[wat0n]

Are you sure?

US deaths Vietnam War (1954-73): 58,220: 58,220 divided by 19 = 3064

Worst year of the war (1968): 16,899

US homicides by gun in 2021: 20,958

US suicides by gun in 2021: 26,328

US personnel deployed in Vietnam throughout the war = ~2.6 million.

Combat deaths (KIA+Dead from wounds) = 40,934 + 5,299 = 46,233

Rate per 100k = 46,233/26 = 1,778.19 per 100k personnel deployed.

If you want to add suicides, be my guest.

US population (2021) = ~332 million.

I'll let you calculate the rates from there.

[Pants-of-dog]

And once again, we are seeing (deliberate?) confusion between gun deaths and all deaths.

[wat0n]

Yeah, as we all know under 1% of all combat deaths in Vietnam were gun deaths. How could I forget that?!

[Pants-of-dog]

So now the argument is that we can pretend deaths from other causes are gun deaths because the only other possibility is that under 1% of all combat deaths in Vietnam were gun deaths.

[wat0n]

You do realize that 1,778.19 per 100k deployed is well over 100 times greater than the gun homicide rate of 6.31 per 100k inhabitants for 2021, right? Am I supposed to believe gun deaths in Vietnam, and war in general, normally represent less than 1% of all combat deaths? If not, then it's clear there's no real comparison between both.

[ingliz]

@wat0n

Lies, damned lies, and statistics?

[wat0n]

@ingliz just a fallacy of not comparing rates.

[ingliz]

1,778.19 per 100k deployed

Around 30–35% of American deaths in the war were non-combat or friendly fire deaths.

1%

The largest cause of death in the U.S. armed forces was small arms fire: 31.8%

1,778 - 623 = 1,156

31.8% of 1,156 = 368

[wat0n]

Around 30–35% of American deaths in the war were non-combat or friendly fire deaths.

Those count as KIA.

The largest cause of death in the U.S. armed forces was small arms fire (31.8%): 18,518

Even this number leaves a rate of 712.23 gun deaths per 100k soldiers deployed - over 100 times the gun homicide rate in 2021.

Of those 18,518 soldiers killed by small arms fire, 398 of them were killed in friendly fire incidents.

[ingliz]

@wat0n

The largest cause of death in the U.S. armed forces was small arms fire: 31.8%

1,778 - 623 = 1,156

31.8% of 1,156 = 368

Divided by 19 = 19.4 per 100k deployed per year

over 100 times the gun homicide rate in 2021

Using your numbers and Wiki's numbers and comparing like with like, I make it just over 3-times the rate.

[wat0n]

@wat0n

The largest cause of death in the U.S. armed forces was small arms fire: 31.8%

1,778 - 623 = 1,156

31.8% of 1,156 = 368

Divided by 19 = 19.4 per 100k deployed per year

No, this assumes that the % deaths due to friendly fire by small arms was the same as the overall rate. That's not the case:

In previous wars, friendly fire incidents were much more frequent. An Army captain who researched small-arms mishaps in Vietnam found that 398 soldiers were killed due to fratricidal or self-inflicted bloodshed. During World War II, tens of thousands were killed by their fellow soldiers. And by some estimates, 75,000 French soldiers alone were killed by their own troops in the First World War.

In reality, you have to take that 31.8% of 58,220 (namely, 18,518, which you put in actual numbers earlier - why did you edit it out I wonder?) KIA by small arms fire and substract 382 deaths due to self-inflicted wounds (if you want to assume all suicides were done using small arms and not other means like hanging or poisoning) and aforementioned 398 deaths due to friendly fire. You would also need to do the same for gun homicides in the US in 2021 i.e. substract accidental/unintended gun homicides.

Only then you would calculate the rates, if you don't want to include friendly fire and other accidental small arms deaths.

Also, I don't think it makes sense to just take this number and divide by the 19 years of the duration of the war since it is already an average considering the whole war. If you wanted to take that into account, you would just take the average of the annual rates, which I guess you can do if you wish.

[ingliz]

18,518 - 780 = 17,738

Divided by 26 = 682

Divided by 19 = 36

Just under 6 times the US gun homicide number and nowhere near the 100-fold numbers you arrive at.

an average

If you don't want to divide by 19, you must take US gun deaths from 2003-2022 and add them together to arrive at a comparable figure.

if you don't want to include friendly fire and other accidental small arms deaths

I consider non-combat deaths and friendly fire on a par with suicides in the US gun death numbers. So if we are not removing non-combat deaths and friendly fire from the Vietnam numbers, we must add suicides by gun from 2003-2022 to gun deaths.

[wat0n]

18,518 - 780 = 17,738

Divided by 26 = 682

Divided by 19 = 36

Just under 6 times the US gun homicide number and nowhere near the 100-fold numbers you arrive at.

The problem is that you are only dividing the numerator here. That doesn't really make sense, since a rate is already an average.

If you don't want to divide by 19, you must take US gun deaths from 1993-2022 and add them together to arrive at a comparable figure.

If you wanted to do that, you would need to add up the population of each year to build the denominator. That is, you would take the total number of gun homicides in the US and divide it by the sum of the estimated population for each year in 1993-2022. I don't think it would make much of a difference to be honest.

You could measure the rates in terms of 100k person-years, but you would need to have info on how long was each person considered in the denominators deployed in Vietnam (for the soldiers) and alive during the period (for the US gun homicide rate).

I consider non-combat deaths and friendly fire on a par with suicides in the US gun death numbers. So if we are not removing non-combat deaths and friendly fire from the Vietnam numbers, we must add suicides by gun from 1993-2022 to US gun deaths.

Friendly fire is more like accidental homicide. Like, for example, killing someone else while playing with a gun or killing your partner thinking he or she was trying to forcibly enter your home. Not that friendly fire was a major driver of small arms deaths in the Vietnam war from what I've seen - that 398 figure you know - so it doesn't make much of a difference to include it or not. It seems friendly fire incidents involved mostly heavy weaponry, which isn't all that crazy if you ask me - get the target wrong for a bombing run and you can perfectly kill dozens of your own soldiers.

From what I can see, only around 1% of gun deaths (and therefore around 2% of gun homicides) in the US are accidental so I didn't remove them either.

Suicide is, well, suicide, which is clearly beyond the scope of this thread (the American tourist in Chile didn't kill himself, the claim was also clearly specifically about homicide). I think suicides don't consider accidental self-killings. Not that conclusions would drastically change, instead of a 100x ratio it would fall to 50x, meaning the Vietnam rate was still several times over the total US gun death (homicide + suicide) rate.

[ingliz]

@wat0n

It's not 682 per 100k deployed per year dying from small arms fire, though, is it?

Even if you take the worst year of the war, 1968, you don't get that number.

[late]

Where will this thread go next?!

It's already in the crapper, so nowhere.

[ingliz]

@late

It was in the shitter from the OP. We just pushed it further down.

[Pants-of-dog]

Well, now we have @wat0n trying to explain how people who were not killed by being shot should be counted as being shot, but only so we can pretend the Vietnam comparison does not work.

I am wondering if @Puffer Fish will blame those deaths also on Blacks, or if @wat0n will dismiss these numbers because they are not from Vietnam.

[late]

@late

It was in the shitter from the OP. We just pushed it further down.

I was the second reply, the main point of which is that we are at war against ourselves.

What I didn't say is that that is insane.

[wat0n]

@wat0n

It's not 682 per 100k deployed per year dying from small arms fire, though, is it?

Even if you take the worst year of the war, 1968, you don't get that number.


:?:

What exactly are you calculating?

From what I have been able to find, there were 536,100 US troops in Vietnam in 1968 and a total of 16,899 of US soldiers died that year of all causes. Even assuming 31.8% of them died due to small arms fire (a very strong assumption, it could be less or more - I don't know) this comes up to a rate of 1,002.4 soldiers killed by small arms fire per 100k deployed.

Well, now we have @wat0n trying to explain how people who were not killed by being shot should be counted as being shot, but only so we can pretend the Vietnam comparison does not work.

I am wondering if @Puffer Fish will blame those deaths also on Blacks, or if @wat0n will dismiss these numbers because they are not from Vietnam.

Since ingliz was kind enough to provide the number of people killed by small arms fire in Vietnam, we can now get a more accurate rate. It's 682 per 100k, 100 times the gun US homicide rate.

@late it would just be easier to admit your hyperbole was way out of place.

It's always amusing to see how leftists have so much trouble with a simple rate calculation.

[late]

=

@late it would just be easier to admit your hyperbole was way out of place.

It's always amusing to see how leftists have so much trouble with a simple rate calculation.

What's amusing is the lengths people go to; to avoid the obvious.



The point is that we are at war.

Against ourselves.

All fatalities in the worst year of Vietnam was less than half of American gun deaths last year.

Have a coffee.