $17,400,000 spent each year on senator salaries. $84,532,500 in tax revenue from the 7,500 samples / $17,400,000 in senator salaries = 4.85 years of state senator salaries that we would be able to pay for if so many samples weren’t subtracted due to mass shootings in 2016. Let’s round that down to 4 full years, or $69,600,000. We now have $14,932,500 left in tax revenue to spend. To put that in perspective, that would be enough for 1,659,166 adults to see a movie in Orlando if the 7,500 samples had not been subtracted in a mass shooting this year.

One of the most logical ways to look at something is by comparing the cost to the benefit, rather than the alive to the dead. I think that the data here proves that if we can reduce the number of mass shootings, we can increase our tax revenue which benefits everyone. That money could go to health care, national defense, education, and more. The question now, is how do we get the government to listen to reason? The logical answer is to speak the language of money to explain the benefits of reducing the number of mass shootings.

Call your senator and let them know how much money the government could receive from taxes if we didn’t have so many mass shootings. Don’t know how to contact your senator? You can find that information here at http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/.

Feel free to use the facts and figures I have presented here, but let them know that 7,500 fatalities is a bit of a high estimate. According to gunviolencearchive.org, the total number of deaths…I mean subtractions…is actually only 6,384 as of right now, which is one more than it was at 9:40 this morning according to the screenshot I used earlier. That’s right, a sample was shot and subtracted in the time it took me to write this article. But that’s only one person out of a current population of 323,836,566 people, so again it’s not that big of a deal.

Kevin Froleiks is a New York based comedian. Follow him on twitter or check out his website to find out where he’s performing next. His comedy album, Jokes I Don’t Really Do Anymore, is available for free on his website as well. You can also check out his podcast, We Wrote A Musical, on iTunes.