[quantummagic]

Some of the discussion going online, has asserted that heat related deaths in Europe exceed gun related deaths in the USA by some margin. If true, it has been ignored as a problem for too long.

[delecti]

Yeah, annual heat deaths in Europe (about 70k) exceed annual gun deaths in the US (about 44k) in absolute numbers. They're slightly under US gun deaths if you adjust for population (about 13 per 100k gun deaths in the US, and 12 heat deaths per 100k in Europe).

In comparison, fewer than 2k people die annually of heat in the US, well under 1 per 100k. And for symmetry, there are about 7k gun deaths annually in the EU, which is just slightly under 1 per 100k.

[pseudo0]

The WHO claims it's over 170k heat-related deaths per year, not 70k.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152766

[janalsncm]

So in summary, the chance of a person dying from heat or guns is roughly equal in the EU and the US.

[snehk]

You can't trust those numbers, though. If you get drunk and jump into a river and drown it's counted as a heat related death.

[quantummagic]

You can't really trust any numbers. The gun death numbers in the United States include suicide, which account for as much as 62% of the totals.