WE'RE NUMBER 1!

This month is the anniversary of the Columbine massacre and the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre, so the Violence Policy Center felt like bringing us down just a little bit more. They just put out an update of their study American Roulette: Murder-Suicide in the United States (PDF warning). In it you can can read up on such lovely statistics as the 80% of the 1,000 to 1,500 murder-suicides caused by firearms, that nine occur every week, and 95% of the murderers are male. Most significantly you learn that Florida, alongside Texas, leads the nation in both numbers of murder-suicides and deaths related to murder-suicides.

A quote from a sample news report from Florida: "In January, relatives entered a home 'festooned with holiday decorations' to find David Bryant, 58, and his wife Cathy, 53, shot to death. Sheriff’s officials determined David shot his wife and..." blah blah sadness. Also of interest are 11% or so "other" weapons used:

"...seven knife, five hanging, four arson, four strangulation, two zip tie, one carbon monoxide poisoning, one antifreeze poisoning, one car, one aircraft, one power saw, one bodily force, one hammer, one iron pipe, one blunt object, and one suffocation."

Reminds me of the first couple of scenes of the Metalocalypse episode Deth Wedding.

(via Josh Sugarmann)