The statistics Brucie has cited come from a joke page, but they are very roughly correct (look here for a better reference, one sided, but the numbers are alright).

The joke comes not from using the wrong numbers in a statistic but from using an inappropriate comparison (this is by far the most common erros in susing statistics and not the outright lie).

Let me just tell you another example so you see how it goes (the numbers used are from Europe, with less of random killings, and they are correct!):

There are women, I have heard, who are afraid at night in dark public places when they see the shape of a male approaching and are sighing in relief when they see it is their partner/husband. How silly are they to be relieved when they see their partner instead of an unknown male, for it is well known that more women are killed each year by their partner than by males not being their partners.

That's how it goes: you take correct statistics and make a silly comparison.

More children are killed by one of their own parents than by anybody else. Shouldn't we take children away from their parents at birth to increase their safety....

The whole gun debate is a bonanza for anybody looking for abuses of correct statistics (in addition to that, a minority of the statistics are actually falsified, but that's not the main problem)

Wolfgang