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

[xchrom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/14/chart-the-u-s-has-far-more-gun-related-killings-than-any-other-developed-country/



The Sandy Hook Elementary shooting that killed 27, including 20 children, is already generating the same conversation that every mass shooting in America generates: Why are there so many shootings?

One piece of this puzzle is the national rate of firearm-related murders, which is charted above. The United States has by far the highest per capita rate of all developed countries. According to data compiled by the United Nations, the United States has four times as many gun-related homicides per capita as do Turkey and Switzerland, which are tied for third. The U.S. gun murder rate is about 20 times the average for all other countries on this chart. That means that Americans are 20 times as likely to be killed by a gun than is someone from another developed country.

The above chart measures data for the nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes all Western countries plus Turkey, Israel, Chile, Japan, and South Korea. I did not include Mexico, which has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.

[cantbeserious]

1. 25 Statistics That Reveal Everything You Need To Know About The U.S. Firearms Industry

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/statistics-firearms-industry_n_2303336.html?utm_hp_ref=business

On Friday, December 14, a gunman entered an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., and shot and killed 26 people including 20 children. Earlier that same week, an Oregon man shot three people at a shopping mall before taking his own life. A few months before that, a gunman entered a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and left having taken 12 lives.

Tragedies such as these have raised serious questions about a firearms industry growing larger and more powerful everyday. Today, it's easier for most Americans to access guns than it is to find mental health treatment. Such realities have set in motion a conversation about the nation's gun control laws, and the powerful industry such rules would regulate. So how big is the gun economy really?

Here is everything you need to know about the U.S. firearms industry:

31 billion - Economic impact of the firearms industry in 2011 in dollars.

19 billion - Economic impact of the firearms industry in 2008 in dollars.

4 billion - The number of dollars spent in annual commercial gun and ammunitions sales -- a 20-year high.

Snip .....

[xchrom]

2. +1

[unhappycamper]

4. We're Number 1!!!!!

[xchrom]

5. right?

[aandegoons]

6. You should have included Mexico anyways.

It gives the NRA something to shoot for.

[HiPointDem]

7. yeah, mexico seems a bit of an oversight if you're going to include countries like turkey, chile

& bulgaria.

[JI7]

8. how about libertarian paradise Somalia ?

[HiPointDem]

9. I think that 'developed country" is kind of a jello-y category. e.g. why is chile 'developed' but

not argentina or brazil or costa rica or honduras (all of which have higher rates of gun murders than the US?

I think it's more useful just to look at all the data, e.g.:

***

The Small Arms Survey...although it is from 2007, it collates civilian gun ownership rates for 178 countries around the world, and has 'normalised' the data to include a rate per 100,000 population.

With less than 5% of the world's population, the United States is home to roughly 35–50 per cent of the world's civilian-owned guns, heavily skewing the global geography of firearms and any relative comparison

So, given those caveats, we can see which countries have the highest ownership rates for firearms - and which have the highest gun murder rates.

The key facts are:

• The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world - an average of 88 per 100 people. That puts it first in the world for gun ownership - and even the number two country, Yemen, has significantly fewer - 54.8 per 100 people

• But the US does not have the worst firearm murder rate - that prize belongs to Honduras, El Salvador and Jamaica. In fact, the US is number 28, with a rate of 2.97 per 100,000 people

• Puerto Rico tops the world's table for firearms murders as a percentage of all homicides - 94.8%. It's followed by Sierra Leone in Africa and Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean


http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list


Countries with higher murder by gun rates than the US: gun murders/100,000 & guns/100

US: 2.97/100,000
88/100

Anguilla: 7.14/100,000

Argentina: 3.02/100,000
10.2/100

Bahamas: 15.2/100,000
5.3/100

Barbados: 2.99/100,000
7.8/100

Belize: 21.82/100,000
10/100

Brazil: 18.1/100,000
8/100

Colombia: 27.9/100,000
5.9/100

Costa Rica: 4.59/100,000
9.9/100

Dominican Republic: 16.3/100,000
5.1/100

Ecuador: 12.73/100,000
1.3/100

etc....


Then we can look at outliers on the other side -- countries with low rates of gun homicide but relatively high rates of gun ownership:

Austria: .22/100,000
30.4/100,000

Bahrain: 0/100,000
24.8/100

Canada: .51
30.8

Croatia: .39
21.7

Cyprus: .46
36.4

Finland: .45
45.3

France: .006
31.2

Germany: .19
30.3

Iceland: 0
30.3

...Switzerland: .77
45.7

No death figures for yemen, the second-highest gun-owning society...


So what does it mean? There's no obvious direct correlation between gun ownership rates and gun death rates. I'm sure there are problems with the figures -- there always are. For example, poorer reporting in some places, maybe more guns off the radar in those latin american countries, involvement of drugs and gangs, more regulation in european countries...

but here is the US we also have guns off the radar, drugs & gangs, and some degree of regulation, so i'm not sure it changes the picture that much. I have no problem with regulation, but I'm not so sanguine about how much increased regulation would change the picture -- mainly because i don't believe the availability of guns is the prime cause.

And I'm not so sanguine about regulation in these times, mainly because of the growth of the surveillance state. I tend to believe that the regulation would be used as an excuse to ramp that up more on *everyone*, and in matters having little to do with gun ownership per se.

and these mass murders of strangers aren't really typical crimes -- they're something kind of new (at least in their apparently increasing frequency). in fact, murder rates in the us have been going down if the stats are to be believed -- but these kind of crimes are seemingly going up.

if indeed this is the case, that seems a key point that should be investigated.

[KG]

10. autoxchromeDURec

[malaise]

11. Last year's numbers

48 people in Japan
8 in Great Britain
34 in Switzerland
52 in Canada
58 in Israel
21 in Sweden
42 in West Germany

AND

10,728 in the great USA.

[newfie11]

12. well if we look back at Chile's history we can thank the CIA for the guns there now

That goes for other Latin America countries AND Mexico. Our gun problem isn't staying at home, we feel the need to share and make life hell for everyone.