48 Killed in Lightning Strikes This Year

An average of 90 people die every year in the US in lightning strikes. Of 103 leading causes of death of 2.4 million people in the US, assault without firearms killed 5500. 1% would be 24000. If we want more people to live, we should research heart attack, cancer, stroke and so on and buy automatic electronic defibrillators. The media frenzy about terrorism induces bad public policy. We might be able to cut heart attack (acute myocardial infarction) deaths in half from 170,000 to 85,000 a year by spending a one-time $82 billion on defibrillators. That’s a one time $1 million for one life saved per year. If we completely stop all homicides not from firearms for that amount of money per year, that would be more than $16 million per life saved. Focusing just on the deaths from terrorism, it’s probably closer to $160 million per life saved.