Those 1.5 million Americans may not have been in the military, but they died because of the belief that Americans may need to violently overthrow the government, and so in my opinion the only difference between Americans who have died to guns and American service members who have fallen in battle is that the latter were afforded the opportunity to choose. Those who die to gun accidents or gun violence didn’t get to choose to face death, and that makes it important to remember that they died and why they died.
Whatever a person believes regarding second amendment rights and guns, it’s just as important to remember those who did not choose to become sacrifices as those who did get to choose.