> The number of gun murders per capita in the US in 2012 - the most recent year for comparable statistics - was nearly 30 times that in the UK, at 2.9 per 100,000 compared with just 0.1.
If you compare to Canada which, compared to all Western countries besides the US, has comparatively lax gun laws and high firearms ownership rates and a similar overall culture:
* US sees 12.21 firearms deaths per capita per year to Canada's 1.94.
* US sees 4.46 homicides via firearm per capita per year to Canada's 0.52.
(The UK stacks up at 0.20 and 0.02, so significantly lower still.)
This pattern holds over basically all numbers relating to rates of violence at every level of division.
In USA there are 120.5 guns/100 people AND 3.4 gun murders/100000 people
In Canada there are 34.7 guns/100 people AND 0.6 gun murders/100000 people
In France there are 19.6 guns/100 people AND 0.4 gun murders/100000 people
In Germany there are 19.6 guns/100 people AND 0.1 gun murders/100000 people
In Italy there are 14.4 guns/100 people AND 0.3 gun murders/100000 people
In England+Wales there are 4.6 guns/100 people AND 0 gun murders/100000 people
Sources: Small Arms Survey, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.·Ownership rates are for 2017. Murder rates for the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia and Spain are from 2016; otherwise, the latest available rates are used.
I'm just going to compare murder rates between Canada and US. Murder is harder to fudge. Using data from different years. Maybe that invalidates the conclusion, but I'm guessing it holds in general.
> Here in Canada, we have higher instance of violence with knives, but unsurprisingly almost the same proportion of violence with guns, despite fairly hefty controls.
Firearm homicide in the US per 100k: 3.55 [1]
Firearm homicide in Canada per 100k: 0.51 [1]
Homicide rate in the US per 100k: 4.7 [2]
Homicide rate in Canada per 100k: 1.6 [2]
Proportion of homicides from firearms in the US: 3.55/4.7 = 76%
Proportion of homicides from firearms in Canada: 0.51/1.6 = 32%
Not sure what to make of the numbers. But it doesn't seem like Canada has "the same proportion of violence with guns".
According to Wikipedia, 0.20 out of 100,000 people died of guns in 2015, of which only 0.02 are homicides. As for the US - 12.21 out of 100,000 total, 4.46 homicides.
Seems like British criminals do have a really hard time finding guns.
There is an implicit "of the scale of gun murder in the US"
Murders in the US are currently sitting at 14k, ~11k of which are from firearms. The US only has 5 times more people than the UK, which would turn your stat into a rough US-equivalent of 1.7k.
But if you look here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... - the USA has a very high per-capita gun homicide rate (4.46) compared to most other comparable countries (e.g. the G7 countries which are 0.2, 0.52, 2.33, 1.04, 1.13 and 0.02). Interesting that France (2.33) is so high - I hadn't realised that.
It's disingenuous to compare shootings purely by a per-capita basis. It should be per-capita among gun owners.
The data as shown indicates the US has a cultural mass shooting phenomenon, but it's simply not accurate. The US just has more guns, and mass shootings happen at extremely rare rates among gun owners everywhere.
This approach would be like comparing drunk driving fatalities in Los Angeles vs Venice, Italy.
Edit: I was curious and just ran the numbers with the full OCED countries. The US had 0.136 rampage shootings per gun (compared to 0.120 rampage shootings per capita), and non-US countries had 0.177 rampage shootings per-gun (compared to 0.246 rampage shootings per capita). I used the author's numbers and the Wikipedia page data for guns/100 residents.
By this metric, the US is better off that much of South and Central America. I bet if the stats were normalized by deaths/100K guns instead the US would look pretty good. (~17% drop for US, as we have more guns than people, but every other country has significant increases)
Fatal Shootings involving police officers (not adjusted for population so lets be kind and multiply 3 by 8..).
UK (2015/2016 latest year I could find) - 3
US 2015 - 1052.
I'll take heavy gun control (guns are legal here, they are just controlled - If I wanted a license I could apply for one - requirement is legitimate reason (member of a shooting club qualifies) and no criminal background, 700,000 people have the license to own a gun with more than 1.5 million guns in private hands) thanks.
Sure we have a high burglary rate but that isn't to do with guns, it's do with more than a decade of destroying police budgets.
Figures from wikipedia/UN.
Oh and the one that amuses me in a black way, guns kill their owners (suicide) at a higher rate than they do anyone else in the US.
Also in the interests of clarity,
UK suicide rate 7.6 per 100,000
US suicide rate 21.8 per 100,000
with academic research showing that easy availability of firearms increases suicide rate.
The United States has 4x the number of guns per capita than any of the countries you've listed. Just taking Norway, the rate of handgun ownership is also significantly higher in the US.
It could be the case that below a certain threshold, further reducing firearm availability does little to affect crime, but the US is probably far from that level
The US has roughly 110 guns per 100,000 people and 4.5 gun homicides per 100,000 people.
Mexico has over 20 gun homicides per 100,000 people and about 18 guns per 100,000 people.
Canada has 2 gun murders per 100,000 people and 31 guns per 100,000 people.
Mexico: each gun is responsible for 1.11 murders
US: each gun is responsible for .04 murders
Canada: each gun is responsible for .07 murders.
Interestingly, the Bahamas has 30 gun murders per 100,000 and about 4 guns per 100,000. That's 7.5 murders per gun.
France has 2.8 gun murders per 100k and 31 guns per 100,000. Which makes each gun responsible for .09 murders -- slightly higher than both the US and Canada, despite far stricter laws.
The U.K. Has .23 gun murders and 6.6 guns -- so .35 murders per gun.
Sweden has 1.47 murders per 100k with 31.6 guns for a rate of .047 murders per gun.
Nicaragua has 4.68 murders with 7.7 guns -- each gun is part of 1.65 murders.
Jamaica: 31 murders/8 guns.
Denmark: 1.28/12 guns
Israel: 2.09/7.3 guns
Brazil: 21.2/8 guns
Australia: .93/21.7 guns
My point: gun ownership does not correlate to gun murder rates -- in fact one could make a case that increased gun ownership could actually reduce gun murder rates.
Despite having more guns per capita than most countries, the overall US murder rate ranks 108 out of 218, with Honduras topping the list (incidentally Honduras has 67 murders and 6.2 guns per 100,000)
If you compare the US to only developed countries, it is an extreme outlier with regard to violence, and that violence correlates strongly with the number of guns [1]. Gun violence in the US is rising, not declining [2].
And yet, there is a 1.5x higher chance per capita of being in a burglary in the US vs UK, and 4x more likely to be killed. Even though US citizens have much higher gun ownership.
> The number of gun murders per capita in the US in 2012 - the most recent year for comparable statistics - was nearly 30 times that in the UK, at 2.9 per 100,000 compared with just 0.1.
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