Today the U.S. Senate voted to proceed on a debate on new gun control legislation, overcoming Republican-led attempts to filibuster the bill.
Proponents of gun control say the new legislation is necessary to curb the "epidemic" of gun violence in the U.S. And judging from the data available from the Centers for Disease and Control, that's a pretty important goal.
Over the past 12 years, the number of gun deaths has annually increased by an average of 272 . In 2011, the most recent year for which stats are available, 32,163 people were killed by firearms.
Using that information, here's a loose trend-line projection of the number of Americans who will be killed by firearms over the next ten years:
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As the increasing rate of people being killed by firearms has showed no signs of slacking so far, from 2013 to 2022 an estimated 339,400 people will be killed by firearms.
That figure is 29,526 more firearm deaths when compared to the historical ten year period from 2002 to 2011.
To give you some perspective on those numbers, 339,000 people is roughly equivalent to the entire population of Tampa, Fla.
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