Check out this chart

[jgreiner]

I found this stunning....not really surprising, but what a tool for arguing for our guns.

 

[BKExpress]

No surprises here. Thanks for sharing!

 

[cosermann]

Nice visualization. The data is freely available on line, but it's just numbers until you put it in a format like this. Then people go, "wow."

 

[jgreiner]

Nice visualization. The data is freely available on line, but it's just numbers until you put it in a format like this. Then people go, "wow."

Exactly. The anti gun types need pictures. Usually, I make them stick drawings.

 

[cosermann]

It looks like the maps on these two pages with the colors standardized. Same data sources cited.

Number of guns per capita by country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[BiscuitNaBasket]

I wonder how up to date this is. With Australia's gun ban / confiscation it doesn't seem to have a higher intentional murder rate than in the US but they have a significantly lower gun ownership ratio. Maybe it's just a population difference.

 

[cosermann]

I wonder how up to date this is. With Australia's gun ban / confiscation it doesn't seem to have a higher intentional murder rate than in the US but they have a significantly lower gun ownership ratio. ...

There are exceptions of course (compare Jamaica, low guns/high murder and Japan low guns/low murder for example). Cross-cultural comparisons of this sort are fraught with difficulty since we’re talking about criminal behavior (which is intertwined with socio/cultural/legal issues which differ from country to country), but it does show an interesting correlation. It also shows that violent crime is NOT tied directly to the prevalence of guns, per se, as the most important factor.

What's most interesting is looking at violent crime in places like the UK, and Aus. before and after their most recent gun control measures, and U.S. states before and after the passage of shall-issue legislation. This holds more of the socio/cultural/legal variables more or less "constant" while varying the firearms issue. Those sorts of comparisons also tend to show that more guns = less crime.

The simplistic gun control argument that, “if we get rid of guns, we’ll get rid of our violent crime problem,” is simply ridiculous; not only on its face, but it’s unsupported by the data.

And of course, all the gun control arguments are specious. They're just plausible political cover to advance an agenda of more control.

Whether they actually reduce crime, improve public health, etc. (which they don't), is beside the point.

 

[cosermann]

Ordinally speaking. . .

It's interesting to note that NONE of the top 30 countries in terms of gun ownership are among the top 30 countries in terms of homicide (according to the Wiki numbers).

Whereas 3 of the bottom 30 countries in terms of gun ownership are in the TOP 30 in terms of crime.

And then you have countries like North Korea, which is of course very LOW in gun ownership, but whose numbers you can't trust, and homicides committed by the N. Korean government against their own people are not counted as "homicides".

Anyway, lots of interesting ways to look at it.