# Future of guns and mass killings in the US **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 3, 2015, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411 "2015-10-03T21:17:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/21 "2015-10-04T06:39:00Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > The gun-fatality stats are even more stark. Despite being very similar nations in socioeconomic terms, the US has _ **seven times** _ the gun fatality rate in Canada – 3.5 per 100K compared to 0.5. And a great deal of that is inflated by American guns coming over the border – the gun fatality rates in most of Europe are a tiny fraction of Canada’s. IOW, the [US is pretty much off the chart in gun deaths](http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2014001/article/11925/c-g/c-g04-eng.gif). > > And as I mentioned in post #10, gun fatalities dropped by 50% in Australia after the measures taken in the aftermath of the Port Arthur shootings, and gun suicides – which are almost always fatal compared to suicides attempted by other means – dropped by 80%. As has become the norm for these debates, we have references to “gun fatalities” and “gun deaths”–but not other kinds of deaths–and we have talk about “gun suicides”–but not suicides in general. All this adds up to convey the impression that the United States is totally off the charts compared to all the other non-hellhole nations on the planet. But if we look at human beings deliberately killing human beings in the most advanced countries on the planet–I’ll use the 34 OECD countries\*–the United States doesn’t look so abnormal. \*Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. I’m taking the numbers from the [United Nations](http://data.un.org/) and the [World Health Organization](http://www.who.int/research/en/). And just to be clear, the data is not great–in particular, finding data for each country _from the same year_ is frequently impossible; instead, I’ve got a mishmash of data from 2008-2012–so there’s no point in a lot of spurious precision and multiple decimal points. Still, it turns out that the U.S. is distinctly less violent than Mexico–well, OK, no surprise there, and that’s not really what we normally mean when we talk about comparing the U.S. to other “First World” countries–but the U.S. is also substantially less violent than South Korea, less violent than Estonia, Hungary, or Japan, and about as violent as Finland or Belgium. The United States _is_ more violent than Australia or Canada, but it’s not a huge multiple–it’s the difference between something like 16 violent deaths per 100,000 for the U.S. versus 11 or 12 per 100,000 for Canada or Australia. We _are_ at least twice as violent as Great Britain, and perhaps three times as violent as places like Greece or Italy. Now you’re undoubtedly thinking that this is all crazy talk–Japan is more violent than the U.S.?!? The U.S. is only about as violent as Belgium or Finland?!? The U.S. is only a little more violent than France or Ireland?!? No fucking way, dude! But that’s what happens when you “lump” homicide and suicide. Personally, I agree it’s kind of nuts to do that. It would be pretty whacky to decide to take your vacation in Mexico instead of South Korea, on the grounds that South Korea is more “violent” than Mexico; or to say that Japan is more “violent” than the United States. But, I keep hearing about “gun deaths” and “more Americans are now killed by guns than in car wrecks!” and so on, all of which are “lumping” homicides and suicides. I’m not even sure why the gun-control side even does that–looking at homicide alone, the United States does in fact stand out, in a big way–OK, Mexico has us beat, and it looks like maybe Estonia edges us out. But other than that, the U.S. really does have a substantially higher homicide rate than most of its peer countries, and not just by a little bit–four times as high as Australia, and five times as high as Germany or Spain. One thing, though–is the admittedly very high U.S. murder rate a “crisis” or an “epidemic”? The [2014 Uniform Crime Report](https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/cius-home) was released just last month. Once again, the “murder rate” (technically, murder and non-negligent homicide) _dropped_. And that wasn’t just a blip or an abberation–the homicide rate in the United States has basically been falling for 20 years now. Not just a little fluctuation, either; the U.S. murder rate in 2014 was almost 20% lower than it was in 2004, and the rate in 2014 was less than half what it was in 1994. In fact, the U.S. murder rate in 2014 was the lowest it has been since 1957. Will the murder rate in the U.S. continue to drop? Well, it’s difficult to say, because no one really know why it dropped in the first place. (Nor does anyone really know why murder rates spiked so much beginning in the early '60s.) Crime in general is way, way down, not just murder or even violent crime in general–there were fewer than half as many car thefts in 2014 as there were in 1995, and that’s with a population thats grown by over 56 million people (and it wasn’t because we’re now living in some _Mad Max_ post-peak-oil sci-fi dystopia where no one steals cars because no one has cars to steal, either). Whatever we’re doing, it seems to be working–now if we could just figure out what it is that we’re doing. (It’s been seriously proposed that lead pollution–lead paint and especially leaded gasoline–were major contributors to the great late 20th century crime wave.) > [@Projammer](#): > > Dead is only statistically significant if there was a gun involved. All others are accidents or acts of nature or something. Nothing to see there. Look at the bad gun numbers. Yep–that does seem to be about the size of it. ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/22 "2015-10-04T09:14:37Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > It’s been seriously proposed that lead pollution–lead paint and especially leaded gasoline–were major contributors to the great late 20th century crime wave. It might be better to say after 300 academic studies over 14 or so years no one has been able to refute the link. In fact, the closer the data is examined - city vs. city enforcement timelines - the correlation becomes tighter. Don’t even get started on lead plumbing. At some point it just has to be accepted. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/23 "2015-10-04T10:07:35Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > As has become the norm for these debates, we have references to “gun fatalities” and “gun deaths”–but not other kinds of deaths–and we have talk about “gun suicides”–but not suicides in general. All this adds up to convey the impression that the United States is totally off the charts compared to all the other non-hellhole nations on the planet. Excuse me? “Not other kinds of deaths”? It’s in the immediately preceding part that you forgot to quote: 4.7 total homicides per 100K in the US from all causes, 1.6 in Canada. Also, 1.1 in Australia, 1.0 in the UK. Numbers from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), [referenced here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate). As for suicides, I’m just doing a quick edit here and am not going to go looking up all the papers, but the fact is that gun-enabled suicides are almost always lethal. Other kinds are often not, and are less amenable to impulse. Guns, they kill real good. That’s what they’re designed to do, and they do it. > [@MEBuckner](#): > > But if we look at human beings deliberately killing human beings in the most advanced countries on the planet–I’ll use the 34 OECD countries\*–the United States doesn’t look so abnormal … > > … I’m taking the numbers from the [United Nations](http://data.un.org/) and the [World Health Organization](http://www.who.int/research/en/). And just to be clear, the data is not great–in particular, finding data for each country _from the same year_ is frequently impossible; instead, I’ve got a mishmash of data from 2008-2012–so there’s no point in a lot of spurious precision and multiple decimal points. > > Still, it turns out that the U.S. is distinctly less violent than Mexico–well, OK, no surprise there, and that’s not really what we normally mean when we talk about comparing the U.S. to other “First World” countries–but the U.S. is also substantially less violent than South Korea, less violent than Estonia, Hungary, or Japan, and about as violent as Finland or Belgium. The United States _is_ more violent than Australia or Canada, but it’s not a huge multiple–it’s the difference between something like 16 violent deaths per 100,000 for the U.S. versus 11 or 12 per 100,000 for Canada or Australia. We _are_ at least twice as violent as Great Britain, and perhaps three times as violent as places like Greece or Italy. The first of those links brings up a generic page which seems to have a link to UNODC which is what I referenced above, and the second one is a broken link. Though it doesn’t matter, Lord knows none of this is news, though precise numbers vary depending on the source. The data I quoted shows the US having a rate of intentional homicide not quite three times that of Canada, your data – whatever it actually means – indicates a violent death rate only about 50% higher than Canada or Australia. And that’s even worse news for gun advocates, because [here’s the kicker](http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2014001/article/11925/c-g/c-g04-eng.gif): the US **gun homicide** rate is **seven times** what it is in Canada. You figure it out. I’m sure there’s some excuse that has something to do with the US not having enough guns. :rolleyes: Yeah, that must be it. Here’s some other data that I posted before. In 1998 [the most recent year for which this data had been compiled at the time], handguns murdered: - 373 people in Germany - 151 people in Canada - 57 people in Australia - 19 people in Japan - 54 people in England and Wales, and - **11,789 people in the United States** No, there’s no problem here, nothing to see, carry on. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/24 "2015-10-04T10:16:48Z")
> [@ChickenLegs](#): > > 1. Once good guys with guns show up, the murder spree ends. [There were multiple “good guys with guns” on the campus in Oregon.](http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/10/02/3708410/good-guy-with-gun-was-on-ucc-campus-at-time-of-massacre/) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/25 "2015-10-04T11:33:10Z")
If Americans won’t give up their guns, possibly the best ways to reduce violence with guns are: 1. Legalize drugs; and 2. Dramatically increase funding to detect and treat mental illness. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/26 "2015-10-04T11:56:55Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > If Americans won’t give up their guns, possibly the best ways to reduce violence with guns are: > > 1. Legalize drugs; and > 2. Dramatically increase funding to detect and treat mental illness. I’m trying to figure out how a coke-fueled disturbed loner with a gun, or a meth-head, is somehow better than a sober disturbed loner with a gun. (I gather you meant that a lot of guns are used in the illicit drug trade, but the other reading is funnier.) ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/27 "2015-10-04T12:00:50Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > If Americans won’t give up their guns, possibly the best ways to reduce violence with guns are: > > 1. Legalize drugs; and > 2. Dramatically increase funding to detect and treat mental illness. These things should be done whether they would have an impact on gun crime or not. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/28 "2015-10-04T12:18:46Z")
Dammit. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/29 "2015-10-04T12:23:09Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Unless Canada outlaws every conceivable tool capable of murder it won’t change anything. > > People who intend to kill other people are messed up. That seems like such an innocuous statement yet somehow the blame is assigned to an object and thus the solution involves removing the object. And yet, countries with stricter gun control magically don’t have mass shootings every day. So strange. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/30 "2015-10-04T12:47:24Z")
Sorry about the broken links; these are databases and it can be difficult to link to specific results, which are often the result of a user-specified query. Here’s the thing: I’m not trying to change y’alls minds about guns in general, which is probably impossible and certainly won’t happen in one SDMB thread. All I’m really trying to do for now is persuade y’all that this insistence on talking about “gun violence” and insisting that we must include both homicides and suicides when discussing guns is silly and–for “your side”–genuinely counterproductive. On homicides, while the U.S. rate has fallen dramatically, it is also still markedly higher than in other First World countries. The argument thus seems superficially convincing: America has way more guns than other countries; America has way more murders than other countries. Q.E.D. I mean, I don’t actually think it’s quite that simple, but it doesn’t seem nuts on the face of it. > [@wolfpup](#): > > As for suicides, I’m just doing a quick edit here and am not going to go looking up all the papers, but the fact is that gun-enabled suicides are almost always lethal. Other kinds are often not, and are less amenable to impulse. Guns, they kill real good. That’s what they’re designed to do, and they do it. And again, America has way more guns than other countries, and firearms are undeniably more likely to be lethal than, say, taking pills. Which is why the suicide rate in the United States is so much higher than in other First World countries. Except that the suicide rate in the United States _isn’t_ so much higher than in other First World countries. In fact, the U.S. suicide rate is pretty moderate; higher than some, lower than others. I _think_ that this will be a permanent link to [WHO Suicide Data](http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.MHSUICIDE?lang=en) (for 2012, the most recent year, and for all the countries in the world, not just my selected list–member states of the OECD, as a reasonably good approximation of “First World” countries), but in case it isn’t, here are the numbers: South Korea: 28.9 Hungary: 19.1 Japan: 18.5 Poland: 16.6 Estonia: 16.3 Finland: 14.8 Belgium: 14.2 Iceland: 14.0 Czech Republic: 12.5 Slovenia: 12.4 France: 12.3 Chile: 12.2 **United States: 12.1** Austria: 11.5 Sweden: 11.1 Ireland: 11.0 Australia: 10.6 Slovakia: 10.1 Canada: 9.8 New Zealand: 9.6 Germany: 9.2 Switzerland: 9.2 Norway: 9.1 Denmark: 8.8 Luxembourg: 8.7 Netherlands: 8.2 Portugal: 8.2 Turkey: 7.9 United Kingdom: 6.2 Israel: 5.9 Spain: 5.1 Italy: 4.7 Mexico: 4.2 Greece: 3.8 So, Americans kill ourselves slightly less often than the French do, rather less often than the Finns and the Belgians, substantially less often the Japanese or Hungarians, and _way_ less often than the poor South Koreans. We are somewhat more likely to kill ourselves than the Austrians or the Swedes or the Irish. Note though, that Ireland has _very_ strict gun control laws compared to those in the U.S., and their suicide rate is still about 90% of that in the United States. Australia, despite its well-known gun control laws, winds up with a suicide rate that’s still about 88% that in the United States. Britain’s suicide rate is genuinely much lower than ours, and Mexico (which has a truly horrific murder rate) has a reported suicide rate that’s only about a third of the U.S. rate. It seems fairly irrefutable, at least when it comes to _suicide_, that whatever effect availablity of firearms has is totally swamped by other factors in determining a country’s suicde rate. And yet, gun control advocates continue to insist on talking about “gun violence” as including both suicide _and_ homicide (even though, if you add together suicides per 100,000 people to homicides per 100,000 people, you wind up with the slightly absurd result that the U.S. is “less violent” than Japan, and South Korea is markedly more “violent” than Mexico). ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/31 "2015-10-04T12:48:33Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > The best that can be hoped for now is a 2 income family assuming that means 2 parents are involved. That creates a vacuum in child care. The skill of child rearing took a serious hit and that’s never been addressed. The changes in social structure have been dramatic. Huh. You would think that would lead to dramatically different outcomes between kids who go to daycare and kid with a stay-at-home parent. And, yet, decades of studies point to there being very few substantial difference, and basically none for kids in high quality daycare. You would also think you’d see a correlation between gun violence and daycare. And yet, the most violent countries in the world have lots of stay at home parents, while in many of the safest countries, two-earned households are the norm. And looking to the past, I promise you that ma on the farm with eight kids wasn’t providing a lot of one on one attention. The “nuclear family where mom’s time is primarily spent caring for a small number of kids” was something that happened in a brief period of unprecedented economic prosperity and household mechanization. For most of history, Mom was just as hard at work as anyone else. Family earning arrangements is not the mystery factor you are looking for. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/32 "2015-10-04T13:09:29Z")
> [@XT](#): > > But it’s not [impossible](http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/world/asia/china-railway-attack/). In the PRC you can’t have a gun if you are a regular citizen, but they still find ways to do shit like this…there have been [several](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/15/not-just-sandy-hook-china-s-terrifying-knife-attacks.html) such [attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_%282010%E2%80%9312%29) over the years, though, thankfully, none recently that I know of. And yet with a billion people- several times our population- attacks like this are rare. Three times the number of people, and a handful of attacks a year. We have a mass shooting EVERY DAY. With far fewer people. I’ve lived in China. It’s one of the few places in the world where you really, really don’t think about violent crime. Someone once tried to rob the highway toll booth in my town with a fake gun, and that is the most shocking incident my town saw in my two years there. Even as a conspicuously foreign woman in a small city, I felt comfortable exploring alone freely, even in new towns. Cities literally do not have rough neighborhoods. The streets are safe late into the night- walking home at three AM would not be something I’d give a second thought to. I’m usually a very vigilant traveler, but in China I didn’t worry. Some of that was the authoritarian government and over-the-top punishments. But some was that many people had literally only seen a gun on TV and would have no idea where to get one. Police didn’t even carry them. They, for practical purposes, didn’t exist. When compared to say, Honduras, where I got the experience of eating at a McDonalds protected by armed guards and my hotel had a place to check in guns at the front desk-- well, it’s a pretty stark difference. In Honduras, it wasn’t even safe for me to walk a block in daylight. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/33 "2015-10-04T13:22:56Z")
Not that only one vote matters, but your vote is the only one you have. Vote/support someone who advocates change as opposed to advocating Hemorrhoid Farming. Every time there is a mass killing, push to reintroduce a background check Bill in Congress. Eventually, the gunmen will kill someone They Do care about. Or, just let it go. _“Stuff happens.” - Jeb Bush, 2015 (while running for President)_ ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/34 "2015-10-04T13:23:22Z")
> [@ChickenLegs](#): > > (My own state of Wyoming, with some of the most lax gun laws and the highest gun ownership rate in the nation, had a 2013 murder rate 0f 2.9 per 100,000 > .) That’s because people in your state, when they die from gunshot, tend to have turned the gun on themselves. Wyoming is [tied for sixth among the states in the overall firearms death rate](http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-per-100000/), which, from my perspective, means you have almost four times to gun tragedy rate of New York City. Someone once tried to tell me here that Wyoming’s sky-high suicide rate ([number one in the US](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6345a10.htm)) has nothing to do with guns being readily at hand when a temporary impulse to self-destruction arises, but only with it being a horribly lonely place to live. As a resident, you may, or may not, have a different perspective. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/35 "2015-10-04T13:49:16Z")
And it’s tragic how much more often the Japanese or South Koreans take human life than Americans do. ---
**Author:** ![ChickenLegs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@ChickenLegs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChickenLegs)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/36 "2015-10-04T14:16:51Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > That’s because people in your state, when they die from gunshot, tend to have turned the gun on themselves. Wyoming is [tied for sixth among the states in the overall firearms death rate](http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-per-100000/), which, from my perspective, means you have almost four times to gun tragedy rate of New York City. So from your perspective, you consider the U.S. to be a safer place to live than Japan, because Japan’s combined murder +suicide rate is higher than that of the U.S.? (See MEBuckner’s post above.) Or you only “count” people that die by means of firearms? ---
**Author:** ![ChickenLegs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@ChickenLegs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChickenLegs)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/37 "2015-10-04T14:26:31Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > PhillyGuy is including suicides in his calculus. Yes. I consider it misleading. I’m not particularly concerned about someone breaking into my house and committing suicide. ---
**Author:** ![ChickenLegs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@ChickenLegs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChickenLegs)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/38 "2015-10-04T14:33:05Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > In 1998 [the most recent year for which this data had been compiled at the time], handguns murdered: > > - 373 people in Germany > - 151 people in Canada > - 57 people in Australia > - 19 people in Japan > - 54 people in England and Wales, and > - **11,789 people in the United States** > > No, there’s no problem here, nothing to see, carry on. Blatant cherry picking. Handgun murders? Six countries? Can I pick my own six countries and report on machete murders? There are 208 countries in the world. 101 of those countries have higher homicide rates than the U.S., and almost all of those have stricter gun control. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/39 "2015-10-04T14:48:04Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > And yet, countries with stricter gun control magically don’t have mass shootings every day. So strange. remove black on black violence and you will see a much different set of numbers. ---
**Author:** ![ChickenLegs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@ChickenLegs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChickenLegs)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2015, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411/40 "2015-10-04T14:51:50Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > [There were multiple “good guys with guns” on the campus in Oregon.](http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/10/02/3708410/good-guy-with-gun-was-on-ucc-campus-at-time-of-massacre/) Really? I heard there was a guy up in Portland that had a gun, too. How many of the victims were armed? It’s a sad state of affairs when we have a heroic ex-soldier reduced to bum rushing the murderer, unarmed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-of-guns-and-mass-killings-in-the-us/733411.md?page=3)