Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health

Although the anti second amendment blog Mikeb302000 is obsessed with discussing fatalities related to fire arms in America, according to the United Nations World Health Organization, alcohol causes nearly 4 percent of deaths worldwide. That is more than AIDS, tuberculosis or violence. Perhaps when Mikeb302000 blogging from another country decries gun violence in America, he should omit blogging about fatalities involving a fire arm when alcohol is a contributing factor.

According to the World Health Organization in its "Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health.", approximately 2.5 million people die each year from alcohol related causes.

Including gun deaths when alcohol is involved allows anti second amendment critics like Mikeb302000 to focus on the firearm and not other extenuating factors in the incident such as alcohol. Isolated from the daily realities of living in America, this ex patriot often forgets that if he were to drive a car between the hours of 10 pm and 2 am in the United States, (that is 2200 and 0200 for our international readers) he would acknowledge that he would have a much greater risk of being killed in an alcohol related incident than a fire arm related incident.

Taking into consideration the lack of mass transit in the United States and the suburban sprawl layout of the country, you can see why there should be a dramatic overhaul of alcohol regulation in the Unites States and the punishment of people convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol. While MikeB302000 habitually decries the amount of gun violence in America, considering the high amount of drunk driving in Italy and the joke of a legal system it has there, perhaps he could share some stories of alcohol related deaths in Italy. While living in Italy myself, I particularly remember one incident where a son of a police chief in Rome killed two Irish women tourists.

The driver, 32-year-old Friedrich Vernarelli, is the son of a prominent former police chief and mayor who had campaigned for improved road safety in the area where the young women were killed. He allegedly fled the scene but was arrested a short time later after crashing into a parked car and bins where he was blocked in by a police patrol car.

Last night he was charged with drunk driving, manslaughter, failing to stop at the scene of an accident and offer help, and damaging public property.

While Mikeb302000 likes to decry injustices with the American police, making matters worse for the family of the two Irish tourists killed by the drunk Italian, the driver was then granted bail.

Rome mayor Walter Veltroni expressed his anger at the decision to earlier give him bail and said: "It is not acceptable that the person responsible for the deaths of two people on a zebra crossing is on bail at home.
As MikeB302000 constantly blogs about the injustices in America and the brutality of its police, perhaps he can update the readers on what ever happened to the drunk Italian who killed the two tourists while driving intoxicated. Like most of the legal cases in Italy, I am sure it will drag on for over ten years and then the statue of limitations will expire and the defendant will never see a day in jail. 

While this is not to attack or single out where Mikeb30200 lives, it merely wants to put the issue of gun and alcohol deaths in an international and cultural comparison. The high amount of drunk driving deaths in the United States and the lower rates of mass transit options for Americans is evident in comparing the drunk driving deaths in the UK (population 61 million) and the amount of drunk driving deaths in California with half the population. According to the statistics, there were 380 drunk driving deaths in the United Kingdom in 2010 (12% of all fatal accidents), compared to 1,489 drunk driving deaths in California in 2007 (22% of all fatal accidents) with a population of 36 million people.

Considering the amount of legal gun owners in America and the amount of people who have a license to drive a car, the report by the World Health Organization has some merit. Driving (excuse the pun) the point home further was the recent story of a Connecticut State police trooper who ran his car into the back of a truck and it was later found that he may have been drinking.