Global stats on gun ownership & homicides...

[jskp229]

This popped up on one of the lists I'm on. I haven't had time to deep dive, but a cursory look tends to poke some holes in the anti crowd "facts". We have to be careful though as numbers can be twisted.


Excerpt from the email list:


"Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics: In light of the recent news and discussion of guns and gun control I spent some time analyzing the data regarding gun ownership and homicide world wide in more than 170 countries. I report various statistics regarding the relationship between gun ownership rates, homicide rates, and homicide due to gun rates... I combined these two datasets in order to assess the relationship between gun ownership and overall homicide rates. There is a lot of missing data, so for some plots not all countries are represented... In this chart the countries are sorted left to right by gun ownership rates (further right means more guns per 100 people). The US leads the world in guns per 100 people at 88.8. The US is at the furthest right. The red line indicates guns / 100 people. The blue line indicates homicides per 100,000 people. If increased gun ownership were correlated with increased homicide rates we should see the blue line increase as we go right. We do not see that... In this chart the countries are sorted left to right by homicide rates (further right means more homicides per 100,000 people). The red line indicates guns / 100 people. The blue line indicates homicides per 100,000 people. The US is the big spike in the red line in the middle. The US is about in the middle with regard to overall homicide rates. If increased gun ownership were correlated with increased homicide rates we should see the red line increase as we go right. We do not see that. In fact it seems to decrease somewhat as we move to the right... "



http://bit.ly/VKd47c



Let the debate begin...

 

[chammer]

I find it interesting that I just found this thread shortly after I posted to Facebook. CNN is really irritating the crap out of me with their one side reporting, and so I went and spent 5 minutes on Google to lookup some stats. Based on what I found (which sadly wasn't much for current years), I posted the following:

If only because the TV won't shutup about it, I want to throw this out there. This is not to minimize what happened recently in anyway, but most are following knee-jerk reactions and speaking from emotion without any idea about some facts.

In 2005 there were 10,100 homicides caused by firearms, the majority of which being handguns. Not assault rifles. Murders by any firearm type are either the lowest they've been since the early 1980's, or the lowest they've been in general.

A study published in 2011 in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that sepsis and pneumonia caused by hospital acquired infections killed 48,000 patients in 2006. A second study showed that bloodstream infections caused an additional 100,000.

In 2004 there were 42,836 men, women, and children killed in traffic fatalities. Another 43,443 in 2005.

So, when will we call for a ban on doctors and nurses? How about vehicles? It's clear both kill many more men, women, and children every year yet no one says a word.

This was sourced from both Wikipedia and medical journals. Please feel free to take 5 minutes and verify my information if you doubt the numbers.

Remember - Gun laws (or laws of any type) only apply to those who are law abiding. Criminals don't give a damn, and never will.