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Fact check: False claim uses misleading data to report deaths from rifles, constipation

BrieAnna J. Frank   | Paste BN

The claim: Rifles killed 297 people last year, constipation killed 2,167

Weeks after President Biden signed a sweeping bipartisan gun safety bill into law, some social media users continue to argue that concerns about firearms are excessive.

“Rifles of any kind were involved in 297 deaths last year, in America. Constipation killed 2,167,” reads an Aug. 20 Facebook post that was shared more than 200 times in less than a week.

But the first figure mentioned in the post is an outdated FBI statistic, while the second is a cumulative number based on CDC data over a 15-year timespan. 

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Paste BN reached out to the user who shared the claim for comment.

Post uses outdated, misleading data 

FBI data, which was also reported by PolitiFact, shows rifles were used in the deaths of 297 people in 2018.

That number rose to 364 in 2019 and, according to the agency’s Crime Data Explorer, reached 455 in 2020, the last year for which data is available. 

Unlike the rifle-related deaths, the claim's  reference to the number of deaths caused by constipation is a total sum over a years-long period. 

In 2016, Insider published an article headlined "8 surprisingly common causes of death that sound like freak accidents." The article, which appears to be a source for the claim, listed constipation as one of the "surprisingly common causes of death," and it used CDC data stretching from 1999 to 2014 to cite 2,167 as the total number of deaths caused by constipation.

But this total is an aggregate number, not an annual one.

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According to the CDC's cause of death database, there were 198 deaths caused by constipation in 2018, 202 in 2019 and 207 in 2020, the last year for which data is available.

As of August 2022, neither the FBI nor the CDC had published data for 2021.

Nevertheless, the number of annual deaths caused by rifles has been consistently higher than the number of annual deaths caused by constipation when comparing recent FBI data with recent CDC data.  

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that rifles killed 297 people last year while constipation killed 2,167. The former number is from 2018 and the latter is a sum of such deaths over a 15-year-period. FBI data shows 455 people were killed with rifles and CDC data shows 207 people died from constipation in 2020, the last year for which data is available.

Our fact-check sources: 

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Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. 

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