Worldwide Gun Ownership Vs. Homicides

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Here we go again, with pesky facts.
I can’t imagine the comments on this one on the original posting. I’m always amazed the way our enemies spin their nonsense when things like this are so clear.
 
Back in the late 80's or early 90's I read an article on homicides in Mexico where gun ownership is so difficult. There were more knife homicides than homicides of all kinds in the US. I've tried to find this article again but have had no luck.
 
CapnMac said:
We are just so ruuude, whith our factshaming and all . . .
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I fight a never ending battle to be positive and uplifting but if someone accused me of "factshaming", it would be hard not to say "Factshaming? Oh, you mean Idiot-shaming. Yeah, I need to work on that".
 
The graphic serves to illustrate that gun ownership is not the prime indicator of high homicide rates.
There are always other factors such as the economy, corruption and instability.

Otherwise Australia and South Africa should have similar homicide rates according to that graphic.

Compare UK to South Africa. South Africa has a higher gun ownership and higher homicide rate.

Some caution and background information is needed before attempting to arrive at conclusions from such a graphic.

By the way, when I worked in the trauma unit at Johannesburg hospital, we used to see 5 gunshot cases a day on average. Guns were fairly common in the population, some legal and some illegally held.
Yet even in those circumstances stabbings were more common. My record is 22 stabs in one night, 2 of those being stabbed by the same guy so call it 21 incidents.

I suspect stabs outnumber gunshots in most trauma units. You then open another can of worms regarding the relative fatality rates comparing the two injuries.

It is a complex topic and I don't think there is an easy way to arrive at a suitably canned answer.

Too many variables.
 
How can you let facts interfere with such an emotional agenda?

The more interesting fact is that BEFORE the AWB on 1994, the US homicide rate was 7.6 per 100K, the current rate is 3.6 per 100K. Granted this is not perfect, but as gun ownership has risen over the last 10 years, the homicide rate has dropped significantly.

Where the antis like to pad the stats are including suicides in the mix. Suicide does not equal homicide.
 
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While I do agree it is a very complex equation, I can not ignore the correlation. While civil unrest and custom may sway some areas, I must take this graph for it's face value. After all, it is from the United Nations.:)

Contradiction will not matter, still.:(
 
There are always other factors such as the economy, corruption and instability.
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Let's not forget ethnic/racial/cultural makeup as well. Many of the lowest areas have a homogeneous makeup in that regard as well as a small population - most of Scandinavia, for example have countries with populations in the 5-6 million range with a single majority religion and basic cultural beliefs; whereas this country is such an amalgamation that, except for a dozen or so bad areas, we are amazing and actually outside the statistical norm compared to the majority of the rest of the countries
 
CapnMac said:
Toss out just 5 US cities, and the US drops to below the Japanese.
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Hi CapnMac, I really liked this when I first ready it! Its extremely powerful if it can be verified.

A very quick search came up with this article showing the 5 major cities with the most murders in 2017:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/02/19/homicides-toll-big-u-s-cities-2017/302763002/

The total of these 5 is 1886 murders in 2017.

From wikipedia I come up with a total number of murders in the USA at 15,696 from 2015

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country

So the total for the US when removing the 5 cites with the most murders is 13,810.

From the above Wikipedia link the total number of murders in Japan is 395 from 2014.

I'd be really curious to see where you got this information from. I really want it to be true!

Im also pretty skeptical of the argument in the original post and map that more guns equal less crime on a global perspective. I personally think it's primarily a combination of two factors:

1 - The society must be high trust. As George P was alluding to this is usually the result to ethnic homogeneity along with a similar history and religion.

2 - The society must be high IQ. An individuals IQ is the single best predictor of all problems in society from of course violent crime to single motherhood to welfare consumption.

The USA is of course a mix of these two. At one extreme you have the high trust / high IQ regions of America such as East Asian and Jewish communities and on the other you have the 5 cities referenced above. As others have said its a very complex situation that no one on either side seems to want to have an "honest" conversation about.

Thanks, Dan
 
Dan Forrester said:
Hi CapnMac, I really liked this when I first ready it! Its extremely powerful if it can be verified.

A very quick search came up with this article showing the 5 major cities with the most murders in 2017:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/02/19/homicides-toll-big-u-s-cities-2017/302763002/

The total of these 5 is 1886 murders in 2017.

From wikipedia I come up with a total number of murders in the USA at 15,696 from 2015

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country

So the total for the US when removing the 5 cites with the most murders is 13,810.

From the above Wikipedia link the total number of murders in Japan is 395 from 2014.

I'd be really curious to see where you got this information from. I really want it to be true!

Im also pretty skeptical of the argument in the original post and map that more guns equal less crime on a global perspective. I personally think it's primarily a combination of two factors:

1 - The society must be high trust. As George P was alluding to this is usually the result to ethnic homogeneity along with a similar history and religion.

2 - The society must be high IQ. An individuals IQ is the single best predictor of all problems in society from of course violent crime to single motherhood to welfare consumption.

The USA is of course a mix of these two. At one extreme you have the high trust / high IQ regions of America such as East Asian and Jewish communities and on the other you have the 5 cities referenced above. As others have said its a very complex situation that no one on either side seems to want to have an "honest" conversation about.

Thanks, Dan
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To simplify what you have said culture, not gun ownership rate, is the key factor in determining crime rates. Culture varies greatly even regionally and this is reflected in crime rates.

I'd say the OP's map is accurate AFAICS. For once, the stats used do not include suicides specifically by firearm, while ignoring other countries' enormous rates of suicide by other means. Whenever stats are labeled "gun violence" or "gun deaths" it's a safe bet that suicides have been lumped in with murders. The two problems are so different that they bear no real correlation or shared solution.
 
In democratic form of governance the truth is irrelevant. What we need to do is find more members for NRA, GOA,.....and recruit new members into shooting community. Basically in this conflict we can not afford the other side to outvote us.
 
Dan Forrester said:
I'd be really curious to see where you got this information from. I really want it to be true
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Several sources out there--mostly condensations & digests of scholarly reports (including some CDC ones).

Because of the population variances, you cannot look at just the totals. Instead, you examine the rate per an aggregate number. This is typically a ratio per 100,000. Which allows more direct comparisons between less-populated places, like Australia, and more populated, like Japan or India.

Off the top of my head, from pure memory, the US ratio (corrected to remove suicides :fire:) is 1.8 per 100,000. Adjusted to remove 10 US cities, it drops to 0.7 per 10^5, which is well behind the "European" average of 1.6/10^5 (Anti's do not much like to talk about the murder rates in Scandinavia, or in the Adriatic nations). One of the 2005 CDC studies placed the US under 20th in the world when the violent (crime-ridden cities, and their populations), were factored out.
 
Toss out just 5 US cities, and the US drops to below the Japanese.
...
Adjusted to remove 10 US cities, it drops to 0.7 per 10^5, which is well behind the "European" average of 1.6/10^5
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Clearly the murder rates are higher in large population centers, as you point out.

This means that if the comparison is to be fair/reasonable/apples-to-apples then if some large population centers in one country/region are eliminated to change the stat for that country/region, an equivalent number of large population centers with similar statistics (relative to the overall stat for that country/region) should be eliminated in the other country/region as well.

Frankly, this kind of manipulation of the raw data muddies the waters and opens things up for (accurate) accusations of manipulating the data to achieve the desired result as opposed to just letting the numbers speak for themselves.
 
Could the maps showing North Africa being green actually be true or maybe just don't have good numbers for those regions?
 
Not every country tracks and reports homicides, and not every country that does report uses the same definitions.

I did a quick check of small towns near me in Utah and came up with a local rate of 1.1 per 100,000. That is similar to Denmark, Sweden, the UK, and Portugal. It's good company, but not nearly as good as Japan.

Among countries that report, the US is close to the median. Contrary to the propaganda stream, this is not a particularly dangerous country. We are in the middle .
 
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