Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Americans killed by lightning vs. unarmed blacks killed by police. Which is greater?

    Awhile ago, I heard a shocking statistic, pun intended. As you can tell from this blog post's title, it was how many Americans are killed by lightning on average each year compared to how many unarmed black people are killed by police each year. The importance of this comparison is obvious because when anybody wants to drill home how exceedingly rare something is, comparing to being killed by lightning is usually the analogy given, right? Sometimes "being *struck* by lightning" is the key metric but 90% of people struck by lightning actually survive, making those who are killed a much, much smaller figure. Therefore, if specifying killed vs. struck in any comparison, the intention must be to highlight some kind of extreme rarity to make a solid point in comparative data such as this. Using the killed vs. struck metric in this post is required since the shooting deaths of unarmed black people by police is what is most often the loudest complaint by BLM and its supporters. As you will see in a video below, I am doubtful any BLM supporters believe there are at least several dozens, if not hundreds, even thousands of unarmed blacks killed by police each year. That is the reason for this post ultimately: to show how wildly incorrect that belief truly is and why the BLM movement is fundamentally, if not fatally, flawed.

    I will first show the data found on the National Weather Service site listing lightning fatalities between 2006 and 2020. My source for unarmed blacks killed by police only covers 2015-2020 and comes from the oft-referenced Washington Post Police Shootings Database. That database allows searching for specific criteria such as state, gender, race, age, mental illness, weapon possessed (if any), body camera, fleeing the seen and/or year. I figured it is far easier, and fully acceptable, to only filter on race (black) and weapon possessed (unarmed) to get the data needed as those are the only factors necessary in this comparison. That data is displayed below as a screenshot showing the results of the filter. I wanted to include the extra decade of lightning deaths simply because the data is available. These numbers are being compiled on this page on 10/13/21, by the way.

    Lightning deaths (15 year total = 432) (15 year average = 28.8) (2015-2020 average = 23.7)

            2006 - 48
            2007 - 45
            2008 - 29
            2009 - 35
            2010 - 29
            2011 - 26
            2012 - 29
            2013 - 23
            2014 - 26
            2015 - 28
            2016 - 40
            2017 - 16
            2018 - 21
            2019 - 20
            2020 - 17

    The screenshot below is the result of filtering specifically for unarmed blacks between the first year available to the same year of available lightning strike data. The six year total is 133 with an average of 22.1 from 2015-2020. The "137 people shot..." reference below includes 2021 data, which is not part of this comparison yet.


    As you can see, there actually ARE fewer unarmed blacks killed by police on average during the timeframe given. A key factor not seen here is despite the person being killed by police was determined to be unarmed, being ***dangerous*** to police, or bystanders, in other ways was almost certainly a factor.
 
    A prime example is the shooting of an unarmed Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, MO on 8/9/14. Brown had just robbed a local business of goods when Wilson approached Brown and his friend walking in the middle of the street in his police vehicle. Soon, Brown reached into the vehicle and wrestled for Wilson's handgun, firing at least one round in the scuffle. Once Wilson was outside his vehicle, Brown charged Wilson, posing a deadly threat again considering how brazen Brown was seconds before. Wilson fired several shots at Brown as he charged, killing him before he reached Wilson.

    Initially, word spread Brown was in the act of surrendering to Wilson, saying the now-famous "Hands up! Don't shoot!" statement but still being killed by Wilson, essentially in cold blood. An investigation, with eyewitness testimony, determined Brown was not surrendering and never did say "Hands up! Don't shoot!" but rather was intent on attacking Wilson, perhaps killing him.
   
    This false event is what BLM used to flourish into the movement it has become, with George Floyd's 2020 death being the most recent event of note.

    Here is a great video about BLM being a major problem for the black community followed by another containing a woman who believed the number of unarmed blacks being killed by police was into the thousands each year.