Following the Oregon University shooting on October 1st, 2015 President Obama made reference to the significant difference between American homicide rates verses other countries. In the same news event he stated his belief that the problem in Syria was a complex problem. Seems when its trying to stop violence in a foreign nation its a complex problem, while the gun issue is a simple one. Here is how its not simple
Homicide Statistics
When gun-controlists reference homicide rates they uniformly then start stating the different gun homicide numbers between the United States and other nations. The chart shows the difference between Canada, Australia, Britain and the United States in gun homicide numbers. Such a simplistic chart works well for the gun control movements arguments,
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The problem is their story always begins to come apart when the actual homicide rates are shown. You see rates are based on the number of homicides or suicides verses the nation's population. This is done so you can compare a nation of only 30 million people (like Canada) to a nation like the United States with over 300 million.
Granted they are still 1/4th our number (1/3 if its Canada). But that's quite different then the image one got from the first chart where we are 85 times the number. |
But just because the gun control movement likes to add gun suicides what is the total suicide rate of these countries compared.
I didn't break it down based on guns since Canada, Australia and Britain all have extremely low gun suicide numbers. That being said, with such low gun related, how do they then have suicide rates this high; equal to 83% of the USA number for Great Britain and 90% of the US for Australia and Canada. The answer is restricting the means doesn't prevent the action; it just changes the means. |
But when it comes to charts I like this one. Comparing the non-gun murders and suicide rates of Britain, Canada, and Australia to the United States Gun related murder and suicide rates.
The reason: on a regular basis we have approximately 28,000 people die in the United States by firearms. But if we had Britains Non-firearm death rate we would have on average 37,000 murders and suicides without firearms used. That would be an increase of 9,000 deaths, the equivalent to the number of Americans murdered by guns: And it would be an increase. |