Originally posted by STING:
I don't have much time to respond at the moment, but I'll say this and I have said it before, an average of 10,000 AMERICANS are killed every year from gun violence compared to only 50 in the UK. The UK has 1/5 the population of the USA so the death rate from guns in the USA should only be 250, it it was just as good as the UK! BUT ITS 10,000! Clearly the UK system for gun control is far superior to the USA!
Oh, and Lefty Edge, the area's that you mentioned in the USA that have the highest death rates from gun violence also have the highest poverty rates! Its the not the fact that they have more gun control that makes things worse. There is little to begin with and the second and real problem is poverty. Area's that have little gun violence have little poverty. Its not because more people have guns!
Comparing the U.S. to the low guns/low crime societies of the United Kingdom or Canada is one of the most common arguments among gun control advocates. In rebuttal, gun control opponents typically reference high guns/low crime nations such as Switzerland and Israel. However, these comparisons miss the mark. The futility of pairwise comparisons between nations? crime rates relative to their gun ownership becomes apparent once one realizes that there are countries with every permutation: the US (high guns/high crime); Switzerland and Israel (high guns/low crime); Japan (low guns/low crime); and Mexico (low guns/high crime). Any two countries can be compared or contrasted to make any point desired.
A simple thought experiment will illustrate this point: Three countries, X, Y and Z have very strict anti-gun laws. Should we assume their homicide rates to be very low? In fact, X, Y and Z have homicide rates 100-150 percent greater than the U.S. (compare the U.S. homicide rate at 9.5 people killed/100,000 to X?s 19.7/100,000 in 1993). Should we suppose that X, Y and Z have one common feature that is responsible for their homicide rates? Since X, Y and Z are low guns/high crime societies, should we assume that guns are not causing the homicides? If so, why not?
X, Y and Z are actually Russia, Taiwan and South Africa, respectively. But which one characteristic, the same in Russia, Taiwan and South Africa throughout the past and present, is responsible for their homicide rates? Attempting to distill the cause of homicide down to one factor such as guns, in each of these very diverse countries, is difficult if not impossible.
Gun control advocates claim that the crime rate is low in the UK because the British have fewer guns than Americans. But European countries have always had lower violent crime rates than the US, even before strict gun control laws were passed. Moreover, many violent crime rates in Europe and elsewhere are increasing faster than in the U.S. right now.
Furthermore, the logic of the low guns/low crime rate fails when one considers that the UK?s homicide rate is lower for non-gun homicides as well. Clearly, fewer homicides committed with knives, sticks, etc. cannot be attributable to gun control.
Very little can be concluded from international studies focused on the guns/crime relationship. Not surprisingly, most of the research is technically weak. The best available homicide and suicide data collected from 36 countries by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, when analyzed by Gary Kleck, demonstrates that there is no significant correlation between gun ownership and homicide.
To summarize, there is no consistent global correlation between gun availability and violent crime rates.
