1. The United States’ homicide rate of 3.8 is clearly higher than that of eg France (1.0), Germany (0.8), Australia (1.1), or Canada (1.4). However, as per the FBI, only 11,208 of our 16,121 murders were committed with firearms, eg 69%. By my calculations, that means our nonfirearm murder rate is 1.2. In other words, our non-firearm homicide rate alone is higher than France, Germany, and Australia’s total homicide rate. Nor does this mean that if we banned all guns we would go down to 1.2 – there is likely a substitution effect where some murderers are intent on murdering and would prefer to use convenient firearms but will switch to other methods if they have to. 1.2 should be considered an absolute lower bound. And it is still higher than the countries we want to compare ourselves to.
2. There are many US states that combine very high firearm ownership with very low murder rates. The highest gun-ownership state in the nation is Wyoming, where 59.7% of households have a gun (really!). But Wyoming has a murder rate of only 1.4 – the same as right across the border in more gun-controlled Canada, and only about a third of that of the nation as a whole. It seems likely that the same factors giving Canada a low murder rate give Wyoming a low murder rate, and that the factors differentiating the rest of America from Wyoming are the same factors that differentiate the rest of America from Canada (and Germany, and France…). But this does not include lower gun ownership.
3. There are many US states that combine very low firearm ownership with very high murder rates. The highest murder rate in the country is that of Washington, DC, which has a murder rate of 21.8, more than twenty times that of most European countries. But DC also has the strictest gun bans and the lowest gun ownership rate in the country, with gun ownership numbers less than in many European states! It seems likely that the factors making DC so deadly are part of the story of why America as a whole is so deadly, but these cannot include high gun ownership.
slatestarcodex.com
I took the countries with the 100 highest murder rates. I added to the sample countries that compare to the United States culturally such as European countries, Australia, Japan, etc. I deleted countries for which I could find no gun ownership stats or countries that were small or obscure. My profile looked at 98 countries, or a pretty solid slice of all the countries in the world.
America is by far the country that owns the most guns per 100,000. In America, there are actually more guns than people. Our murder rate is much higher than that of our European counterparts. So far, the gun control hypothesis seems to be holding up.
But guns in America are very unlikely to be involved in murders. Our ratio of guns to murders is 20,696 guns privately and legally owned for every murder. Not every murder involves a gun. But the gun-control hypothesis suggests guns still make murder easier and more common.
The murder capital of the world is El Salvador. El Salvador has done a relatively good job rounding up legal guns. There are only 5,800 guns per 100,000 residents (compared to over 101,000 in America), yet El Salvador’s ratio of guns to murders is a staggering 53. Every year, there’s a murder for every 53rd gun in El Salvador.
The countries that have been most successful at limiting private, legal gun ownership are 1. Ethiopia, 2. Eritrea, 3. Haiti, 4. North Korea, and 5. Rwanda. Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Haiti all have higher murder rates than that of the United States. North Korea and Rwanda have slightly lower murder rates (4.4 and 4.5 per 100,000 respectively versus the United States at 4.88).
Let’s look at the countries with the highest concentrations of gun ownership (excluding Yemen and Iraq as active war zones). Guns per murder in those countries are,
- United States at 20,967,
- Uruguay at 3,777,
- Norway at 55,893,
- France at 19,747,
- Austria at 59,608,
- Germany at 35,647,
- Switzerland at 35,435,
- New Zealand at 24,835, and
- Greece at 26,471.
Norway is a particularly interesting example. It has 10 times the gun ownership rate of the United Kingdom, but only half the murder rate.
When one excludes Iraq and Yemen, not one of the countries on the list of the 10 highest rates of gun ownership also appears on the list of the top ten highest murder rates. In fact, the countries with the highest murder rates have markedly low gun ownership rates.
- El Savador (108.64 murders per 100,000/5800 guns per 100,000)
- Honduras (63.75/6200)
- Venezuela (57.15/10,700)
- Jamaica (43.21/8,100)
- Lesotho (38/2,700)
- Belize (34.4/10,000)
- South Africa (34.27/12,700)
- Guatemala (31.21/13,100)
- Trinidad (30.88/1,600)
- Bahamas (29.81/5,300)
It really doesn’t matter how you slice this data. The conclusion is inescapable: High concentrations of private, legal gun ownership do not correlate positively to increased murders. Indeed, you can look at almost any slice of data and conclude the opposite: Higher private ownership of guns can be strongly correlated to lower murder rates.
The data also exposes some myths I have heard about gun control. For example, I’ve heard activists tout Australia, which supposedly banned all guns. Australia has advanced a number of gun control measures over the years. Nevertheless, according to the data, Australia has a rate of private ownership of guns of 13,100 per 100,000 and a murder rate of .98.
Australia has almost twice as many guns per capita as the United Kingdom, for example, and a comparable murder rate. New Zealand has almost twice as many guns per capita as Australia but a lower crime rate.
Countries with both a low rate of private gun ownership and a low murder rate exist, but they are clearly data outliers. These include the Netherlands (3,900 guns per 100,000, for a murder rate of .61) the United Kingdom (6,200 guns per 100,000, for a murder rate of .92), Japan, and Portugal. Places like Norway, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany overwhelm those examples because they all have high rates of gun ownership and enviable crime rates.
thefederalist.com
Yes, as with the gun-happy United States, the murder rate is down in Australia. It’s dropped 31 percent from a rate of 1.6 per 100,000 people in 1994 to 1.1 per 100,000 in 2012.But it’s the only serious crime that saw a consistent decline post-ban.
In fact, according to the Australian government’s own statistics, a number of serious crimes peaked in the years after the ban. Manslaughter, sexual assault, kidnapping, armed robbery, and unarmed robbery all saw peaks in the years following the ban, and most remain near or above pre-ban rates. The effects of the 1996 ban on violent crime are, frankly, unimpressive at best.
It’s even less impressive when again compared to America’s decrease in violent crime over the same period. According to data from the U.S. Justice Department, violent crime fell nearly 72 percent between 1993 and 2011. Again, this happened as guns were being manufactured and purchased at an ever-increasing rate. winteryknight.com |
