Primary Response

[A Duke]

Hi DavidG,
Some surprises there in both directions. Especially based on my perceptions in some of the countries I have lived in. Who's figures are they and are those only the legal (registered) weapons?
Regards

[Koala-Man]

Louie Gohmert's comment (starting this thread) about how the teacher, if armed with an assult rifle, could have shot the shooter doesn't get around the fact that the shots the teacher heard in the first place would have been the sound of his students being killed. As if it would have been OK if Lanza had been stopped at, say, 10 kids instead of 20.

What a moron.

[artme]

Perhaps you are playing devil's advocate here Hugh.

I would like to know which figures surprise you and in what direction.

Why question the figures? I believe they are sourced via Wikipedia form
official government figures.

If you have "better" figures then feel free tom use them.

[A Duke]

Perhaps you are playing devil's advocate here Hugh.

I would like to know which figures surprise you and in what direction.

Why question the figures? I believe they are sourced via Wikipedia form
official government figures.

If you have "better" figures then feel free tom use them.

As I said in both directions. A little country like Swaziland being so high on the list of gun homicides. No suicides in a number of countries. The low number of guns in some countries when I know how many were left floating around after the liberation wars in Africa I can only guess they haven't counted the ones in the hands of militia and rebels. As to better numbers, I don't have any it's just a gut feeling from having been there and not swallowing every statistic fed to me. As you say government figures, if you know some of those governments you would wonder too.
Any way it's only me you can take it with a pinch of salt if you like.
Regards

[Bushmiller]

Thanks to David for digging up the stats. At the very least they show a broad trend even if they don't include the illegal weapons and for a broad discussion here, I am sure they suffice. (I couldn't see Australia listed in the list of gun ownership. Probably a typo.)

Factors that would distort the stats apart from illegal weapons would be the genocide conducted by some of those countries. In other words is it restricted to peacetime or does it include SRCC (strikes, riots, civil commotion, malicious damgage and war whether declared or not)?

However that is getting off the point. Wherever guns are prevalent there is a high risk of collateral damage amongst the innocent. The point is that they are not the primary targets during criminal activity. The event we are describing is where the innocents are the primary targets and I think this is the important point.

I think it is interesting to compare, from David's stats, the corralation between homicides and level of gun ownership in the UK (some is listed under England and Wales and Scotland). It is extremely low. It is only in recent years the pommy police have had access to hand guns and they still don't carry them on a routine basis.

It is still amazing, to my mind, that so many americans seem to think that their level of innocent death is acceptable and that the answer is more guns.

Regards
Paul

[Bushmiller]

Something else that I should mention is the type of weapon that is allowed in the US. What reason can there be for wanting a fully automatic gun apart from the desire to wreak mayhem? If you are a member of a sporting gun club or hunt for wild deer, rabbits etc the automatic machine gun has no place.

Regards
Paul

[jimbur]

Three facts seem self-evident to me:
Firstly, the mentally troubled are always with us.
Secondly, the children have been killed by a weapon, the only purpose of which is to kill and/or maim people as quickly as possible.
Thirdly, the private ownership of such weapons has been justified by the need of the citizen to be able to take up arms against a tyrannical government.

I suppose all nations indulge in mythologising their foundations to some extent. Here we have a nation of convicts, Ned Kelly, the Eureka Stockade etc. Such mythology tends to be fairly harmless though it can hide the true facts of history be they good or bad.
Simplistic notions such as the belief that the force behind the creation of the US lies in the ability of the citizen to bear arms is downright dangerous and denigrates the intellectual capacity of the founding fathers of the republic and the power of their ideas.
Of course the republic was formed through force of arms but it is not a prerequisite for the creation or the maintenance of a democratic system. So many totalitarian regimes came to power in the same way – for example the Taliban in recent times.
Of course the entertainment industry and their mythology probably doesn’t help - the Die Hard films, Lethal Weapon etc etc.
I would prefer that the biblical quotation on the wall of the CIA Headquarters, “The truth shall make you free”, were used rather than placing reliance on the assault rifle.

[Grumpy John]

Hi DavidG, can you please tell us the source of your figures. They don't quite match the OECD figures. I'm not saying either figures are wrong, we all know how numbers can be skewed to support a given argument.

firearm-OECD-UN-data3.jpg


Chart: The U.S. has far more gun-related killings than any other developed country

[pmcgee]

A few points from my radio-listening mainly ...

The M-4 available to civilians is not the same as the military one. I took that to mean it cannot multi-fire - or not at the same rate. I think that is one argument offered why they are 'acceptable' for civilian ownership.

I understand that the number of guns in the USA is roughly 1-1 with the population ... but only about 20% are gun-owners. This implies that the people who have guns have several.

Lastly I recently was completely shocked ... reading about saws (surprisingly) ... to finally comprehend that the American Civil War was in 1861-1864 timeframe. I was dumb-founded. Agincourt was in the 1400s, as was the War of the Roses. English Civil war in the 1600s. I was unconsciously thinking in these terms.

1860. That's only yesterday. WW1 and WW2 are very real, concrete and fresh to many Australians ... so I'd have to guess that the Civil War is also to a lot of americans. I wonder if that comes into it?

Cheers,
Paul

[Grumpy John]

Hi DavidG, can you please tell us the source of your figures. They don't quite match the OECD figures. I'm not saying either figures are wrong, we all know how numbers can be skewed to support a given argument.

firearm-OECD-UN-data3.jpg


Chart: The U.S. has far more gun-related killings than any other developed country

Added: David, after closer inspection your figures are very close the the OECD figures, just presented in a different way. The inclusion of the South American countries and Jamaica threw me for a while.

[FenceFurniture]

Hmmmm.

I've taken David's stats and amalgamated them, and eliminated the incomplete ones. Then, I added a column "Safety Index", which is the gun ownership divided by the Homicides. To get the two tables on the same scale I changed the Guns per 100 people to per 100,000 people.

So, the lower the index, the less safe the place is, and it makes very surprising reading. Check out how far down the list the USA is: 34th place.

6 of the 10 most dangerous places are in Central or South America.

What I wanted to learn from this exercise (if possible) was which countries of a similar nature (not war torn, western civilisation) had high gun ownership, but low homicide rates.

It would seem Norway, Sweden, Austria, France, Finland, Cyprus and Germany know how to manage this (high gun ownership, but relatively low homicide rate). All of those countries have about 1 gun for every 3 people (we have 1 for every 6.5).

Funny that, they are all European nations.

Having said all of that, we are debating Automatic assault rifles here (and the list is just "Guns"), and I'm sure the USA would come out either on top or damn near.

I am aware that the list is incomplete, but there does seem to be a clear trend emerging - however the Europeans manage high gun ownership, it seems to work.

RANK	Country	SAFETY INDEX (Guns/Deaths	Guns per 100,000 residents (2007)	Homicides
1	El Salvador	115	5800	50.36
2	Honduras	133	6200	46.7
3	Jamaica	171	8100	47.44
4	Swaziland	172	6400	37.16
5	Colombia	218	5900	27.1
6	Guatemala	340	13100	38.52
7	Brazil	442	8000	18.1
8	Philippines	497	4700	9.46
9	Zimbabwe	968	4600	4.75
10	Nicaragua	1078	7700	7.14
11	South Africa	1350	12700	NA
12	Mexico	1500	15000	10
13	Panama	1680	21700	12.92
14	Kyrgyzstan	1698	900	0.53
15	Paraguay	2313	17000	7.35
16	Uzbekistan	2586	1500	0.58
17	Barbados	2600	7800	3
18	Lithuania	2917	700	0.24
19	Costa Rica	2982	9900	3.32
20	Argentina	3400	10200	3
21	India	4516	4200	0.93
22	Moldova	6827	7100	1.04
23	Singapore	7143	500	0.07
24	Israel	7766	7300	0.94
25	Uruguay	9815	31800	3.24
26	Peru	10053	18800	1.87
27	Montenegro	11214	23100	2.06
28	Romania	17500	700	0.04
29	Portugal	17708	8500	0.48
30	Ukraine	18857	6600	0.35
31	Belarus	19211	7300	0.38
32	Netherlands	19500	3900	0.2
33	Ireland	23889	8600	0.36
34	United States	24000	88800	3.7
35	Malta	24792	11900	0.48
36	Luxembourg	25500	15300	0.6
37	Bulgaria	26957	6200	0.23
38	South Korea	27500	1100	0.04
39	Japan	30000	600	0.02
40	Estonia	30667	9200	0.3
41	Georgia	31739	7300	0.23
42	Italy	33056	11900	0.36
43	Taiwan	35385	4600	0.13
44	Croatia	38070	21700	0.57
45	Greece	38136	22500	0.59
46	Canada	40526	30800	0.76
47	Hungary	42308	5500	0.13
48	Slovakia	46111	8300	0.18
49	Macedonia	53556	24100	0.45
50	Denmark	54545	12000	0.22
51	Belgium	59310	17200	0.29
52	Poland	65000	1300	0.02
53	Kuwait	68889	24800	0.36
54	Spain	69333	10400	0.15
55	Azerbaijan	87500	3500	0.04
56	Switzerland	87885	45700	0.52
57	Serbia	93871	58200	0.62
58	Latvia	105556	19000	0.18
59	Qatar	106667	19200	0.18
60	Finland	123077	32000	0.26
61	New Zealand	132941	22600	0.17
62	Czech Republic	135833	16300	0.12
63	France	141818	31200	0.22
64	United Kingdom	150000	6000	0.04
65	Cyprus	151667	36400	0.24
66	Sweden	166316	31600	0.19
67	Australia	166667	15000	0.09
68	Austria	168889	30400	0.18
69	Chile	178333	10700	0.06
70	Slovenia	270000	13500	0.05
71	Germany	505000	30300	0.06
72	Norway	782500	31300	0.04

[jimbur]

Paul, talking of timelines, the second amendment was, I believe, 1791. This was just after the French Revolution and it is possible that the growing opposition in the European monarchies to the French experiment was seen in the US as a future threat to them.

[Scott]

Regardless of statistics, a gun is a gun. From my point of view the only people who should have a gun are the Police and Army, full stop. There should be absolutely no reason why a civilian should own a gun. All the stats in the world doesn't temper the fact that children were killed.

[FenceFurniture]

Pretty right Scott, but I guess you have to add in professional hunters and the like (feral animal control yadda yadda)

[pmcgee]

This was discussed on the ABC quite early in the year.

I believe in Switzerland (please don't shoot me if it's Sweden) a rifle is (unless recently changed) kept by law in every household. I note they are among the safe countries - although I am sure the program said this was wanted to be changed as they were being employed in domestic violence situations.

Paul.

Gun politics in Switzerland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

BBC News - Swiss gun culture comes under fire