From The Guardian from earlier this year.

Someone in another thread told me that one of the eastern european countries has nearly 100% gun ownership and almost no gun violence. I think it was Adam, but I can't remember. This graph seems to show that isn't true. Japan is definitely true, though (low ownership and low violence)

From The Guardian from earlier this year.

Someone in another thread told me that one of the eastern european countries has nearly 100% gun ownership and almost no gun violence. I think it was Adam, but I can't remember. This graph seems to show that isn't true. Japan is definitely true, though (low ownership and low violence)

FIREARMS MURDERS AND CIVILIAN GUN OWNERSHIP
Czech Republic
1,600,000 civilian firearms - 16.3 for every 100 people
Ranked 38 in the world for civilian gun ownership

In the latest year, there were 20 homicides by firearm - 0.19 per 100,000 population. 11% of all homicides are by firearm

Not me... I didn't say 100% ownership... I said that the Czech Republic has a pretty open gun ownership policy, and that any citizen can conceal carry if they chose, but that they do not have near the gun violence we do... That is all I said. I never even speculated at the percentage of citizens there who own guns.

Point... They have more laz policies than we do, but way less gun violence, suggesting that it is our CULTURE here in the US that is particularly violent.


Data from your graph:
See... They are not near as homicidle as we are.

sorry, I didn't mean to put words in your mouth. I just remember some comment about that.

However, they're also on the low end of both gun ownership as well as homicide by gun. They may have lax policies, but they don't buy a lot of guns either.

FIREARMS MURDERS AND CIVILIAN GUN OWNERSHIP
United States
270,000,000 civilian firearms - 88.8 for every 100 people
Ranked 1 in the world for civilian gun ownership

In the latest year, there were 9,146 homicides by firearm - 2.97 per 100,000 population. 60% of all homicides are by firearm

And even with having more guns than any other country we still have a pretty low firearm (and overall) homicide rate. And I'd wager that an overwhelming majority of those shooting deaths are gang related, leaving most of us lucky white folks in the suburbs and mountain towns insulated from that violence.

So basically during any given year, there's less than a 0.00001% chance that you or someone in your immediate family will be shot to death by some random psycho. Although incredibly tragic and despicable, the media blows it way out of proportion. If we actually want to do something about school shootings then we should focus on low-income urban public schools where shootings and gang violence are actually a legitimate problem.

And even with having more guns than any other country we still have a pretty low firearm (and overall) homicide rate. And I'd wager that an overwhelming majority of those shooting deaths are gang related, leaving most of us lucky white folks in the suburbs and mountain towns insulated from that violence.

So basically during any given year, there's less than a 0.00001% chance that you or someone in your immediate family will be shot to death by some random psycho. Although incredibly tragic and despicable, the media blows it way out of proportion. If we actually want to do something about school shootings then we should focus on low-income urban public schools where shootings and gang violence are actually a legitimate problem.

And even with having more guns than any other country we still have a pretty low firearm (and overall) homicide rate. And I'd wager that an overwhelming majority of those shooting deaths are gang related, leaving most of us lucky white folks in the suburbs and mountain towns insulated from that violence.

So basically during any given year, there's less than a 0.00001% chance that you or someone in your immediate family will be shot to death by some random psycho. Although incredibly tragic and despicable, the media blows it way out of proportion. If we actually want to do something about school shootings then we should focus on low-income urban public schools where shootings and gang violence are actually a legitimate problem.

And even with having more guns than any other country we still have a pretty low firearm (and overall) homicide rate. And I'd wager that an overwhelming majority of those shooting deaths are gang related, leaving most of us lucky white folks in the suburbs and mountain towns insulated from that violence.

So basically during any given year, there's less than a 0.00001% chance that you or someone in your immediate family will be shot to death by some random psycho. Although incredibly tragic and despicable, the media blows it way out of proportion. If we actually want to do something about school shootings then we should focus on low-income urban public schools where shootings and gang violence are actually a legitimate problem.

It's the inane, untrue, and racist remarks like this that have helped me to decide that I want nothing more to do with the site.

Byran you're an idiot and fool.

A more charitable reading of bryan's post would be that no one seems to care when poor kids, urban kids, or minority kids are getting shot, but but we get all up in arms about these mass shootings that occur predominantly in "picture-perfect country town with good schools, quiet streets and a strong sense of community." Moreover, that mass shootings, while tragic, constitute a very small share of our overall gun violence.

Though yes, it may be somewhat racist to so casually conflate poor, urban, and minority individuals.

So here's some international perspective from the UN. The data is available for download, I tried to post two xls files, but they're over 100K. Here's the link:
http://www.unodc.org/...alysis/homicide.html

This is probably the best global dataset around. Still, take them with a grain of salt. Somalia basically doesn't have a government so there's really no agency to report to. In many of the less developed countries, people are found dead and nobody worries how. They just get rid of the corpse somehow. In other places, political factors affect reporting.

The most murderous regions of the world are Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. The highest firearm rates are in the Caribbean and Latin America.

The US has a homicide rate per 100,000 of 4.8 (2010), down from 8.1 (1995). It's been falling steadily for years. The biggest number I saw was Honduras: 91.6 (2011). Firearms follows the same sort of pattern. More of our homicides are committed with firearms, but it's not the highest rate. You can download the files and play with them.

Switzerland.

First of all, because they don’t have high levels of gun ownership. The gun ownership in Israel and Switzerland has decreased.

For instance, in Israel, they’re very limited in who is able to own a gun. There are only a few tens of thousands of legal guns in Israel, and the only people allowed to own them legally live in the settlements, do business in the settlements, or are in professions at risk of violence.

Both countries require you to have a reason to have a gun. There isn’t this idea that you have a right to a gun. You need a reason. And then you need to go back to the permitting authority every six months or so to assure them the reason is still valid.

The second thing is that there’s this widespread misunderstanding that Israel and Switzerland promote gun ownership. They don’t. Ten years ago, when Israel had the outbreak of violence, there was an expansion of gun ownership, but only to people above a certain rank in the military. There was no sense that having ordinary citizens [carry guns] would make anything safer.

Switzerland has also been moving away from having widespread guns. The laws are done canton by canton, which is like a province. Everyone in Switzerland serves in the army, and the cantons used to let you have the guns at home. They’ve been moving to keeping the guns in depots. That means they’re not in the household, which makes sense because the literature shows us that if the gun is in the household, the risk goes up for everyone in the household.

That's why most informed people who talk about the dysfunctional nature of the US's gun and murder rates talk about us having the highest rates in the *industrialized* world.

Yes, we're not as dangerous as Somalia or Central American countries. Pat on the back. Yes our murder rates have gone down, especially in most urban areas. Gold star on the forehead.

I don't really think that is cause for complacency, or for us to assume that we don't need to radically rethink the way our laws approach guns and mental illness.