Just The Numbers: Without Real Gun Control, We DO Have A Gun Problem

Louisiana – 10.16

Mississippi – 7.46

South Carolina – 5.41

Michigan – 5.06

Maryland – 4.70

Missouri – 4.64

Arkansas – 4.39

New York – 4.12

Pennsylvania – 3.97

Georgia – 3.93

Tennessee – 3.92

North Carolina – 3.87

Oklahoma – 3.64

Ohio – 3.54

Arizona – 3.53

There were 122,300 armed robberies committed with a firearm in 2011. The total number of armed robberies using knives or other weapons was 48,862.  The firearm robbery rate was 39.25 per 100,000.

There were 136,371 aggravated assaults using firearms in 2011.

(Source for everything above.)

There were 36,909 suicides in the United States in 2009. Of those, 18,735 (50.7%) were committed using a firearm.  (Source)

How we compare:

Compare our overall homicide rate (using guns and anything else) with other countries, starting with the top 5:

Mexico – 18.1 (per 100,000)

Estonia – 5.6

United States – 5.0

Chile – 3.7

Turkey – 3.3

Here are a few other countries, included for comparison:

Israel – 2.1

Canada – 1.8

France – 1.4

Poland – 1.3

Northern Ireland – 1.2

Australia – 1.2

England and Wales – 1.1

Scotland – 1.6

Italy – 1.0

Sweden – 1.0

Germany – 0.8  (Source)

Compare the number of firearm murders in the United States with the latest data from other countries:

South Africa – 31,918

Colombia – 21, 898

Thailand – 20,032

United States – 8,583

Philippines – 7,708

Mexico – 2,606

Slovakia – 2,356

El Salvador = 1,441

The counties above were the only countries reporting more than 1,000 firearm deaths in a single year. What about Europe, Australia and Canada? Here are some samples:

Germany – 269

Czech Republic – 181

Ukraine – 173

Canada – 144

Poland – 111

Spain – 97

Switzerland – 68

Australia – 59

Sweden – 58

Austria – 25

United Kingdom – 14

Compare our rate of firearm ownership with select other countries:

United States – 88.8 guns per 100 people

Yemen – 54.8 (second-highest in the world)

Switzerland – 45.7

Sweden – 31.6

France – 31.2

Canada – 30.8

Austria – 30.4

Germany – 30.3

Czech Republic – 16.3

Australia – 15.0

Spain – 10.4

Ukraine – 6.6

Poland – 1.3       (Source)

Only the United States and Yemen consider gun ownership a right, and Yemen is beginning to enact stricter gun control measures.

Though the United States has 4.5% of the world population, accounts for 40% of its civilian firearms.

The numbers speak for themselves. We have a problem in this country, and if you can’t see it, you’re blind. We have more guns than anyone else, but that’s not the problem. Proportionally peaking, Canada and most of Europe have a significant number of guns, yet nowhere near the number of gun homicides and deaths experienced annually in the United States. How do you explain three times the number of guns, but 40-100 times the number of gun deaths?

The difference seems to be that other countries seem to have a handle on their guns, and we do not.

If so many people were dying from any other consumer product, we’d demand answers. But when it comes to guns, we treat them as a sacred cow. The numbers don’t lie; our firearm statistics are more in line with third world dictatorships than a developed country. No other developed country is even close to us on this. Why aren’t we fixing it?