Really? So America has ~one gun per capita. Canada has ~.3 guns per capita. Are you saying that if we reduced from 300 million guns to only 100 million guns we would experience an 86% reduction in gun homicides? That doesn’t make sense to me. Especially considering that ~25% of Candaian households have guns while 50% of American households have guns.
And why just gun homicides? What does it matter if gun homicides go down by 100 and other types of homicides goes up by an equal amount (I fully recognize that there would not be a perfect substitution effect but just for the sake of argument). Its not like Canada only has 14% of America’s homicide rate and the UK certainly has more than 1.4% of America’s homicide rate. The USA certainly has a much higher homicide rate at 3.8/100,000 versus 1.4 for Canada and 1.0 for the UK but the murder rate is not directly proportional to gun ownership. So those numbers you are talking about (14% and 1.4%) are really not as indicative of overall homicide rates as it is of method of homicide.
The homicide rate in Canada is just under half and the homicide rate in the UK is just under a quarter. The US clearly has a murder problem but it is not in the same ball park as you are trying to suggest with your 7 time sand 71 times.
Emo teenagers grazing a razor over their wrists have to be taken seriously because some of them end up dead but sometimes a suicide attempt is really a cry for help rather than a sincere desire to end life. There are very effective means of suicide available to everyone. Jumping off of tall buildings, jumping in front of trains, hanging, etc. are all very effective means of suicide. that is how countries like Japan and Korea have such high suicide rates despite just low levels of gun ownership.
So you take a bunch of rural western states and you notice a coincidence of high gun ownership and high suicide rates and you attribute the suicide to the guns rather than the fact you are talking almost exclusively about rural western states.
The southern states have high rates of gun ownership and yet their suicide rate is not really that high. Maine and Massachusetts have almost identical gun ownership rates and yet Maine’s suicide rate is a lot higher. Isn’t it possible that loneliness, and culture might be a bigger factor in determining suicide rates than the presence of guns?
It looks like you are looking at the 2014 figures? NH, VT, ME, HI, and IA all have murder rates that are probably not statistically different from Canada. And within Canada, the murder rate ranges to a high of 10.93 in Nunavut, and even BC has a slightly higher rate than the national average (by about 0.5). Highest actual province is Manitoba at 3.43.
So that’s your argument? A litany of incorrect information and invalid comparisons? I provided cited data here. The US has almost seven times the gun homicide rate of Canada, 32 times that of Australia, and 71 times that of the UK. Here’s the same information in graphic form. The US gun homicide rate isn’t just high, it’s practically off the chart compared to all equivalent developed countries.
The only way the US gun homicide rate is “in the middle” is if you intentionally include third-world countries or those with a long history of political or criminal violence, which is indeed where the US exists in terms of gun violence, and nowhere near any first-world developed nations. This is where the unrestrained gun culture has dragged the US down to, and that’s precisely the tragedy. Your attempt to argue otherwise is obvious utter nonsense. It’s impossible to have a meaningful discussion with someone who can’t even admit that there’s a serious problem.
Nice try (not really), but Switzerland has the kind of gun control that would make an NRA gun nut’s head explode. Even air guns are regulated, and even some knives and stun guns prohibited entirely. And those militia rifles kept at home are kept there without ammunition, in accordance with Swiss gun law:
Only 2,000 specialist militia members (who protect airports and other sites of particular sensitivity) are permitted to keep their military-issued ammunition at home. The rest of the militia get their ammunition from their military armory in the event of an emergency
If you exclude those militia weapons, the Swiss gun ownership rate is only about 25%, high for Europe but nothing like the US. That, plus strict gun control, is why their murder rates are low.
Again with Switzerland and comparisons with third-world shit-holes. Are you just cutting and pasting from the NRA website?
It’s hard to tell how many guns there are in the US because of incredibly poor regulation, and NRA efforts to quash statistics and record-keeping as much as possible. An ownership rate of 90% is often quoted, but this says the US has 112.6 guns per 100 residents. Hence my comment ''more guns than people, or close to it" – depending on what numbers you use.
And both countries have much stronger gun control and far fewer guns than the US. Serbia, due to its history, does have a lot of guns compared to most other countries. They’ve also had more than their share of mass shootings and have been considering tightening gun laws still further.
What’s interesting here is not just that you’ve managed to be wrong (again) on every single claim you made, but you’ve combined bad data with a unique combination of equally bad thinking to try to back it up. I imagine you’ll probably keep cutting-and-pasting nonsense from wherever you get it, so enjoy yourself. I really don’t have the time to keep correcting every twisted statistic and logical fallacy.
wolfpup,
You seem to have missed, in spite of quoting it, that DrDeth posted about the “murder rate”, not the “gun homicide” rate (which I’ve never seen anyone but gun grabbers bring up). That’s what I prefer to think of as a leading indicator on the quality of the rest of your post, but I did have one question:
Could I get a cite for the highlighted portion? Or an explanation? Are you trying to say that 90% of Americans own guns? Or did you mean something else by “an ownership rate of 90%”?
No, the concern over high crime and gun ownership is related.
However, the crime rate is not what we’re talking about- we’re talking about the *Murder *rate. Tell me you comprehend that there are two different things here.
No International agency tracks “gun homicide rate”, they just track “homicide rate”. This is why “gun homicide rate” is a bogus, made up number, pulled out of someone ass with a bias.
Homicide rates are tracked, and unless you can tell me it’s somehow worse to be murdered with a gun instead of a knife or a bomb, that’s the only number worth looking at.
They list 218 nations on wiki for Homicides, many larger nations have a higher murder rate that the uSA. Calling every nation that has a higher rate a “third-world shit-hole” is pretty bogus, and uses the outdated idea that nations not aligned with the USSR or USA is somehow inferior. Note that most of the “2nd world nations” in Europe also have a higher murder rate than the USA. Note that South Africa is a “First World” nation by Cold War standards, but your definition seems to be “If it has a higher murder rate than the USA, it’s a third-world shit-holes.”
It’s true- in 2007 the Swiss took back the issued ammo. But you can just buy it. In fact, at shooting ranges it’s provided below cost.
So, you continue to be wrong, and pull numbers from biased cites that simple make shit up.
*The correlation between the homicide rate and Brady score in all 51 jurisdictions is +.032 (on a scale of -1 to +1), which means that states with more gun restrictions on average have very slightly higher homicide rates, though the tendency is so small as to be essentially zero. *
Five Canadian provinces have both a higher homicide rate and a lower homicide rate that my own state of Wyoming; Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Yukon, NW Territories, Nunavut. Wyoming has the highest gun ownership in the US (last I read) and perhaps the most relaxed gun control (no permit required for concealed carry or open carry, full-auto legal, no licensing, no registration, nothing in addition to federal laws.)
This is one of the dumbest arguments you folks have tried. First, gun deaths and deaths caused by guns. That’s the meaning, and it shouldn’t be hard to grasp.
Secondly, of course there’s a difference between gun deaths and other deaths. Guns make it easier to kill people. That’s why gun types want them so desperately. That fantasy bogeyman haunting your mind - the one you practice your quick draw in your bedroom for - requires a gun.
If guns were the same as other weapons, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You could arm yourself with a rope or a knife and be able to go trembling out into the world just like you do with a gun.
The definition of “gun deaths” is easy to grasp. The reason why you continue to use it, instead of homicide rates, is equally easy for me to grasp.
For those of you that can’t see what Hentor and others are up to, it works like this:
If a society has X amount of guns deaths, and guns are somehow eliminated, the intended conclusion of the gun controllers’ audience is that deaths in that society will decrease by X.
It’s completely false of course. There’s no simple answer as to what the change will be in deaths, as some deaths will still occur by other methods. More significantly, some additional deaths by other means will surely occur, as the defensive uses and the societal deterrent effect of guns will be eliminated.
As I said, it’s a dishonest ploy to sell a flawed idea.
See, the thing is that you can either shut your eyes and pretend, or you can actually define and measure something. You shouldn’t run in fear from data, or from science, although it may be something else that seems scary.
Note: This statistic includes all assaults, rather than attempted homicides, so it is in that sense a biased comparison.
However, estimates of the lethality of firearms relative to other weapon types used against other people suggest that firearms are three to five times more lethal. https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/fireviol.txt
It is simply incredible to believe that guns are equivalent in lethality, and that the homicide rate would be equal with or without them. That’s just your fear altering your logical thinking.
Instead of running away or fantasizing about having special powers, the best thing to do is to arm yourself with knowledge. Thus, rather than handwaving away data or squeezing your eyes shut to knowledge, you would do well to embrace them.
That’s crazy wrong. I mean, absolutely nonsensical in the face of reality.
The FBI has data on homicides by weapon type. The CDC has data on injury and mortality by weapon type and by intent.
Come on! I mean, you must have access to Google. Rather than asking others how often they are wrong, the question is whether or not DrDeth is ever right.
It is without question that there are at least SOME deaths that would not occur but for the prevalence of guns. Accidental deaths would certainly not occur but for the presence of guns. There are certainly some arguments that would have resulted in someone getting a beating rather than someone (not necessarily the same person) getting shot dead. It is certainly worth investigating whether our abnormally high murder rate among wealthy industrialized nations is caused primarily by the legal private ownership of guns.
It would be useful to know how many murders are committed by people who legally own guns.
It would be useful to get a better handle on how many times guns are used defensively every year.
There are a lot of things that would be useful to know but one thing we do know is that gun control does not seem to stop the sort of mass murders that everyone is worked up about. Most of the guns that are used in the mass murders of white people were not obtained illegally.
This discussion sure doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Nor is it clear what proposals folk advocate to address this situation - or even whether it is an issue that needs to be addressed.
Really frustrating when both sides end up contesting statistics. Hard to tell what stats are reliable, or even that they are counting the same things - or the RIGHT thing.
Unclear whether “pro-gun” folk think there is/are gun-related issues that ought to be addressed, or what steps could be attainable and effective. The anti-gun folk similarly fail to impress me with meaningful proposals. There are already quite a few guns out there, and I’d imagine a determined shooter could cause considerable havoc with 30-rd mags…
My impression is that we have more violence than I would hope for in a wealthy economy, but I’m not able to locate and present the stats to support that. A part of me hopes that as a society we would move beyond that. Similar to our recent ability to elect a black president, approve gay marriage, and move towards more sensible drug policy. Never thought I’d see any of those in my lifetime.
But I end up just thinking I this is yet another issue that I’m not going to try to get my head around, and instead put my efforts into avoiding situations where gun violence might be more likely, and hoping “lightning” doesn’t strike.
