Todays rant

[Rover]

WORLD MURDERS STATISTICS
From the World Health Organization:
The latest Murder Statistics for the world:
YOU MUST READ THE END OF THIS MESSAGE.
Murders per 100,000 citizens.
Honduras 91.6
El Salvador 69.2
Cote d'lvoire 56.9
Jamaica 52.2
Venezuela 45.1
Belize 41.4
US Virgin Islands 39.2
Guatemala 38.5
Saint Kits and Nevis 38.2
Zambia 38.0
Uganda 36.3
Malawi 36.0
Lesotho 35.2
Trinidad and Tobago 35.2
Colombia 33.4
South Africa 31.8
Congo 30.8
Central African Republic 29.3
Bahamas 27.4
Puerto Rico 26.2
Saint Lucia 25.2
Dominican Republic 25.0
Tanzania 24.5
Sudan 24.2
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 22.9
Ethiopia 22.5
Guinea 22.5
Dominica 22.1
Burundi 21.7
Democratic Republic of the Congo 21.7
Panama 21.6
Brazil 21.0
Equatorial Guinea 20.7
Guinea-Bissau 20.2
Kenya 20.1
Kyrgyzstan 20.1
Cameroon 19.7
Montserrat 19.7
Greenland 19.2
Angola 19.0
Guyana 18.6
Burkina Faso 18.0
Eritrea 17.8
Namibia 17.2
Rwanda 17.1
Mexico 16.9
Chad 15.8
Ghana 15.7
Ecuador 15.2
North Korea 15.2
Benin 15.1
Sierra Leone 14.9
Mauritania 14.7
Botswana 14.5
Zimbabwe 14.3
Gabon 13.8
Nicaragua 13.6
French Guiana 13.3
Papua New Guinea 13.0
Swaziland 12.9
Bermuda 12.3
Comoros 12.2
Nigeria 12.2
Cape Verde 11.6
Grenada 11.5
Paraguay 11.5
Barbados 11.3
Togo 10.9
Gambia 10.8
Peru 10.8
Myanmar 10.2
Russia 10.2
Liberia 10.1
Costa Rica 10.0
Nauru 9.8
Bolivia 8.9
Mozambique 8.8
Kazakhstan 8.8
Senegal 8.7
Turks and Caicos Islands 8.7
Mongolia 8.7
British Virgin Islands 8.6
Cayman Islands 8.4
Seychelles 8.3
Madagascar 8.1
Indonesia 8.1
Mali 8.0
Pakistan 7.8
Moldova 7.5
Kiribati 7.3
Guadeloupe 7.0
Haiti 6.9
Timor-Leste 6.9
Anguilla 6.8
Antigua and Barbuda 6.8
Lithuania 6.6
Uruguay 5.9
Philippines 5.4
Ukraine 5.2
Estonia 5.2
Cuba 5.0
Belarus 4.9
Thailand 4.8
Suriname ..6
Laos 4.6
Georgia 4.3
Martinique 4.2
And ....................

The United States 4.2 !!!!!!!!!!!!
ALL the countries (109) above America have 100% gun bans.

It might be of interest to note that SWITZERLAND (not shown on this list) has NO MURDER OCCURRENCE!
However, SWITZERLAND'S law requires that EVERYONE....
1. Own a Gun
2. Maintain Marksman qualifications....regularly
3. "Carry"........ a Weapon.
How come we never hear about this?

[Gerard]

According to Snopes, which tends to be quite reliable for this sort of fact checking:

Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world, with 45.7 guns per 100 residents (ranking below only the United States, Serbia, and Yemen in this measurement).

A list of countries by firearm-related death rate shows Switzerland as having 6.4 firearm deaths per 100,000 population per year, a figure considerably lower than in the United States (10.27) but higher than a number of other countries. As for gun-related crime in general, a 2001 BBC article reported that in Switzerland "the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept."

So to suggest that Switzerland has "NO MURDER OCCURRENCE" seems a bit of an exaggeration... although to be fair, this statistic is 'gun deaths' not 'gun murders' or plain old vanilla murders regardless of weapon used.

Then there's this news article citing the second shooting spree in Switzerland within a 2 month period, a bit less than a year ago, this one with 3 fatalities where the shooter was using a military-issue rifle:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-2 ... -laws.html

I'm not arguing with your core point, just suggesting that the numbers and facts generally ought to be somewhat accurate where possible. Hyperbole doesn't help anyone in this debate. I do feel that within some sort of reasonable limits every sane person (difficult question right there, considering the growing prevalence of depression for example) ought to have access to whatever tools/toys they wish to use. Stockpiling weapons of war doesn't seem to be a very healthy pastime for outright loopy folks, something I think we can all agree upon. And the cultural framework where gun ownership is in question is highly relevant. Consider the comparison, with Switzerland's gun-related murder rate being 1/7th that of the USA; what questions ought we to be asking regarding the gun culture? With Canada suffering slightly over 1/3 the gun murder rate of the USA while there are considerably heavier restrictions on gun ownership in Canada than the USA, this would seem to suggest at least considering that there is a non-linear relationship between access and violent use of these tools/toys. Such lists as the one you've presented are more or less typical of the sort of 'make the statistic meet the needs of the presenter' approach to propaganda. It's not nearly so simple a topic to consider. But it does need considering.

I watched a documentary on the Vice Magazine Youtube channel yesterday regarding weapons and murder in the Philippines. Seems the culture of the gun is very deeply ingrained there, and political murders are taking place at an outrageous rate, owing largely to the apparently accepted corrupt nature of politicians there. The most powerful gang wins the election by shooting everybody else. It's almost elegant... except for the 'by-catch' of civilian and family member deaths in these very messy assassinations, often involving small children as the trigger pullers. This is one of many examples demonstrating how the culture of violence is the thing which ought to be addressed, not so much the access to weapons themselves.

[FredB]

According to Snopes, which tends to be quite reliable for this sort of fact checking:

A list of countries by firearm-related death rate shows Switzerland as having 6.4 firearm deaths per 100,000 population per year, a figure considerably lower than in the United States (10.27) but higher than a number of other countries.

I'm not arguing with your core point, just suggesting that the numbers and facts generally ought to be somewhat accurate where possible. Hyperbole doesn't help anyone in this debate...
Consider the comparison, with Switzerland's gun-related murder rate being 1/7th that of the USA...

So 6.4 is 1/7 of 10.27? Could that possibly be hyperbole?

[Gerard]

So 6.4 is 1/7 of 10.27? Could that possibly be hyperbole?

Sorry FredB, seems I was lazy with the numbers. Or rather I was rushing without thinking much as I had family stuff to attend to and banged out that response with less attention that I ought to have given it. According to gunpolicy.org the USA suffered 11,101 gun-related deaths in 2011 with a population of approximately 310,000,000 people, while Switzerland had 22 with it's population at just under 8,000,000. Obviously not the ratio quoted in the Bloomberg article which states "the country has a gun homicide rate one-seventh of that in the U.S." - a figure I can't understand now that I think about it more carefully. Seems the author might have displaced the decimal by 7 places when I put those ratios together. But I'm not much of a numbers guy.

Anyway, my intended point was that we ought to consider the culture as being the more important element than the gun numbers or gun laws. The emotional and historical context seems much more usefully examined than the raw numbers in such lists. And as Americans seem so fond of reminding others, their culture is a culture of the gun, a nation borne of the gun. The Swiss do not generally think of themselves that way. I have a neighbour who is Swiss, an excellent shot in his youth, who was being groomed as a sniper but left the program during advanced training when he encountered human-shaped targets for the first time - until then he'd been shooting at round targets. The human shapes dotting a landscape at various distances just offended him, he couldn't accommodate that imagery. But in the USA it is trivially common to find suburban housewives taking weekend courses in self-defence where human-shaped targets are the rule and round targets are never even presented; Youtube is full of that stuff. Is my neighbour's attitude typical? Who knows, but in talking with him about Swiss attitudes that does seem to be his understanding. They may be more racist than average if this weekend's poll is any indication - slightly over 50% of the vote supporting severe limitations on immigration, flying in the face of their government's agreement with the rest of the EU - but at least their murder rate is rather low.

[visitor]

Sorry, Rover. Comparing the United States with a laundry list of third world countries proves nothing. Nothing. When compared with the developed world, the US is at or near the top of the list.

You might as well try to feel good by showing how much better the US is than your list in infant mortality, life expectancy or math & science education. Oh boy, we beat Swaziland AGAIN!

[joel]

As Mark Twain liked to say often, "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies, and statistics".

Joel

[BigAl]

The list of countries there, all which supposedly have a 100% "Gun Ban" is erroneous. There are British Commonwealth countries listed that I know allow some ownership of firearms, as I have taken part in shooting shoulder to shoulder competitions with members of their National Teams. I have also shot in international postal competitions with teams from several other of the listed countries.

Alan

[Dr. Jim]

This list has been circulation in the "gun community" of Canada as well, even though I note that Canada does not appear on it anywhere. Since we do have murders, gun accidents, and suicides, all using firearms I suspect that the list generator is both not competent and pushing an agenda. Lists in general are rather useless things, even when complete.

Dr Jim

[Rover]

You guys have made some good points, so I'm not going to jump into this again, though I do enjoy seeing you foam at the mouth.

I WILL leave you with one final tidbit, though. If the statistics from Washington, DC and Chicago were omitted (both heavily gun controlled), the rate of shooting deaths in the US would be diminished to a negligible amount.

[Tony C.]

I'm very doubtful about the stats you posted, seems like it just one of those thing posted on the internet from dubious sources.

These info has been floating around on the net for sometime, I have seen it on couple of other forum and has been totally discredited.
North Korea 15.2? where do they got this from? North Korean? Think they will admit having higher homicide rate in the workers paradise then the hated US imperialist?

You will not find any homocide stats on the WHO web site, there is a UNODC ( United Nation Office of Drug and Crime ) that kept homocide stats:

https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and ... icide.html

However your point is well taken, the avaiablity or the lack of firearms have very little impact on crime and homcide rate. In general underdeveloped third world countries with extreme social problems has much higher crime/ homicide rates than developed countries with stable democratic governments, regardless firearm policies.

[kaban56]

We also need to see the rest of the world, some of the more economically developed countries....
I am not here to make any arguments, but the two statistics give us a better picture. Maybe the correlation is somewhere else....

[oldcaster]

Deaths are tied directly to the hearts and minds of the group in question. As the U.S. goes farther and farther from most of its original ideology, the worse we will become but people aren't willing to talk about that because it isn't PC.

When enough people become criminals which means they ignore laws anyway, the more important guns in the hands of law abiding people becomes.

In other words, nothing wrong with guns but just the peoples thoughts.

[FredB]

We also need to see the rest of the world, some of the more economically developed countries....
I am not here to make any arguments, but the two statistics give us a better picture. Maybe the correlation is somewhere else....

Comparing and dwelling on "gun-related murders" is ultimately irrelevant, both to the persons who are murdered and to the society as a whole. What really matters is the overall murder rate, regardless of weapon used. Every time we obsess about only those murders which are "gun-related", we reinforce the absurd belief that guns somehow cause violence and murder. And we increase the likelihood that well-meaning but misguided people, and their often cynical political representatives, will make more laws based on that absurd belief.