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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   22354 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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While this number does not include self-inflicted gunshots (IE Suicides)

Disingenuous argument. So you are concerned about people killing themselves but only if they do it using a doctor?

It's not an argument it was a question at my local haunt's trivia night. What kills more people per year?

A) Gun violence in the US.
B) Doctors in Canada.
C) Traffic accidents in Germany.

And as i said, my initial reaction was to quite literally exclaim "bullshit!" when the presenter told us the answer was 'B'.

And the numbers on the card are all dubious.

A) Does "gun violence" count suicides or not? Gun suicides are the majority of fatal shootings in America. If suicides count as violent, the number on the card is about a factor of 3 too low.
B) Doctors in Canada (and everyone else) kill far more people through medical errors than they do through MAID, it is just that we don't have a reliable count. So the number on the card is an order of magnitude too low.
C) Most car crashes are not accidents, but result from someone making a deliberate decision to violate a traffic law, or at least culpable negligence. Assuming they used the headline number for fatal car crashes, the number on the card is an order of magnitude too high.

The number for "gun violence" does not include self inflicted shootings as i already explained in the OP. Additionally you do understand that Canadian doctors killing an unknown number of people by accident in addition to the number they kill on purpose would increase rather than decrease the total number of people killed don't you?

Point being that when i say i was surprised to find out that the number for 'B' was larger than the number for 'A', saying the number for 'B' might be even larger than reported is not a rebuttal.

I'm not challenging the claim that doctors kill more people than guns - I'm challenging whether this made sense as a trivia question.

It's fantastic, isn't it? Medicine and car safety getting so far. I don't think I would have guessed correctly the order of magnitude of people who die in car accidents in germany.

So you're saying doctors don't kill people, people kill people (themselves)?

Correct. We should get rid of people.

Noted.

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