Gun Deaths. By the Numbers.

Here are five words I never thought I’d write: I agree with Pete Buttigieg.

The mayor of South Bend, Indiana calls Beto O’Rourke’s proposal to confiscate AR-15s from millions of Americans a “shiny object.” I agree. It’s an authoritarian gimmick intended to stoke anti-gun emotions. It would do next to nothing to reduce violence in the U.S. and would cause enormous tactical problems if law enforcement were to go door to door demanding weapons.

That might work in Sweden. It won’t work here.

Fact is, while they’re not all calling for gun confiscation, most of the Democratic hopefuls have their hair on fire over gun violence.

It’s an epidemic! We must do something! Anything!

Several candidates promised to enact gun control measures within 100 days of moving into the White House. By executive order, if necessary.

“Weapons of war!” O’Rourke chants over and over, declaring that 40,000 Americans die every year from guns before adding, “Yes. We’re going to take your AR-15s.”

How about a cool look at the numbers rather than the foaming hysteria?

According to the Pew Research Center - used extensively, I’m told, by NPR so you know they’re not a conservative outfit - the number of gun-related deaths per hundred thousand people have dropped sharply since the mid-1970s.

And the vast majority of those gun-related fatalities? Suicides.

That fact truly is a national disgrace and evidence of poor mental healthcare in America. It’s hard to see how any of the gun control measures being proposed would prevent a determined person from committing suicide.

I’m not going to fill this space with mind-numbing numbers and stats. You can find them yourself by clicking on the link. But here’s a summary: Of the 39,773 gun-related deaths in 2017, 60 percent (23,854) were suicides and 37 percent (14,542) were murders. The other 3 percent were accidental or law enforcement shootings.

An assault weapons ban wouldn’t reduce the hideous number of suicides or even diminish the number of murders. Of the killings, the overwhelming majority were committed with handguns. Only 4 percent of the shooters used rifles, which include hunting rifles as well as O’Rourke’s “weapons of war.”

Look, I’m not trying to downplay gun deaths. We had a horrific mass shooting in Virginia Beach this spring. This subject hits close to home. Literally. Still, no one can point to a single constitutional law that would have stopped this homicidal maniac from killing his co-workers.

Yet in the wake of this massacre at the municipal center, many in Richmond pushed for legislation. They wanted to do something, knowing it would simply be symbolic.

Instead of yapping about assault weapons and tossing around numbers that lump suicides and murders together, we need to admit we have a complicated mental health crisis in America. One that cries out for serious study and solutions.

Not symbolism. Not shiny objects.