I find the medical mistakes number a good example when people take a "if it just saves one life" or "but suicides" approach to debating deaths with firearms. Especially when doctors like Dr Allan Drummond chime in.
I don't see people demanding the government address the issue of 77 people dying a day due to medical mistakes.
I think if you watch the news a bit our health care issues are the number one issue right now. Also mistakes may not all be negligent mistakes. The article I posted explains how those numbers are calculated. Not everything is negligence. Also there are 14 million hospital admissions a year, when you do the math that is like 0.002 mistakes that lead to death.
[that said that number seems incredibly high which makes me doubt the 28,000 per year,but maybe it's accurate.]
If you want to tit for tat then sure but it won’t convince anyone if that is the goal. Use real relatable data. They use suicide by firearms, it is still related to firearms. Medical mistakes are not. There is no link.
Rather take that suicide by firearms rate and compare it to our rate of gun ownership in comparison to maybe peer countries or geo political areas. There may be some correlations as well if our rate of gun ownership declines yet suicide by gun still happens. Or maybe guns are owned predominantly by men. Maybe men have a higher suicide rate in the first place. Maybe be we have a suicide problem and not a gun problem. That sort of thing.
I mean, use whatever argument you want. I just find the pro gun side not being very effective in their approach when they use arguments like medical mistake stats or dog related deaths or shark attacks or whatever.
I say this as someone who had his mind changed almost two decades ago. And it wasn’t with outbursts of anger or apple and orange comparisons that had nothing to do with it. It just took the right guy to explain it in terms that made sense and me having an open mind. I use the same approach with some people I know. I may not have convinced them but I know I have softened some of their stances with a few.