10 numbers behind Trump’s plans to ban Muslims and close the Internet

Donald Trump on Monday called for a “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” as a result of the “great hatred” he says Muslims hold for Americans. Hours later he advocated “closing up the Internet in some way” in order to fight Islamic terrorism because, he argued, “we’re losing a lot of people because of the Internet.”

Is that true? No. The facts show that Trump is wildly overestimating the threat posed and the number of American lives lost from Islamic terrorism.

Here are 10 numbers that get to the truth of Trump’s claims:

1. Number of Americans who die of Muslim terrorist attacks every year: 3.2
2. Number of Americans killed by Muslim terrorists since 9/11: 45
3. Number of Americans killed by white supremacist terrorist attacks every year: 3.4
4. Number of Americans killed by white supremacist terrorist attacks since 9/11: 48
5. Number of murders in America every year: 14,593
6. Number of murders in America since 9/11: 204,312
7. Number of Americans killed in car crashes since 9/11: 430,034
8. Number of Americans killed by heart disease every single year: More than 610,000
9. Number of Syrians killed in civil war since 2011: More than 210,000
10. Number of violent gun deaths in U.S. between 2005 and 2013: 279,976 

Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0) | Remix by Jason Reed