[Commenting on The Truth about Lynching - Link in original]

A further point: even had all the lynchings been born of racial hatred, and all the victims innocents who were merely caught in the crossfire of an ugly mob’s lust for the destruction of their fellow man, there just weren’t that many of them. There’s maybe, a thousand deaths, at the absolute highest number reported here? Over a period of roughly fifty years? (I admit, I am very loosely estimating, but anyone who likes can collate the numbers from the above piece.)

Them’s pretty good odds. To put that in perspective, ~ 300 people die to rifle shots each year in this our modern Republic. (The careful reader may object that there is a sizeable difference in population. I would agree. But even take a tenth of the number, multiply it by fifty for the number of years involved, and it still works out to more proportionally more deaths by rifle in the U.S. today than deaths to lynch mobs in their period of serious activity. And deaths by rifle are one of the least likely weapons of homicide at present: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8)