In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, many of us might wonder about how events like that fit into the larger context of shooting deaths in daily American life. To try to give us this kind of broader perspective, the New York Times recently came out with a graphic that compares different types of deaths by guns, by different age and racial groups.

The graphic basically shows that the most prevalent form of gun deaths are actually suicides by middle aged White men. Unfortunately, the one thing that the graphic does not show is death rates by population size. In other words, White men make up something like 33% of the U.S. population, so in that context, it may not be entirely surprising that they have the highest numbers of deaths by guns.

However, although the graphic shows that the number of gun deaths involving Black men is slightly lower than that for White men, since Black men make up something like 8% of the U.S. population, it would seem to me that on a per capita basis, Black men are likely to have a higher death rate by guns than White men. Just some food for thought.