And there are some powerful voices on the other side that are interested in running out the clock or changing the subject or drowning out the majority of the American people to prevent any of these reforms from happening at all.

WHITEHOUSE: Remarks by the President on Gun Safety

The number includes drowning victims as well as other people who died from conditions caused by the storm, such as patients on life support who died when the power was lost, according to a release from the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

CNN: Bush gets ground tour of Katrina damage

Ten people die every day from unintentional drowning in the United States, making it the fifth-leading cause of unintentional injury death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CNN: Water safety expert: 'Drowning doesn't just happen'

When people go a long way down the road they're almost drowning by the time we get there.

BBC

They received between three and five such patients a year, he estimated, mostly avalanche victims (Klagenfurt is surrounded by the Alps), some of them drowning victims, and a few of them people attempting suicide by taking a drug overdose and then wandering out into the snowy forests to fall unconscious.

NEWYORKER: The Checklist

More than half of drowning deaths in people older than 15 occur outside of pools, according to the CDC.

CNN: Water safety expert: 'Drowning doesn't just happen'

We started picking up people from the rooftops and who were, you know, in danger of drowning in the water.

NPR: In Fla., Families Struggle To Get Aid To Haiti, Cuba

And indeed many deaths occur there: between 1993 and 1996, according to figures from the Centre for Immigration Research at the University of Houston, almost 1, 200 people died while crossing illegally into the United States, most of them by drowning.

ECONOMIST: The Mexican border