The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #163955   Message #3918765
Posted By: beardedbruce
20-Apr-18 - 01:37 PM
Thread Name: BS: Guns in America
Subject: RE: BS: Guns in America
You didn't bother to read my posts- from one of the articles:

The countries that have been most successful at limiting private, legal gun ownership are 1. Ethiopia, 2. Eritrea, 3. Haiti, 4. North Korea, and 5. Rwanda. Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Haiti all have higher murder rates than that of the United States. North Korea and Rwanda have slightly lower murder rates (4.4 and 4.5 per 100,000 respectively versus the United States at 4.88).

Let’s look at the countries with the highest concentrations of gun ownership (excluding Yemen and Iraq as active war zones). Guns per murder in those countries are,

    United States at 20,967,
    Uruguay at 3,777,
    Norway at 55,893,
    France at 19,747,
    Austria at 59,608,
    Germany at 35,647,
    Switzerland at 35,435,
    New Zealand at 24,835, and
    Greece at 26,471.

Norway is a particularly interesting example. It has 10 times the gun ownership rate of the United Kingdom, but only half the murder rate.

When one excludes Iraq and Yemen, not one of the countries on the list of the 10 highest rates of gun ownership also appears on the list of the top ten highest murder rates. In fact, the countries with the highest murder rates have markedly low gun ownership rates.

    El Savador (108.64 murders per 100,000/5800 guns per 100,000)
    Honduras (63.75/6200)
    Venezuela (57.15/10,700)
    Jamaica (43.21/8,100)
    Lesotho (38/2,700)
    Belize (34.4/10,000)
    South Africa (34.27/12,700)
    Guatemala (31.21/13,100)
    Trinidad (30.88/1,600)
    Bahamas (29.81/5,300)

It really doesn’t matter how you slice this data. The conclusion is inescapable: High concentrations of private, legal gun ownership do not correlate positively to increased murders. Indeed, you can look at almost any slice of data and conclude the opposite: Higher private ownership of guns can be strongly correlated to lower murder rates.