Monday, May 30, 2022

What Memorial Day is For

(via PBS)

13 comments:

Ellie Finlay said...

I'm surprised by the number given for Vietnam. I remember learning that it was 58,220.

Miss Cellania said...

Yeah, me too. There's a comment discussion at the PBS link about that, but no real answers.

xoxoxoBruce said...

And 650,000 for the civil war.

Anonymous said...

Total US Covid deaths 1,001,313.

Bicycle Bill said...

Since someone already made the connection with the COVID body count, it might also be interesting to compare the toll of war dead with:

1) the number of people killed on American highways in motor vehicle crashes, and
2) the number of people killed by privately-owned firearms in drive-bys, domestic violence cases, gang-related incidents, school shootings, and other massed-crowd attacks.

-"BB"-

Anonymous said...

Traffic fatalities were about 43,000 in 2021. On a per capita and per miles traveled basis, this is generally trending downward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year#/media/File:US_traffic_deaths_per_VMT,_VMT,_per_capita,_and_total_annual_deaths.png

Anonymous said...

Gun deaths run about 15,000 per year, and an additional 24,000 gun suicides.

https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/

Anonymous said...

Total US deaths per year run about 3.4mm

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

Anonymous said...

Two thousand children under 13 are murdered every year. Lest we get too distracted by high profile school shootings, most of these happen at home in connection with domestic violence. Locking school doors won't help with those.

gwdMaine said...

Well, so much for What Memorial Day is for.

There were once 58,220 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - that gets updated fairly regularly.

xoxoxoBruce said...

All good points to ponder and try to find solutions, but this holiday is about honoring war/military casualties.

Miss Cellania said...

Memorial Day is for those who died in service to our country in war.

I agree that the US has way too many horrific premature deaths that we need to prevent. But that's not what Memorial Day is for.

WilliamRocket said...

'Indian war' ?

Wasn't that just a decimation of an entire race ?

My history books were not American.