Statistically, the average American has a greater risk of dying from heart disease or cancer than from a firearm, according to the National Safety Council. Car crashes also kill about the same number of people in the U.S. as guns do each year, CDC statistics show. In 2017, firearms killed 39,773 people and traffic deaths killed 38,659; in 2016, firearms killed 38,658 and traffic deaths totaled 38,748. Other figures also paint a stark reality of the uniquely American threat. People in the U.S. are 25 times more likely to die from gun homicide than people in other wealthy countries, a 2016 study in the American Journal of Medicine found. In 2017, the most recent year with available data, nearly 40,000 people in the U.S. died from firearm injuries, more than eight times the number of U.S. military members who died overseas during Operation Iraqi Freedom between 2003 and 2010. Most of the U.S. gun deaths in 2017 were suicides, but statistics show that if someone is murdered in the U.S., there’s a high probability it will be with a gun. According to an FBI breakdown of homicides, more than 70% of murder victims were killed by firearms in 2017.