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Originally Posted by Id
Much more detailed maths than I managed.
There appears to be some problems in society that is exacerbated by easy access to guns. UK gangland culture shares a lot of those similarities, but with much harder access to guns, hence you get more stabbings etc. I lived in a housing estate in Salford, a very poor area of Manchester in the North for a while and it is not a good place to be growing up - but there is good education, health and social services in place so there is a bit more hope.
The difference comes down to ease of multiple targets imo.
As I said, I'm a gun owner. I think it is important to have an understanding of guns, knowledge of the limitations of your gun and the mechanics behind the process. But that can be achieved with a .22 much more effectively than a semi.
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Yes, no one likes to do the math when it gets in to 6 decimal places, i agree. What the math shows us is that less guns don't always equal less gun homicides. Take the country top on the list, Columbia. Their population is only 15% that of the US. The total amount of guns in their country is 2,714,000. Sounds like a lot but that is only 10% that of the US.... only ten percent.... Yet their total firearm homicides per year is nearly double that of the US.
There are at least 16 other countries which fall into that category of having a fraction of the guns the US has with more firearm homicides. And as mentioned before, 38 other countries where one of their firearms are responsible for more deaths than one firearm in the US. I'm not trying to justify the firearm homicide rate in the US, it's too high. I'm just trying to put things into perspective for those who are for taking up of our guns.
From my previous post, i find the most interesting fact to be; on a list of 60 countries ranked by homicides per firearm, the US ranks just below middle. (38 countries ranked higher and 22 countries ranked lower.) The countries on the bottom portion of the list, (less gun deaths) average double the amount of guns in their country than the countries on the top portion of the list. (more gun deaths)
For those missing the point... the countries with more gun deaths have less guns while the countries with less gun deaths have more guns. Go figure....
It seems that you don't really have a dog in this fight, but these facts prove that having less guns doesn't always mean having less gun related homicides.
And again, i'm not saying that some meaningful legislation can't be introduced to help curb some over all gun violence in America, but simply banning guns because they look scary isn't the solution. I'm not sure if you've been following the other debate threads, but in America, the guns that NY and CA are going after with their bans are responsible for about 60 of the firearms homicides per year. That's 60 out of about 13,000 deaths per year. You said you used to write legislation, does this make sense to you? If you really wanted to reduct gun violence in America, would you start there? If so, why?