The G word

German Lopez for Voxoffers a good overview of the problem of gun violence. One indisputable fact that immediately cuts through the bullshit is that the U.S. has far more homicide deaths by firearm than all the other developed countries -- and that is by an astonishing margin. Homicides by firearm per year per 1 million people are 29.7 in the U.S. The comparable number in Australia is 1.4.The U.S. is also unique in that it has -- again, by far -- the highest proportion of privately owned guns per person in the world -- not just the developed world, the entire planet. Number 2 is Yemen, by the way. The data are a bit old and I ' m sure the number has increased, but Lopez tells us that in 2007, there were 88.8 guns in the U.S. per  100 people. If you subtract children, that ' s more than one gun per adult. The highest comparable numbers in any developed country are around 30, and most have far fewer.Finally, the linear association between the number of firearms in a country and the number of firearm homicides is astonishingly strong. Here it is:The U.S. is actually not an outlier in the overall rate of violent crime. What ' s different in the U.S. is the rate at which people die from it. The difference, in other words, between a gun, and a knife or a club or a fist. The homicide rate in the U.S. is about 5 times that of comparable nations.Finally, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is taking his gun away. In Australia, after a mass shooting in 1996, the governme...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs