Gun-related deaths
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- April
- 23
Many factors can account for differing attitudes about guns from country to country. What kind of government is in power? What’s the level of political violence? What are the crime rates?
Still, the numbers from this Canadian study, “Firearms Regulation: Canada in the International Context,”:http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/cdic-mcc/19-1/d_e.html are striking. The author, Wendy Cukier, looks at gun homicides per million in the context of regulations and households with firearms. She also gathers numbers for gun suicides per million.
The study was updated in 2002.
You can quibble about one country or another, but however you look at it, the U.S. figure remains remarkable. It is the highest, a ranking that was true also in an earlier study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Japan: 0.3
Netherlands: 2.7
United Kingdom: 1.3
Northern Ireland: 35.5
Germany: 2.1
Spain: 1.9
Australia: 5.6
Belgium: 8.7
New Zealand: 2.2
France: 5.5
Canada: 6.0
Switzerland: 4.6
Norway: 3.6
United States: 62.4
Finland: 8.7
The countries are listed by order of households with firearms. Finland is the highest at 50 percent, compared to 41 percent for the United States. But the United States is higher than Finland in both homicides (the number above) and suicides by gun  57.8 for Finland and 72.3 for the United States.
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on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 2:49 pm by Noreen O'Donnell.
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The US figure is indeed remarkable, but not because there is a correlation between gun ownership rates and violence. Several countries have rates of firearms ownership comparable to the US and have much lower murder rates—both firearm murder rates and overall murder rates.
For example, in Switzerland, there is compulsory military service and adult males are issued a select fire assault rifle and ammunition to take home. (That’s an actual machine gun, not a semi-auto look-alike).
In Israel, most gun ownership is not of sporting arms (e.g., hunting rifles and shotguns), but assault rifles (M16s, Galils) and submachine-guns (genuine Uzi SMGs, not semiautomatic lookalikes). Police stations in some areas where terrorist attacks are common even loan them out to civilians. Concealed handgun permits are easy to get.
Another study was done of American and Canadian border cities with very similar demographics, including gun ownership rates. The US cities had much higher gun violence rates.
All of this shows that there is no correlation, much less causation, between gun ownership and gun violence or firearm murder rates. For whatever reasons, there are segments within the American population that are far more violent than in other nations. Perhaps it is due to our cultural diversity, heritage as a nation born in violence, media sensationalism of violence, the “gangsta” subculture, lack of respect for established societal norms fostered by the hippy generation and their progeny, or a host of other societal causes and influences.
One thing we do know is, it isn’t the guns.
From http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=9486
1. There is no relationship between the number of privately owned guns and the amount of violent crime in the United States.
Between 1973 and 1992, the number of privately owned firearms in the United States increased 73 percent—from 122 million to nearly 222 million. The number of privately owned handguns increased by 110 percent, from 37 million to 78 million, and the rate of gun ownership increased by 45 percent. But during this same period, the national homicide rate fell by nearly 10 percent. Moreover, areas with relatively high gun ownership rates tend to report relatively low violent crime rates, and vice versa.
2. There is no relationship between gun control laws and violent crime.
Studies purporting to show a negative relationship between gun control and violent crime are plagued by serious methodological weaknesses, including the failure to control for confounding factors, selective use of data, and failure to measure the real impact of gun laws on the rate of gun ownership. Criminologists Gary Kleck and E. Britt Patterson sought to overcome these methodological weaknesses in a comprehensive 1993 study that covered all forms of gun violence, encompassed every large city in the nation, and assessed all major forms of gun control in the U.S. All told, Kleck and Patterson analyzed the impact of 19 kinds of gun control measures on six categories of violence. In ninety of the resulting 102 relationships, gun control laws had no significant negative effect on violence.
3. Data from the City of Chicago cast further doubt on the effectiveness of gun control laws.
The City of Chicago’s 1982 gun control ordinance is one of the most restrictive gun control measures in the country. Still, data compiled every year by the Chicago Police Department show that the number of murders in the city ebbs and flows with little respect for gun control laws. For example, the number of murders in the city started falling before passage of the city’s 1982 gun control ordinance. Five years later, the number of murders in the city began to climb steadily. By gun control’s tenth anniversary in 1992, the number of murders in the city was back where it had been a decade before gun control.
There’s also no correlation between states with high gun ownership rates and states with high gun homicide rates. In fact, D.C. has by far the lowest gun ownership rate and by far the highest gun murder rate.
http://www.alphecca.com/mt_alphecca_archives/002976.html
puhlease. if it wasnt guns then it would be something else. we have the right to have a weapon. and soon that will be taken away. and remember guns were tools. soon we wont be allowed knives. or anything. If you all think this is a wonderful idea, think again. every science fiction writer has discussed the false utopian worlds. where we are controlled and bred. people will be stupid with any thing.even a jump rope.
...or people can be stupid with grammar and common sense. Even nations with more guns per capita have their own forms of gun control. Israel is not a good example as all Israeli citizens are required to spend time in the military and are surrounded by hostle countries… we won’t get into the politics of why they’re hostile. They can take out their aggression on a Palestinian and can then say it was for military reasons. As far as gun-control, I don’t think there is a liberal or conservative out there that thinks we should do away with guns completely (unless they’re a complete nut job). The disturbing question, and really the only question to address is “why are people in the U.S. more prone to gun violence?” And it has nothing to do with ‘hippies’ challenging the established norms… if it wasn’t for guns and rebellious youth (along with B. Franklin, the French, and G. Washington) we wouldn’t have a country in the first place.
As far as weapons other than a gun, very few can be used to kill numerous people at a time. It would be a lot easier to protect yourself from a guy wielding a baseball bat than an AK-47. First of all, they have to be in range, and it’s unlikely they’ll get more than one person at a time. Second of all, even a baseball bat is illegal if you’re cracking people’s heads open with it. See how the police react to you if you walk down a crowed street with a baseball bat over your shoulder in anything other than a baseball uniform.
P.S. No one will ban knives as we need them to cut food.
Regarding the comment you said above “don’t think there is a liberal or conservative out there that thinks we should do away with guns completely (unless they’re a complete nut job)”
I had a teacher who said this (a very liberal one) and her policy was that If we put down our arms, they’ll put down their arms.
I think she a complete idiot, if we put down our arms we get destroyed.
Ok, on the issue of gun control. Gun control only works for those people that are already following the laws, i.e. usually the victims. Those people out there that are commiting the crimes do not want people to have fire-arms or any way to defend themselves, this makes it easier for them, and less risk of personal injury. If you truly want to see crime drop change the gun laws to state that every household WILL own at least one firearm per person over the age of 18, and that everyone over the age of 15 will attend a gun safety course before possesing a drivers license. Then further that by allowing people to take thier choice firearm (one per person over the age of 20) anywhere they go. Shop owners would be allowed 1 per employee on shift plus an extra. Then make it easier to get and keep a concealed weapons permit and have it as an endorsement on the drivers license.
What this does is to assure all criminals that everywhere that they might think to rob/ kill/ or generally committ a crime, they will be faced by no less than one armed person that knows how to handle themselves with said firearm. The exceptions to these rules would be anyone that is mentally unstable, or incompetent, or any person with a criminal record of any kind.
And for those liberals out there that are against such an idea, we could try it for a six year span to see that it works. This would be most effective if it were throughout the U.S. with all states having to comply, though I don’t believe that would be passed. Too many liberals that would support the criminals and not the victims.
If you really wanted to take it a step further, grant immunity to anyone that defends thier home, residence, or business from a would be attacker. Just verify that the person was were they should not have been, pat the home owner on the back, and carry on. It may even carry over to someone defending a neighbors house/ property.
Overall, these ideas would likely stop most crime within two years of its full implementation. Have doubts? Only way to know would be to implement it and find out. As Al Capone stated “An armed society, is a polite society.”