Numbers for Today

"I think it's time to analyze the comparisons being thrown around about the US verses Canada, the UK, and Australia.

These cherry picked nations used by gun-control advocates do not compare well with the United States when dealing with the issue of murder and/or violent crimes.

Omitting the use of the propaganda term "gun crime" one can see that actual violent crime in the US is not much different than Europe.

However, let us examine first the comparisons of the UK, Canada and Australia with the US using population parity rather than simply Per Capita, since Per Capita is misleading if the populations of the countries being compared aren't even remotely similar.

To gain this equivalency we must compare state of the US to these countries since the populations of these countries are five-twenty times smaller than that of the US.

The violent crime rate of countries like Canada and Australia are not lower than equivalent US states.

The idea that the US should be compared to the UK, Australia, or Canada as a whole is ludicrous, and disingenuous.

The UK only has a population of 63,000,000 people.

The US has 312,000,000, nearly five times more than the UK.

Total violent crime in the US (2010 Census figures) was 1,318,000.

Total violent crime in the UK (2010 Home Office Statistical Bulletin 2010) was 962,877 (omitting property crimes that may have involved a weapon).

So the UK has nearly the violent crime of the US, yet 1/5th its population.

A better comparison would be to take the three largest states by population (for density) of California, Texas, and New York state (78,000,000 people).

They had a total violent crime rate of 371,854 (using 2010 Census data).

Thus the UK's violent crime is nearly triple (2.6 times more) that of those states combined.

All of those states have less strict gun laws and more gun owners than the UK, with Texas having nearly no gun laws in comparison to the UK.

The United States has overall more gun owners than the UK has citizenry at 80,000,000+ known gun owners in the United States.

Thus it is to be expected that a country with five times the population should have a significant (at least 5 times or more) the homicide of the UK.

To contrast this, let us take a country like Russia.

Russia has a population of 141,000,000 with a total number of gun owners at 12,000,000 (approx) yet they have 5 times the violent crime (13,100 homicides alone) we have (source Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs report 2010).

As for comparisons of the US with Canada and Australia, the numbers speak for themselves.

Canada's population is 34,000,000.

Australia’s is only 23,000,000.

California alone has 37,000,000 people in it, and even it's gun control laws are less strict than in those nations.

California had 161,133 violent crimes last year (2011) according to the FBI crime stats.

While Canada had 437,000 violent incidents last year (according to StatsCan 2010 report).

Guess which place is safer?

If we're talking violent crime, California.

The population of Texas is only 25,000,000 people, which makes it comparable to Australia.

In Texas, they have virtually NO gun laws compared to Australia,

Yet the total number of violent crimes in Texas was 113,231.

In Australia their total number of violent crimes were 117,873 in 2011.

While Texas does have more murders than Australia, the numbers are so close as to be insignificant in so far as the availability of firearms having any measurable effect.

One can stake the claim that gun ownership didn't do anything to avert these murders, and that is what many (if not most) peer-review studies (like JAMA's) have concluded over the years.

However, depriving US citizens of their right to keep and bear arms for laws that do nothing either way, is clearly an infringement of their inalienable rights and bad policy.

If we compare the US murder rate to Europe as a whole, we find something rather interesting (EU crime statistics 2010).

Land Mass:

Europe- 10,180,000 Sq/KM

US- 9,826,675 Sq/KM

Population:

Europe- 836,398,000

US- 309,496,000

Murder Rate:

Europe- 4.83 per 100,000

US- 4.58 per 100,000

Gun Ownership:

Europe- 12,000 per 100,000

US- 90,000 per 100,000

Europe's murder rate of 4.83 per 100,000 is higher than that of the United States' 4.58 per 100,000, but has only 14% the civilian gun ownership of the U.S.

Conversely, the U.S. has 7.33 times the civilian gun ownership of Europe, but a lower murder rate.

What we must do at this point as Americans is to cease and desist with the emotional diatribes, vitriol, and pointless calls for nonsensical restrictions on constitutionally protected gun ownership.

We must realize that gun ownership is not the cause of crime in the US, even if on occasion horrific acts are committed with them.

In short, we do not punish 80,000,000 people for the actions of a few."

 




From the comments here. I think I'm gonna send this to my congress-critter.