America's Gun Fetish...85 Bullets, and Ultrarunning

[image credit here]

Via the always interesting Echidne, we see a statistic that absolutely boggles the mind:

According to Germany's Der Spiegel, German police shot only 85 bullets in all of 2011, a stark reminder that not every country is as gun-crazy as the U.S. of A.  As Boing Boing translates, most of those shots weren't even aimed at anyone: "49 warning shots, 36 shots on suspects. 15 persons were injured, 6 were killed."

Meanwhile, in the U.S., where the population is little less than four times the size of Germany's, well, we can get to 85 in just one sitting, thank you very much. 84 shots fired at one murder suspect in Harlem, another 90 shot at one fleeing unarmed man in Los Angeles. And that was just April. So we bring you Germany's shot total in case you forgot about America shoots itself in the foot with its manic love of guns.

 

And, yes, I did some surfing and the data was reported by numerous major news outlets (May 2012), so this factoid of 85 bullets is indeed accurate.

The link to Ultrarunning?  The backcountry is a peaceful place, where I feel safe and serene.  Unlike, well, civilization.