Geraint Rees wrote:
>
> On 12/24/01 9:40 PM, "James Rogers" <jamesr@best.com> wrote:
>
> > With respect to correlations between guns, murder, and violent crime in
> > general, of all the myriads of studies of various populations around the
> > world there is only one correlation that seems to be universal. That
> > correlation is that there is an inverse relationship between the number of
> > guns and gun owners in the general population and the violent crime rates.
>
> I believe this statement is at best misleading; at least for the violent
> crime of homicide. Here is data on homicide rate and household gun ownership
> percentages taken from
>
> http://www.cybersurf.co.uk/johnny/dunblane/homemain.html
>
> homicide gun ownership
> USA 7.6 48
> Switzerland 1.2 27
> Finland 3.0 23
> New Zealand 2.0 22
> Australia 1.9 19
> Sweden 1.3 15
> W.Germany 1.2 9
>
> A reasonably strong positive association between homicide rates and the
> percentage (OK, not number...) of households with guns is apparent.
The above data is quite wrong. Switzerland has a 100% household gun
ownership rate for all citizen households. It's the law, as a matter of
fact, and large percent of those guns are machine guns. I believe the
27% rate reflects the rate of *handgun* ownership.
Finland, similarly, according to the UN, has a 50% firearms ownership
rate.
The US crime rates include areas of the country where gun ownership
and/or concealed carry is banned if not restricted to a small
eco-politically connected clique. Separating the US into two polities of
pro and anti gun jursidictions results in the pro-gun jurisdictions
having a crime rate consistent with that of Switzerland.
The reason why this is necessary is that the US is the only country that
does not have all gun laws imposed at the national level.
>
> It's worth taking a look at figures 1-3 of the URL if you're interested. The
> document cited here is part of a UK Home Office submission to the Cullen
> inquiry about the Dunblane massacre (the 1996 killing of 15 primary school
> children and their teacher by Thomas Hamilton). If you need/want to look at
> the full judicial inquiry findings, they are at
> http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/scottish/dunblane/dunbl
> ane.htm
Dunblane was over 5 years ago. Since then, US violent crime rates have
fallen by half, (while gun ownership has risen by almost 40%), and
violent crime rates in the UK have continued to rise... as have violent
crime rates in Australia as well, since the gun ban took effect there.
Japan, which is similarly restrictive toward guns, is seeing a similar
rise in violent crime, along with a rise in suicide.
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