To be honest Cicadashell, I do think that using the unintentional (see DoJ link below) firearm related deaths does decrease the random nature of the events and make them significantly less comparable to lighting strikes. They only represents 3-4 percent of firearm death and I am sure that they are more random than Homicides or Suicides. I do not really get the point of your argument about randomness and then talking about people being around. Depending on you definition of “around” we are almost always around other people; at least like to be. Could you elaborate a bit on your argument?

As you can see from the Department of Justice figures, unintentional deaths, which is what I was talking about do not include Suicides and Homicides. So I would interperet that to mean more random events, like if a child accidently shoots the person that lives upstairs through the floor because he/she was playing with dad’s rifle. Would you interpret the word in some other way?

I am surprised and happy to see the downward trend in firearm related deaths from 1991 to 2001. I wonder what has happened since then?

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/frmdth.htm