Over at 2 Crabs, my fellow American expats, no doubt as impressed as I am with the relative lack of crime here in the sceptred isles, have in the wake of the VT shootings, put up some Gun Violence Statistics. Without going into the actual sources of the statistics (The Brady Campaign can hardly be seen as an unbiased source of gun stats), I wish to interject a bit of a response to the underlying message of posting such statistics.
First, it is silly, in my opinion, to include suicides in any discussion of whether or not guns are a neutral or bad thing. Suicides are suicides, and have little to do with the method used. Yes, the easy access to handguns in the States means that more suicides will be committed with handguns, but the lack of access to a gun really doesn’t have any correlative or causal effect on the rates of suicide.
As to the actual rates of murders committed with guns, I think what is probably more useful (and telling) is the complete violent crime statistics for a country, as opposed to simply gun statistics. For instance, Nation Master has a list of murders per 1,000 people for most countries. On their list, the United States ranks 24th in the world with 0.042802 per 1,000 people, and the UK, 46th with 0.0140633 per 1,000 people, lower even than Canada (0.0149063 ), Iceland (0.0168499 ) and France (0.0173272).
As an adjunct idea here, I also find it interesting that the incidence of violent Assaults Per Capita, the numbers are far closer; with the US ranked 6th with 7.56923 per 1,000 people and the UK ranked 8th with 7.45959 per 1,000 people.
You will also find that in Total Crimes Per Capita, the situation is similar, with the UK ranked 6th in the world with 85.5517 per 1,000 people and the US ranked 8th with 80.0645 per 1,000 people.
So perhaps one could argue that access to firearms has a tendency to make Assaults more deadly on average, but not that they cause Assaults or deaths. There are so many factors that go into the (violent) crime rate in any locality that almost any set of statistics are non-authoritative. What about Police per Capita? The UK ranks 34th in the world, the US doesn’t even show up on the rankings. There are too many factors to take into account to simply trot out some statistics, biased or not, as a reaction to, or an explanation for, something like a massacre.
Tags: america, britain, crime, statistics, vt
These are the ramblings of 
In response to “Guns, Violence & Politics” I would like to address some issues that I feel might shed some light on the gun control policies (or lack of for some) in America. First, a tragic event like the VT shootings will always stir up an anti-gun arguement (and rightfully so). The sad truth is that the madman behind the shootings was on a mission to murder as many people as possible and he did so. Another sad truth is the when Cho purchased the weopons used in the shootings, he was breaking a federal law already in place that does not allow some one with any history of mental health problems to purchase or possess guns. It does go to show that even with laws on the books to prevent this from happening, it happened anyway. Even worse, had he wanted to, Cho could have readily got his hands on some serious weopons via the black-market, made a bomb off the internet, or a host of other horrible things that are illegal as well. My question to others would be: would more laws against guns would be equally as ineffective as the ones we have now if they too go unenforced? Everyone in other countries,for the most part, (esp the US) has a belief that their ways of doing something is some how better then some one elses way. Myself and others like me are on the fence when it comes to gun control in America. The fact is that ever controlling politicians when given an inch will take 10 miles. Throw in some ultra funded lobbying orgs and start changing the constitution and you might find yourself on a very slippery slope that will take away a lot more then the guns from the bad guys. Matter of factly, the bad guys might be the only ones left with the guns. If gun control is as effective as drug control in the US, we should stop now before we waste time and money on it. With or without guns isn’t a viable solution to the violent behaviour that manifests itself in our culture today. It can be argued that if some students at VT had been armed as well, they could have shot Cho before he killed 32 people….maybe not….who knows? Taking away guns from law abiding citizens won’t curb the problem.
matt,
I hate to take issue with yo because, by and large, your post makes sense. And I agree with a lot of it. However, your comment that “federal law does not allow some one with any history of mental health problems to purchase or possess guns” is not factual. When purchasing a firearm of any kind in the United States, one must complete a Form 4473. Form 4473, section 11, question f, asks “Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective (which includes having been adjudicated incompetent to manage your own affairs) of have you ever been committed to a mental institution?”
Cho answered no. He may have been directed by a court to be evaluated, but he was never adjudicated as in need of treatment or as incompetent. Like as not, he answered correctly. But let’s say that some judge had adjudicated him and had committed to psychiatric treatment for, say, a year. He gets out of hospital and goes to buy a gun. He answers the same question on the form “no”. How is the federal government to know that it is not correct. The ADA and HIPPA acts provide for all kinds of protections regarding the confidentiality of any records that pertains to one’s medical treatment. How/can/could a background run from a 4473 application get at the data? Interesting, eh?
To answer your question [How/can/could a background run from a 4473 application get at the data? ]. Simply put, one would wave their rights to confidentiality when they applied for the gun permit. The point I wanted to stress was that ineffective laws are still ineffective even when there are more of them. Again the real problem here has little to do with the availabilty of handguns and more with the responsibilty we all have to take the needed precautions. Wehave to heed the signs of caution when a co-worker or peer start to show signs of isolation, deep depression, lack of intrest in previously enjoyed activities etc…and we have to step up and call in the calvery , so to say, to be sure the information is being relayed to the proper athorities. That is a real pro-active solution that people can use. We are in big trouble if the best we can do to protect ourselves is what ever the poiticians come up with.
Saying that the UK has strict gun control and low crime isn’t telling the whole story. The UK has never had high gun crime rates, even before they banned handguns.
That’s why no one said that. What I said was that the statistics in the blog that I reference at the beginning don’t tell the whole story, and neither do any of the other statistics I trotted out.
Boing Boing has an article up about this as well…