700,000 physicians in the U.S. cause 120,000 accidental deaths each year

Oh no, don’t tell the NRA, or we’ll start seeing bumper stickers reading;
“Guns don’t kill people, Doctors do!”

Yeah, I’ve heard the long-term death rate for people under the care of a doctor is close to 100%.

So … guns are the cause of 40,000 deaths per year but only 1500 of those are accidental. Doctors intend to kill only a very small number of their patients, so the number of intentional doctor deaths per year is probably well below 1500 (there are laws against it and all in most states). Since most gun deaths appear to be intentional, total intentional gun deaths is 38,500. Total intentional doctor deaths less than 10.

I’d like to see the author of that little blurb shot in the knee to see how he responded.

Oh lord, not this crap again…
This is a joke that has been circulated on the internet and photocopied and posted on bulletin boards for years – sort of an urban legend/joke.
Now someone thinks it’s real?
Think for a minute people: NOBODY says doctors cause that number of deaths; the numbers for firearms and owners are wrong; the number of doctors is way too low. This whole thing started out as a JOKE, OK?

One mustn’t forget that of the “intentional” gun deaths, approximately 55% of them (cross-year average) are always suicides, and that the rate of suicide is not affected by legality of gun ownership (Japan’s suicide rate is higher than the US’s, but gun-suicide is near-unknown because guns are nearly impossible to get there.)

Also, all legitimate gun deaths (police shootings of violent criminals, for instance) are also included in “intentional” shootings.

This is an unfair and misleading statistic. Patients are under a doctor’s care in hospitals for a reason – they’re sick or wounded. These numbers are obviously going to be inflated.

If you want to do a fair comparison, you should use family doctors doing annual preventative check ups on patients.