People kill people..
For your reading enjoyment see the following site..
guncite.com
From the introduction:
International Studies
In 1993 a Swiss professor, Martin Killias, published a study of 18 countries concerning gun ownership, homicide and suicide. He concluded there
was a weak correlation between total homicide and gun ownership (total suicide rates were not significantly associated with gun levels). For a
partial criticism of his study see Dunblane Misled where using the countries studied by Killias, these researchers found a much stronger correlation
between firearm homicides and car ownership! More seriously, when the United States was included in the Killias study, a correlation between
total homicide and gun ownership was found. When he excluded two countries, the U.S. (high gun ownership, high murder rate) and Northern
Ireland (low gun ownership, high murder rate) the correlation was marginally significant. When only the U.S. is excluded the correlation
disappears. (Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Walter de Gruyter, Inc. New York, 1997.) Kleck concludes that "the
homicide-guns study was not international at all, but merely reflected the unique status of the United States as a high-gun ownership/high-violence
nation...Since the positive association Killias observed was entirely dependent on the U.S. case, where self-defense is a common reason for gun
ownership, this supports the conclusion that the association was attributable to the impact of the homicide rates on gun levels."
Using homicide and suicide data from a larger sample of countries (35) (International Journal of Epidemiology 1998:27:216. See International
violent death rates), Kleck found "no significant (at the 5% level) association between gun ownership levels and the total homicide rate in the
largest sample of nations available to study this topic. (Associations with the total suicide rate were even weaker.)" (Targeting Guns.) |
