Comparing murder rates and gun ownership across countries

Mar 31, 2014 | Featured

Charles Blow in the New York Times last year made the very common argument: “America has the highest gun homicide rate, the highest number of guns per capita . . . .”  In another story, the New York Times quotes researcher David Hemenway as claiming: “Generally, if you live in a civilized society, more guns mean more death.”  CNN’s Piers Morgan believes: “America has the worst incidents of gun murders of any of what they call the civilized world.”  Bloomberg’s Businessweek also made similar claims this spring.  The one common feature for these claims is that they rely on the Small Arms Survey.

So how do homicide rates compare across countries? (Click on figures to make them larger.  It is necessary to greatly enlarge the picture to read the names of individual countries. UNODC data.  Here it is as an Excel file.)

Much of the debate is focused on gun ownership rate data for 109 countries from the Small Arms Survey. There are real problems with this survey. They only provide sources for 20 European countries with survey data from 2005, that they adjust in some unexplained manner to use for later years. After repeated requestions over many years, the Small Arms Survey and Aaron Karp, who worked on these reports, have refused to provide any additional information.

Even registration numbers would be problematic. When Canada tried in the late 1990s to register its estimated 15 million to 20 million long guns, about 7 million were actually registered.  In the 1970s, Germany registered 3.2 million of the country’s estimated 17 million guns.  In the 1980s, England registered only about 50,000 of the estimated 300,000 pump-action and semiautomatic shotguns in the country.

Even in the US, there is evidence that surveys of gun ownership rates are not very accurate.  In many countries where gun ownership is illegal, surveys continually show zero gun ownership even when that is clearly not the case.

Or take the supposed rates of gun ownership for Israel (7 per 100 people) and Switzerland (supposedly 47 guns per 100 people).  Anyone who has ever been to Israel knows that this estimate is ridiculously low.  Indeed, in the past up to 12 percent of the adult Jewish population in Israel has carried handguns in public.

The problem with this survey excludes weapons that are technically owned by the government. The vast majority of guns in Israel are technically owned by the government, but if people have possession of guns in their homes for decades, the issue should be that public possession, not who technically owned the guns.  Similarly, at that time of the Small Arms Survey, all able-bodied Swiss males between the age of 18 and 34 kept their military weapons in their homes. After age 34, they could apply for permission to continue to keep their military weapons and the majority opt to do so. Only at age 65 are the Swiss given the option of purchasing these guns for their own private ownership. Israeli guns are also excluded for the same reason.  A 2011 vote in Switzerland to no longer require that the weapons for those in the military be stored at home was defeated in a 57% to 43% vote.

The Small Arms Survey claims that the United States has by far the highest level of gun ownership, with 88.8 guns per 100 people. Both Israel and Switzerland probably have much higher gun ownership rates, but including them, the way the Small Arms Survey does, biases the results so that those countries look lower than they actually are.  The US gun ownership is so high compared to other countries that it drives any regression results.

There are also other problems with the survey. For example, a much better measure of gun ownership would be the percentage of the population owning guns, and not the number of guns per 100 people as used by the Small Arms Survey. Presumably, the issue is whether people have access to guns, not the number of guns greater than one that an individual has access to.

In addition, what most people don’t understand is that homicides are not the same as murders.  Homicides add together murders and justifiable homicides (when a police officer or a civilian kills someone in self-defense).  In the US, during the five years from 2011 to 2015, there was an average of 11,577 firearm homicides and 8,786.4 firearm murders.  This gap is much larger in the US than other countries, so comparing homicide rates instead of murder rates exaggerates the US rate compared to other countries.

The homicide rates are also likely underestimated in a number of countries, particularly the worse ones.  In Venezuela, in 2015, the government claims that there were 18,000 murders, while the independent Venezuelan Violence Observatory says the number is almost 28,000.

Finally, murder isn’t a nationwide problem in the United States; it’s a problem in a very small set of urban areas.  In 2014, the worst 2 percent of counties accounted for 52 percent of the murders. 5 percent of counties account for 68 percent of the murders. Yet, even within these counties with all these murders, there are large areas without any murders.

Looking at all countries for which the Small Arms Survey measured gun ownership, and using the Small Arms Survey data the way that it measures gun ownership, implies that more guns equals fewer homicides.
Screen Shot 2014-03-31 at Monday, March 31, 3.17 AM

Usually only a small set of countries are used in any comparison, typically limited to so-called “civilized,” as Hemenway or Morgan calls them, or “developed” countries. It isn’t clear what is meant by “civilized” countries, so what can Americans learn from these other “developed” nations? Using the developed nations as defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), developed countries in fact show that more gun ownership as measured by the Small Arms Survey is associated with fewer homicides.  First, this is how homicide rates vary across developed countries.

Homicide Rates for Developed Countries OECD 2011 or latest year

The relationship between homicide rates and the supposed measure of gun ownership provided the Small Arms Survey shows that even with their obviously biased measure of gun ownership, more guns ownership is associated with fewer homicides, though the relationship is not statistically significant.

OECD and Small Arms Survey
Because the US is claimed to be such an outlier, it makes the relationship between gun ownership and homicides less negative than it actually is. (Regressions fit the regression line to “minimize the sum of the squared errors” so you can see how much extra weight one extreme value is given.)  But so what can Americans learn from these other “developed” nations?

Screen Shot 2015-03-24 at Tuesday, March 24, 6.20 PM

Yet, even though the cross-country data implies that more guns equals fewer homicides, this type of comparison isn’t very convincing. There is a real problem in using cross-sectional data. Suppose for the sake of argument that high-crime countries are the ones that most frequently adopt the most stringent gun control laws. What if gun control actually lowered crime, but not by enough to reduce rates to the same low levels prevailing in the majority of countries that did not adopt the laws. Looking across countries, it would then falsely appear that stricter gun control resulted in higher crime. Economists refer to this as an “endogeniety” problem. The adoption of the policy is a reaction to other events (that is, “endogenous”), in this case crime. To resolve this, one must examine how the high-crime areas that chose to adopt the controls changed over time —not only relative to their own past levels but also relative to areas that did not institute such controls. Below is part of a long discussion in The Bias Against Guns, Chp. 5 (More Guns, Less Crime also has a long discussion in Chp. 2).

Unfortunately, many contemporary discussions rely on misinterpretations of cross-sectional data. The New York Times recently conducted a cross-sectional study of murder rates in states with and without the death penalty, and found that “Indeed, 10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average, Federal Bureau of Investigation data shows, while half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average” (Raymond Bonner and Ford Fessenden, “States With No Death Penalty Share Lower Homicide Rates,” New York Times, September 22, 2000, p. A1.). However, they erroneously concluded that the death penalty did not deter murder. The problem is that the states without the death penalty (Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Vermont) have long enjoyed relatively low murder rates, something that might well have more to do with other factors than the death penalty. Instead one must compare, over time, how murder rates change in the two groups – those adopting the death penalty and those that did not.

It is because of this concern that we also provide another post that looks at crime rates before and after regulations such as bans.

Finally, as an aside, one has to be very careful in making comparisons across countries because numbers are not always comparable. For example, homicides in England and Wales are not counted the same as in other countries. Their homicide numbers typically “exclude any cases which do not result in conviction, or where the person is not prosecuted on grounds of self-defence or otherwise” (Report to Parliament). A more detailed discussion of the difference between “offenses initially recorded as homicide” and “offenses currently recorded as homicide” in England and Wales based on the outcomes of trials is available starting on page 9 here. While this adjustment reduces overall homicides by about 15 percent, it has a larger impact on firearm homicides because those tend to be the ones most likely to involve gang fights that are much more difficult to solve. The problem isn’t just that it reduces the recorded homicide rate in England and Wales, but there would be a sizable reduction in the reported US homicide rate if this approach were used here. For example, from 2000 to 2008 only about 62 percent of US homicides are even cleared by arrest. The numbers in the UK appear to be only adjusted based on cases where charges are brought. In that case, it is useful to note that in the US only about half of those arrested are eventually convicted (also here).

A time-series discussion of how crime rates change before and after gun bans is available here.

Other Countries bias down their homicide numbers

You also need to be very careful before relying too heavily on homicide rates in other countries. If the United States is relatively more accurate in measuring its homicide rate and other countries try to hide their rates, it will look make it look like the US has a relatively higher rate than it actually does. Take two examples.

Argentina — Some countries might deliberately mischaracterize homicides into another category.

The breakdown of official statistics also raises the critical question of whether the extent of youth homicides is being obscured. With gun suicides and accidental deaths separately categorized, many of the violent deaths involving a firearm that La Nacion reports are currently listed as “unknown intent” could be homicides. . . .

UKHomicides in England and Wales are not counted the same as in other countries.  Their homicide numbers “exclude any cases which do not result in conviction, or where the person is not prosecuted on grounds of self-defence or otherwise” (Report to Parliament).  The problem isn’t just that it reduces the recorded homicide rate in England and Wales, but what would a similar reduction mean for the US.

If taken literally, and there is significant evidence that in practice the actual adjustment is nowhere near this large, a simple comparison can be made.  In 2012, the US murder rate was 4.7 per 100,000, a total of 14,827.  Arrests amounted to only 7,133.  Using only people who were arrested (not just convicted) would lower the US murder rate to 2.26 per 100,000.  More information on the adjustment for England and Wales is available here and it suggests that while many homicides are excluded it isn’t as large as it would appear (in 1997, the downward adjustment would be about 12 percent). 

Firearm Homicides

Many gun control advocates prefer to look at only firearm homicides, not total murders. The United States has neither the highest firearm homicide rates for all countries or for developed countries. Among OECD countries, Mexico has the highest firearms homicide rate, with a rate about 3 times higher than the US rate.  Brazil’s and Russia’s are much higher, though Russia does not report firearm homicides so it is only a guess for that country.  Political issues, not economic ones, have kept Brazil and Russia from being full-fledged members of the OECD.

By the way, despite Israel and Switzerland having very high gun possession rates, their firearm homicide rates are extremely low. In the data shown below, Switzerland had a firearms homicide rate of 0.77 per 100,000 people and Israel has a rate of just 0.09 per 100,000.

Note that there are many countries that clearly have higher gun homicide rates than the United States but simply don’t report firearm homicide data. Indeed, while 192 countries report total homicides, only 116 countries report firearm homicides. The average homicide rate for the countries that don’t have firearm homicides is 11.1 per 100,000.  If you compare this next figure for firearm homicides with the first figure on this post for homicides, the apparent increase in the US ranking is simply due to the highest homicide rate countries not reporting their firearm homicide rates.  The median homicide rate for those that are missing is 8.7 per 100,000. Among the countries with higher homicide rates is Russia with a homicide rate of 11.6. The bottom line is that the countries that are missing the data are among the worst homicide countries.

Again, all the concerns provided over-relying on cross-sectional data still apply here.  In addition, the firearm homicide data is not available for many of the countries with the highest homicide rates, suggesting that this cross-sectional comparison is even much more misleading than the discussion on homicides.  Click on figures to enlarge.
Screen Shot 2014-06-27 at Friday, June 27, 11.55 PM
Screen Shot 2014-06-27 at Friday, June 27, 11.56 PM

The UNODC homicide report from 2013 is available here.

Regression estimates for developed countries.

OECD Small Arms Survey regressions

johnrlott

103 Comments

  1. Larry Stirling

    The flaw in all these analyses is assuming that the murder rate and gun ownership have anything to do with each other.

    First, the murder rate is not constant across the US and assigning the horror life in the ten most dangerous cities in the US with the entire country is simply a false representation. Gun ownership is widespread, the mass of murders is not.

    Second, have you taken a moment to review the historic and ongoing murder rates throughout Africa?

    Millions are slaughtered and you are whining about the relatively tiny murder rate in the US? What about Russia, China, North Korea, and any of the Muslim inspired wars?

    If it is the loss of life or murders you are concerned about turn your attention to where it is a real problem.

    Or is that too dangerous for you?

    Larry Stirling
    San Diego

    • mirgc

      You are partially correct. I think the data was more of an attempt to demonstrate that how violent a country is, is independent of gun-ownership. i.e. guns don’t lead to more killing, but rather the culture is more to blame/credit.

      Conversely, if some of those countries would allow their citizens to arm themselves, there would be fewer roaming bands of machete wielding warlords.

      Note: My wife is from one of those countries with high homicide, but near non-existent gun ownership. Her father (owner of the only small store in the village) used a machete has his personal defense weapon. Which he had to use a couple of times to defend his store and family. His wife and daughters? They didn’t have much to equalize their smaller stature and physical strength.

    • Gary

      So, how many thousands of death a year does it take to become a “real problem” here? It does not seem rational to me to not deal with a problem because someone else has the same problem on a larger scale.

      • e

        I submit to you that the problem is behavior, not firearms. If you want to stop gun crime stop plea bargaining for violent crimes. And work to re-instill a respect for human life. Since the misguided 1962 supreme court decision taking God, prayer and the Bible out of schools (seems it WAS “Constitutional” up till that point,) and the horrendous 1973 decision legalizing the slaughter of humans in the womb our respect for human life has diminished considerably.

        • Dennis

          Right, because we all know that Moses’ slaughter of the kingdoms, including women and children, are a great example of respect for human life.

          • KuhnKat

            So Dennis, second guessing GOD now??

            HAHAHAHAHA

            Oh wait, you don’t believe in God. You think you are an evolved mess of chemicals. Mess is probably correct…

        • Diane Jettinghoff

          Sorry, but emphasizing Christianity in government and public schools has ALWAYS been against the Constitution as per the very first Ammendment. The separation of religion and government is one of the most important fundamentals of our country so that all, no matter what a person’s religion is, they are free to worship or not worship such as they believe, and not influence government according to their beliefs. Unfortunately, there has always been a false idea of this issue perpetrated by politicians who want to exert power over others – especially minorities. Would you like a Catholic making political decisions based on their philosophies and forcing you to go to mass; how about Buddists ; (and this is especially good) how about an Atheists? Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention God, supporting the First Amendment. All faiths and beliefs have good and bad people, including Christianity.

          • Chili Dogg

            Just for the record, the Constitution does state ‘…in the year of our Lord…”.

          • T. J. Anderson

            Diane, please read the constitution and try to understand it the way our Founding Father’s intended it to be used. In their day, they had a king who was forcing his subjects to abandon their religious believes and join the Church of England. Many people from all over Europe came to the new world to escape forced religion. The idea our Founding Fathers put in the constitution was not to separate religion from government or education, but to keep the ruling authority from mandating a particular type of religion and forbidding all others. Your argument is sad… presuming religious influence is somehow bad or evil. The base of any legitimate religion is decency and good will. The absence of religion is the absence of a moral, ethical and principle center. Can religious people do bad? Of course. Can non-religious people do bad? No… they have no basis to determine good or bad. Anything goes! In any event, try to understand the constitution the way it was intended.

          • Dave

            I believe you actually need to READ the US Constitution and also the Bill or Rights. Me being Catholic you may think I am biased, but I also have friends who are non-religious and other religions. The First Amendment does not state anything of separation of church and state. What it does state is that there shall be no Established Religion. Also, you maybe interested in checking out that the Declaration of Independence states we are granted the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness and those rights have been granted to us by our Creator (yes it is Capitalized). Go read it. Then go read the Bill of Rights. Even though I am Catholic, I don’t think religion should be taught as a class in public schools to keep everyone even, but if we are going to treat the Islamic faith with respect, maybe we should treat the other Christian, Jewish, Pagan, Buddhist, etc. faiths all the same, too. No special treatments for any religion. If we allow Muslims to be able to pray at their hour they must pray (yes I have a few friends who are practice their Islamic faith), then the same courtesy should be offered to the others.

            Just my few cents about how you should read the Bill of Rights and open your eyes about what rights we all have.

        • NEIL C. REINHARDT

          Too bad for those espousing Christian religious propaganda that while American Atheists, who are mostly all former Christians and who are at least ten percent of the population, are, according to US prison intake records, less than 1/2 of one percent of those in prison while the same percent of Christians in the population (75%) are in US prisons.

      • Bill

        Maybe we should eliminate cars using your same rational

        • Ross

          Absolutely, we should! Cars accidents do kill people. Self-driving cars are coming and will hopefully fix that. Better yet, Americans should get with the program and use more public transportation.

          • Bsampler

            Let them eat cake! is what you just said.
            I really hate the that most myopic piece of crap advice ‘Americans should use more public transit’. That just means you have only ever lived in a city. And you have no working knowledge of the rest (majority) of this country. For example, pick any town in central NY state, and tell me what mass-transit you would use to go to the doctor or grocery shopping?

          • OldRed

            A self driving car will have to be programed to pick the least number of people to kill when presented with a situation it has no way out off.

            Driving down a 2 lane road at 70 MPH and a school bus pulls out on the road from a side road that you can’t miss. This is a real accident the driver of the rock truck did the best he could to stop he only killed four out nine kids.

        • Artaxerxes

          We don’t ban cars but we do require a license and strictly regulate their use, with constant checks that the operator is in fact following the law. Are you sure you want to continue with this analogy? Because I’m perfectly fine with it.

          • Mark

            Well yes actually vehicular deaths in the US are higher than guns, even though vehicles are far more regulated.

          • Bill

            (not the same Bill) – Driver’s licenses don’t require the same waiting period and background check for mental illness. In New Jersey, drive the heavily traveled route I drive daily, you will see people driving in ways that demonstrate total disregard for laws, regulations, their own safety, and the safety of others. There is little to no effort to “strictly regulate their use, with constant checks that the operator is in fact following the law.” If people threatened the same way with guns as they do with cars and pickup trucks, anyone would agree that shooting back is self defense. If someone gets drunk (or maybe just texting their friends) and kills someone with a car, quite often they just get a fine. If someone kills someone with a gun, they go to jail. Cars don’t kill people, PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE!

          • Bill

            Forgot one point. A couple of years ago, a coworker was murdered by a drunk driver who was going the wrong way on an interstate highway. The drunk had been arrested and convicted of the same crime previously. I have now found any indication that his case has even gone to trial yet and he is out and conducting business on the internet. If his crime had been a gun crime, he would have been prevented, by law, from owning or operating a gun. No so with a car! Come on people, murder is murder – stop blaming the tool and hold the person responsible!

          • Pbeagler

            I will. Just because someone has a license to drive does not mean they will not accidently or purposely kill someone while driving. And, anyone can drive without a license. It’s not legal but people can and do drive illegally. Let’s not forget what happened in France recently.

          • Beau

            Under motor vehicle law, it is a privilege to operate a motor vehicle, not a right! Do you want to keep going with this analogy? I am perfectly fine with it! Second amendment rights versus driving a car. What the?

        • Shawn Gunnison

          @ROSS

          “Maybe we should eliminate cars using your same rational”

          Uhhhh… no. Guns don’t drive me to work everyday. They don’t help me travel to see family and friends. Guns don’t drive people to hospitals. Guns do ONE THING… fire bullets. To compare a car vs gun is just asinine.

          I say this with my .45 and .308 within an arms reach.

          DONT BE STUPID ABOUT THIS.

          And it’s “rationale”, not “rational”.

          • NEIL C. REINHARDT

            These four facts prove gun control does no work and thus is stupid.

            Fact 1. Intelligent logical and rational people know the rate of murder / death is the important factor.

            Fact 2. Cars are registered, drivers are trained and licensed and yet over 300,000 Americans die from car accidents every year.

            Fact 3. Logically the most effective gun control is to make all guns illegal to own.

            Fact 4. Yet in the rate of murder in many countries where all guns are illegal are from a little times higher to many times higher than the rate of murder by guns in the USA are.

      • Dave Conner

        I see nothing in this article that suggests we should not deal with the problem of violent crimes. It only challenges the statistics that are used in an effort to promote the disarming of America.

        A disarmed America has no defense against tyrants who historically always appear to subvert undefended liberties.

        If you are not aware of this phenomenon, it is a testament to the effectiveness of your forefathers who have purchased your insulated innocence with hot lead.

        • Jeremy McQueary

          Oh right, because that’s certainly happened recently. That’s the paranoid delusion of sycophants who can’t think for themselves, which amazingly covers quite the demographic in this country. A bunch of scared citizens gobbling up the rants of fear-mongers. So very very afraid of everything that differs from your self-perpetuated norm, a norm that is fed to you from your chosen source. I own a gun for defense, but not from the government, that kind of craziness I leave to nut-jobs hiding away in their cabins with their stockpiles. Was it not that long ago that our society looked on that kind of behavior as overly-paranoid and dangerous? Why is suddenly normal to think that one day martial-law or some kind of tyrannical rule will overtake our democracy? I’m more worried about party lines splitting the country in two. The line dividing the two parties keeps getting deeper and deeper, but over what? Nothing is so different about the real core issues of our country that we should all be divided like this, it’s ridiculous. We all want food, shelter, clothing, and good educations for our children and future generations, don’t we? Am I wrong in thinking that?

          • Andrew

            It’s not that crazy, the Boston Bombing proves how quickly a militarized police force turned citizens into prisoners in there own homes as they went door to door violating all rights to privacy in a matter of a couple hours. If you know about economics in the US and the system on which we rely it then it would be silly to think that an inevitable crash isn’t in the near future. Yes we are all civil until there isn’t enough food and water to go around. Take the Cliven Bundy standoff for example, they sent a high level SWAT team but they approached in a slow mutually respective way and nobody was hurt because no aggression was initiated. Now compare that to how the Ferguson protestors were engaged. See the difference when the state knows an equalizing force is present? I’m just not overconfident in our government in a crisis….

    • Kevin

      I must say I’ve never seen an article use charts and graphs repeatedly to prove itself wrong. We have relatively few homicides and own a high amount of guns per capita. Thanks for doing our work for us bozos.

    • joe

      please show me the gun ownership rates in your headline. The “rates” you site are per capita rates, not ownership rates. not even close to the same thing. by your logic, my block has a 100% ownership rate because we have 10 neighbors and ten guns. actually it is 10% because I own 10 guns and my neighbors own zero.

      • johnrlott

        Thanks, Joe, but isn’t that exactly what was discussed in the post? “There are also other problems with the survey. For example, a much better measure of gun ownership would be the percentage of the population owning guns, and not the number of guns per 100 people as used by the Small Arms Survey. Presumably the issue is whether people have access to guns, not the number of guns greater than one that an individual has access to.”

    • Deborah Holloway

      It is sad you have to say we are no worse than Russia or North Korea. Though actually we have a higher homicide rate than Russia, slightly.

      • KuhnKat

        Uh, NO. We do NOT have either a higher homicide rate or higher gun homicide rate than Russia. This survey did not find that and neither do others that have been done.

    • John Weiss

      So, people who’s kids have been murdered in their classrooms should stop “whining”? Yeah, they’re such whiners.

      How about the idea that, even if there’s someplace worse in the world, we should always try to improve our own society.

      • Pete

        Did you know that kids have a greater chance of dying in a school bus accident than being shot in school? Or that schools have never been safer today than any other time in history?

  2. Eli McLaughlin

    What is not usually shown is that the vast majority of murders occur in the cities with the strictest gun control laws.

    • josh

      I agree and the reason why it’s higher is because it makes it a lot harder for the people who are responsible gun owners to have guns. The people who do murder are not going to care about breaking a few extra laws to get the gun.

      • Tucason_Jim

        I want to point out that, because crime was such a problem in big cities, that gun-control was instituted as a solution. The strict gun laws have not produced the high crime rates… but, they have not solved them either.

        • johnrlott

          Dear Tucson_Jim:
          If you read the above post, you will note this is a criticism that we raised about using cross-sectional data. Fortunately, there is a way of fixing this concern and that is looking at the changes in many places before and after they ban or regulated guns. For example,

          http://crimeresearch.org/2013/12/murder-and-homicide-rates-before-and-after-gun-bans/

          You can see the book More Guns, Less Crime for additional discussions on regulations more generally.

          Thank you.

          • JIm

            Unfortunately, this fix doesn’t really work. It’s an improvement to be sure, but it doesn’t “fix” the problem. The real question is whether gun laws in a specific location result in fewer violent crimes than there would have been in that same location without the gun laws. Comparing murder rates before and after the implementation of the laws can only tell us whether or not the rates went down afterwards, not whether they were lower than they would have been without the laws.

            All of these analyses make assumptions about the root cause of violent crime. Comparisons across place, assume that the background causes are similar in the various places examined so that gun laws would have similar effects. Comparisons across time assume that background causes are relatively constant across the time interval and that the place studied is sufficiently causally isolated from nearby areas. There are, of course, various ways to address these assumptions, but these in turn make other assumptions that are no more warranted. What is lacking in all of this discussion is not data and more exacting correlational studies, but a serious look at the various causes of violent crime generally. Trying to isolate the effect of a single type of variable, gun laws, on a phenomenon that is poorly understood and for which the variable is likely not a major contributor, is not likely to produce helpful results regardless of the “fixes” applied.

          • johnrlott

            Dear Jim:
            It works in the sense that every single time that guns have been banned, murder rates go up. It is hard to think of some other factor that is left out that changed at all these times that could otherwise explain the increase. If you can think of such a factor, please share it with us. In any case, the two posts that are put up on this website are meant to deal with the cross country comparisons that are frequently made in the media. If you want a detailed comparison that accounts for thousands of other factors, the US provides 51 different laboratories to test out the impact of gun control laws and it is possible to make extremely detailed comparisons that allow you to account for different factors that can impact crime rates (See “More Guns, Less Crime”).

          • JIm

            John:
            It’s trivial to come up with factors that would account for subsequent increase. The simplest ones involve factors that themselves increase over the time period. Pick any factor that you think is related to violent crime, e.g. poverty rates or population density. If those increase over the same time period as the analysis, then crime rates might increase even if the gun laws had a supressive effect. You’ve already noted that there is a problem in cross-location analysis as locations with higher violent crime rates are those that tend to enact gun laws. If it turns out to be true that locations that enact gun laws not only have higher background crime rates than other locations, but that those crime rates are increasing (i.e. if the derivative of the violent crime rate is positive) then a pre/post analysis runs into essentially the same problem as cross location analysis. Both types of studies rely on the background causal factors being constant across the comparison. Without a clear analysis and statistical control of these causal factors, we can only rely on bare assumption that they are. Diachronic analysis is likely an improvement, as a single location is more likely to be similar to itself at an earlier stage than it is to be similar to a different location. (At least this is true in the absence of a clear causal account of violent crime. If we had such an account, locations could be matched on factors.) However, diachronic analysis in no way “fixes” the problems inherent in cross-locational analysis. Instead it simply moves the problems to comparisons across time rather than across location. For this to be a fix, we would need to have reason to think that the causal factors are relatively invariant across time in a single location. Whether this is more likely to be true than that causal factors are relatively invariant across reasonably selected locations depends upon what those factors are. I haven’t seen that we have much actual evidence in favor of diachronic analysis being better, though it’s not implausible as a guess.

            Again, it’s not that diachronic analysis is a bad thing, or that I can point to a specific factor on which it fails (gun violence is not my research field.) Rather, I just want to point out that the diachronic analysis you refer to doesn’t fix anything. It may plausibly be thought to somewhat decrease the issues involved in cross locational analyses, but until we have a clear idea of the causal background we don’t really know whether, or to what degree, it does so. This is a general problem with correlational studies, whether synchronic or diachronic. It is always tempting, but almost never justified, to draw causal conclusions from them.

        • KuhnKat

          You suggesting that Chicago, DC, and the rest of the Democrat plantations had higher murder rates BEFORE their gun laws?? I don’t believe it. Y’all gonna have to show some proof on that speculation.

      • Spikealee

        thinking of the man that just shot up and killed innocent people in a movie theatre in Lafayette. He had been denied a gun at a legitimate gun store, but then went to a gun show, and though he had documented serious mental issues, his family was terrified of him, and that is documented, , he still bought a gun at one of the “gun shows”.. The gun shows should be illegal! If you want a gun, go to the gun store and apply for it. Then have the gun shop actually look at the person’s criminal and mental health records!! These shootings have Got to stop. Putting our heads in the sand saying well, “Russia or Uruguay has more” REALLY? That is one sorry reason for allowing this mass murder to continue. Schools, churches, movie theatre’s , What does it take to get these people that sell and sanction these Gun Shows to realize they are a scourge to our country. People have the right to walk out of their door, and not get shot and killed. It happens Every day.

        • Bill

          If so many knew that he had mental problems and posed a danger to himself and others, WHY WASN’T HE IN A MENTAL INSTITUTION RATHER THAN OUT IN SOCIETY? We used to quarantine sick people (both physically and mentally) to protect society. Now (because it is an invasion of their privacy or maybe they are mentally incompetent enough to vote for my political party?), we accommodate and grant special privileges to people who represent a danger to others. Look up the full story of Typhoid Mary. She didn’t need a gun. She just went back to work preparing food.

        • Sineater

          He wasn’t documented to have serious mental health issues. He was brought before a judge, had the opportunity to be committed, but the judge sentenced him to an ‘evaluation’ which by law had to be conducted within a certain time frame after which he was released into the general public. The mental health officials that oversaw the evaluation did not ever either petition a judge to commit him OR report his mental status to the state authorities where it was conducted. Another tribute to the effectiveness of the American Psychiatric Association.

      • John Weiss

        At a recent community meeting with law enforcement here in my city (San Francisco), an attorney with the law enforcement apparatus said it was common knowledge, when he was a kid, that after the local gun show, where people could easily stock up on guns, with no background check, there was always easy access to those same guns on the black market, to teenagers on the street. Teenagers who are murdering each other. Background checks– common sense? Ending gun shows– common sense?

    • Robert L Waters

      Eli,
      You are absolutely correct in what you said–if you take away the deaths in Chicago, Detroit,St Louis ,New Orleans and New York (I may be wrong about NY, I know there are 5 cities) then we go all the way to third from the bottom and these cities have the absolute strictest gun laws in the nation. With the number of firearms and firearms owners I would venture to say that 98.9% are law abiding and will never be a problem to LEO’s or anyone else. As far as the mass shootings most have been occasioned by disillusioned persons with mental health issues or misfits who just never could figure how to fit in. As a firearms owner I am concerned about the false and misleading “facts” and “surveys” that are being foisted as gospel.

      • johnrlott

        Sorry, but that claim about removing the murder rates for 5 cities is simply not true.
        Chicago 411
        Detroit 298
        St Louis 159
        New Orleans 150
        New York City 333
        Total 1,351

        Removing those five cities would reduce the total murder rate for the US from 14,249 to 12,898. For a comparison across countries see http://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/, this change would not appreciably change the US rank.

  3. Grant

    The comparison of guns per population only accounts for legal guns, not illegal guns. Illegal guns are the ones used in 99% of all gun crimes. Also look at the statistics based on crime in the city compared to countryside and you will find the cities are the problems. Now look at the laws, strict gun control laws do not prevent criminals from committing gun crimes, because they do not purchase them legally and criminals do not care about laws.

    People are not just going into a gun store, buying a gun and then going to commit a crime. We know how criminals are getting their guns, but those statistics aren’t shown because then it shows the real truth.

    Now look at which party runs these cities and the crime rates and compare them with other cities.

    My research shows that gun crimes are a democrat problem, that’s why they need gun control, actually they need to learn to control themselves.

    For example; Black offending rate (34.4 per 100,000), was almost eight times higher than whites (4.5 per 100,000). By offending, I mean gun crime against another person.

    I’m not making this stuff up, I have tons of statistics regarding this stuff. More guns does not equal more crime, as a matter of fact.

    “But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow. …
    For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding.”

    • Blake

      I think if you look at where their data comes from, they consider all civilian (non government purchased) guns, not legal vs . Illegal guns. It isn’t from a door-to-door census of people asking who has gun.

    • Mojo Bone

      Leaving aside the obvious racial bias in your post, the fact is, most guns used in crimes were originally obtained legally, (upwards of 90%, by most estimates, but it’s probably even higher) or semi-legally, through straw purchases, and you can bet the gun sales figures, at the very least, are accurate. According to a former gunrunner of my acquaintance, firearms are commonly purchased new through intermediaries or on the secondary market at gun shows in West Virginia (and places like it) where gun laws are lax, for later sale to felons in NYC. (and places like it) The same thing goes on in Indiana for sale in Chicago, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the US.

      Criminals as a class can be pretty stupid, but organized criminals are smart enough to assess risk; stolen guns are difficult to resell, the serial numbers are in a database, once the theft is reported, leaving a very small window to try to pawn or resell to anyone who’s not already a felon. Straw purchases are much safer, (they don’t involve breaking into the domicile of an armed homeowner, for starters) as the source usually doesn’t report the transfer; if the gun turns up in the commission of a crime, they just tell police they didn’t know the weapon was missing.

      • johnrlott

        President Obama’s claim was that the US accessibility to guns is what causes our high murder rate. My response was only to take the data that he was referring to and say that in fact in that simple relationship the opposite was true. The US has neither the highest homicide rate nor the highest mass violence rate. Nor is there the causation that he claims. I think that lots of factors matter and that is the reason I have written books that literally account for thousands of other factors. If this simplistic discussion is racist, you might want to take up your claim with Obama because he is the one who decided the initial comparison.

        As to the 90% claim you assert, the number is quite debatable for the US, but note that in the countries were guns are banned (e.g., Russia and Mexico) or in countries were only a couple percent of the population legally own guns (e.g., Brazil) you have a murder rate that is 2.5 to 5 times higher. Given that, your notion of gun theft isn’t relevant. The point is a simple one, you assume that there is only one primary way for criminals to get guns and that is obviously not true. Take drug gangs, who are responsible for most violent crime and murder. How hard have we tried to keep those drug gangs from bringing in illegal drugs? Even if you eliminated all guns from the United States right now, who long would it take for the drug gangs to bring in guns along with their new shipments of drugs so as to protect them? Illegal drugs are very valuable and other drug gangs will want to steal them. The drug gangs can’t call the police to help get their illegal drugs back.

  4. Bob

    Puerto Rico isn’t part of the US?

  5. CavScout62

    If you have half a brain then you KNOW that an armed American society is a far more POLITE American Society. In every state where Constitutional Carry is observed, (as it should be in all 50 States because it’s THE LAW OF THE LAND) not only are the homicide rates lower but, so are all violent crime rates lower. Why you ask? Because people (I use the term with trepidation) are far less likely to attack you if they believe there is a high probability that you are armed. The City/States with the most illegal, strictest firearm bans/control have the worst violent crime rates as the Bad Guys KNOW the probability of the average citizen being armed is very low because he/she doesn’t want to be accosted by the PORK for firearms possession. Common Sense is NOT a common commodity in this land.

    • Kat

      You know, that’s sort of a tired argument. Crime is lower in communities with lax gun laws because those are typically rural backward communities with low populations. I wish people would stop using that as a comparison against crime in urban, highly populated communities. It’s lacking in common sense besides statistical reality.

      • JW

        It is perfectly correct to compare murder rates from one area to another. Most murder rates are based on murders per 100,000 people. How is comparing murders per 100,000 in rural Illinois to murders per 100,000 in Chicago not statistical reality?

  6. Bill

    The problem in the US is that people can buy guns so easily without being required to undergo training and obtain a license. This is completely ridiculous. There is no reason why a person who wants to own a gun should not be forced to have a background check, take a gun safety course, and obtain a license. You would assume that a person who wants to own a gun for protection would also want to know how to use it properly and also how to prevent it from being used improperly. I don’t think instituting stricter gun control would necessarily lower the intentional homicide rate but I do think it would mean fewer accidental shootings (e.g. two years olds pulling a gun out of their mom’s purse and shooting them at Walmart.

    • Doug

      Well Bob that is Michigan Law I took A gun Saftey Course and back ground Check and got my permit to carry 6 week in the mail after all was done

    • DudeManGuy

      You are still discounting the fact that most violent gun crimes are not caused by legal gun owners. As said above, people aren’t going into a store and buying a firearm and then killing people with it. I have to agree that education is something that I would agree making a requirement to own guns but it is not the problem overall. Illegal gun owners are not going to take a safety course any more than they will use proper storage methods. In my opinion, mental health is the real problem. In ALL mass murder cases in the last decade, the shooter was found to be mentally disturbed and in most cases it was documented and well known. However, there was little to no follow through by courts or doctors to ensure treatment was being given. The guns used in the shootings were also not purchased legally by the shooter. (Key words “by the shooter”. One of the shooters stole the guns from his mother and another one was given from his father via an illegal straw man purchase, for example.) Had there been more available mental health care, these atrocities by have been prevented.

  7. Bob

    The big question Bill is were those purchases done legitimately or not? I watched a show recently that took plain people into 10 different gun shops to buy a gun and 9 out of those 10 required a cool down period and a background check. The problem I see is gun store #10!! I do however agree with mandatory training in the use of firearms and firearms safety. I also think the sale of firearms needs to be more tightly regulated, not to say yes or no but to make sure all checks have been done correctly.

  8. Phil

    Forget about the rubbery figures around what constitutes homicide in diferrent countries. Look at the overall death rate caused by guns. US is the clear winner on these measures. And this also talks about “small arms” what does that include?

    • Tucason_Jim

      Ummmm, not it isn’t. The US has a HUGE population compared to, for example, Great Britain. When you talk TOTAL numbers, the US has a huge number of gun related deaths… however, as a percentage of the population, i.e. “RATE”, the US is in the middle of the pack, with 4.7 deaths per hundred-thousand people.

      So, if you want to blame “gun ownership” for crime, then, you do not get a chance to selectively choose your data. The trend must be consistent, but, it is not.

  9. mike dvey

    Article that leaves out the most important numbers in the fact. Politifact says it best, the claim that Americans are 20 times more likely than other civilized countries is true. The problem with your graph is that you leave out most of the countries we compare best with – the UK, Japan, Canada etc. Way to cherry pick your data.

    • johnrlott

      Dear Mike: All those countries are indeed included in both the UNODC and OECD data. You can obviously see this in the OECD data. If you look at the UNODC data, you will see all the countries there also, though the type is small in order to fit in all the countries. For the graphs showing the regression lines, there are simply too many dots close to each other to label all of them. But all the countries in the Small Arms Survey are included.

      As to “civilized” countries, do you have an official list of civilized countries? Is Chile a “civilized country? Is Brazil a civilized country? Estonia? Tell me how you define “civilized’ countries. Usually, people make the claim regarding “developed/industrialized” countries, and one can clearly see that claim is false with regard to developed/industrialized countries.

  10. Justin Benjamin

    At first this article seemed like a fair critical evaluation, but then I came across this line: “The relationship between homicide rates and the supposed measure of gun ownership provided the Small Arms Survey shows that even with their obviously biased measure of gun ownership, more guns ownership is associated with fewer homicides, though the relationship is not statistically significant.”

    First of all, the word “obviously” does not belong in any reputable work, as it reeks of partisanship on an issue. But more importantly, the chart used to demonstrate this relationship shows Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and Turkey on the chart as “developed countries”. This is FALSE. These countries are DEVELOPING countries, and the fact the author would identify them as such discredits the whole article since it is clear the author is willfully deceiving the readers to support a particular viewpoint. Furthermore, Chile and Estonia are at the lower end of the developed countries as per HDI metrics, with Estonia being #33 out of 49, and Chile #41 out of 49. These oversights by the author, whether deliberate or merely accidental, undermine the criticisms and counter-arguments presented in this article.

    It may not be important to some people how countries are categorized or what their level of human development is, but it is clear to the author that this is vital to the arguments presented which is why this intellectual dishonesty was deemed necessary; as the author well knows, any good statistical analysis requires categorizing countries into equivalent groups to prevent confounding variables from leading us to spurious conclusions.

    Correlation is not causation, so to maximize the strength of our correlative relationship requires accounting for different variables which may influence the homicide rate. For example, the citizens of countries which are less technologically developed may have less access guns for homicide; even more so, people who are economically poorer may be less likely to purchase guns due to their high comparative cost. Additionally, countries which are economically poorer and less developed are more likely to commit more crimes REGARDLESS of the gun ownership rate simply because low socioeconomic development is a major risk factor for violence.

    All these factors have to be taken into account to ensure the critical analysis of the effects of gun control is properly done so as to ensure the conclusions are reasonably correct and not confounded by third party factors. This article’s author has demonstrate not only are they not interested in ensuring such, but they intentionally deceived their readers into thinking they actually had taken these factors into account to artificially strengthen this case. This kind of deception and partisanship has no place in serious critical inquiry.

  11. Jason

    There is flawed logic in saying that if more people had guns there would be less gun crime and gun deaths. Studies by the Harvard School of Public Health show states where guns are more prevalent, suicide rates and accidental gun deaths are higher than in states with fewer guns. As for crime, not everyone is a responsible gun owner. If everyone was, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Responsible gun owners who have obtained guns legally still occasionally fall off the deep end. Be it a jealous rage, custody dispute, nervous breakdown, or psychotic break. Japan has forbid almost all forms of gun ownership and you know how many gun homicides they have a year? 2. Logic dictates, if people don’t have guns, they can’t use them to kill other people or themselves. Every new instance of someone using a gun to go on a killing rampage shows that our system is flawed. Columbine, Aurora, Newtown, Charleston, Lafayette. And last, why do gun advocates always cherry pick the results showing Russia or Mexico or Estonia and compare us to them, I don’t want us to be compared to them. You go to most of those places and get away from the tourist areas and see if you feel safe. We should be comparing ourselves to countries more like us. When you compare us to the UK, France, Sweden, Germany, or Japan, we show that their gun laws must be working and ours don’t.

  12. Lindsey Lee

    The OECD countries may be too broad a set to compare the United States. If you were to compare the United States to the IMF Advanced Economies, the data would show the U.S. to be an outlier with regards to gun ownership, gun deaths, and murder.

  13. glock back plates

    Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems
    as though you relied on the video to make your point. You clearly know what youre
    talking about, why throw away your intelligence on just posting videos to
    your site when you could be giving us something informative to
    read?

  14. Cris Baker

    When guns bans are strictly enforced, while guns homicides may go down, violent crime goes up. The metric to compare is the Violent Crime Rate per 100,000 people – not gun murders.

    Once the UK had banned guns, the British Telegraph newspaper reported that: “The United Kingdom is the violent crime capital of Europe… The total number of violent offenses recorded compared to population is higher than any other country in Europe, as well as America, Canada, Australia and South Africa.” see:
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/5712573/UK-is-violent-crime-capital-of-Europe.html
    http://www.universalgunownership.net/right-response/un-global-gun-grab/

    • Graham

      I suppose statistics can state so many different things. In one report I read the UK has a murder rate of 1 in 100,000. and the US a murder rate of 4.7 in 100,000. But here it states that the way The UK and The US record murders are different making comparisons difficult. In free countries such as the UK and the US murder is a sad part of the culture but let us not forget that murder compared to death by ill health is a small fraction. The US and UK are safe places to live, The chances of being murdered are quite small. Have a safe a wonderful day

  15. W.G. Whitney

    Another problem with bias in the murder/homicide rate is that homicides, in Canada anyway, are logged only for those who end up dead. Since the statistics started to be compiled for gun control purposes, the efficiency of paramedics and the spread of better emergency clinics across the country has lead to a lot less deaths, even after severe gunshot wounds.
    None of these survivors were entered into the statistics as homicides !! Even though the criminals tried very hard to kill them but failed. This under reports the number of gun related, attempted or actual murders and makes it look like gun controls are working.

    • Clark Kent

      Homicide implies death, if someone survives an attack it is not a homicide. It is logical to not place a survivor of an attack into the category of died from an attack.

  16. John

    It would be very helpful to have the US numbers sans Detroit, Chicago, Washington DC, and New Orleans. These four cities have among the toughest gun laws and murder rates in the country. Wondering how far the US would fall with these four cities removed.

    • Clark Kent

      I agree John. I too am curious about these statistics.

  17. Metalman

    Studying statistics on this subject is interesting, however, no argument can be made that takes my right to defend myself from me. I have been carrying a pistol since 1985. Three times I have pulled my pistol and pointed at someone who was intent on doing me harm. I never had to pull the trigger because the sight of the gun changed the bad guys minds very quickly. So, these are the statistics that really matter to me: good guy 3 / bad guys 0.

    • DB

      Carry your pistol, but not an AR 15 please!

  18. Ray Williams

    What would the US numbers look like without “Urban Youths” in the mix?

  19. ngatimozart

    I live in NZ and we have had fairly strict gun laws for years. Hand guns, automatic weapons and military style firearms are illegal unless you hold a special licence. That licence does not entitle you to carry or use the weapons in public. The last mass shooting we had was Aromoana in November of 1990. We don’t have an issue with the current NZ firearms legislation because it does protect our people. Our police do not carry firearms as a rule, except at the International airports. As a nation we look at the gun massacres that routinely happen in the US and wonder about the mentality of the people of a nation that allows for the continual massacres of its citizens, especially children in schools. To us it points to a fundamental wrong and societal sickness in a nation, where any attempts to correct this situation attracts such vociferous and in some cases vicious opposition. Lately the US NRA have been trying to influence or interfere with firearms legislation in Australia and New Zealand. They are not wanted nor are they welcome here.

    Just for the record, I am familiar with firearms having hunted as a kid and teenager and served in two branches if my countries armed forces. So I’ve used and fired weapons including pistols, rifles, battle rifles, sub machine guns, shot guns and heavy machine guns.

    • DB

      Well said! Somehow millions of folks here in the US can’t see what is so obviously ludicrous to people outside of here

    • Rand Pierson

      So you think that, all other things being equal, the murder rate in the USA would be similar to that in NZ if gun laws in the USA were similar to those in NZ? Even a cursory look at the data shows that this would not be the case, or even remotely the case. The USA has a much higher rate of violent crime, both firearm and non-firearm related, than NZ. It might be plausible to claim that higher rates of gun crime are caused by more guns, but even if that were true (and there is not much credible evidence that it is), that doesn’t explain why the non-firearm rates of violent crime, including murder, are so much higher in the USA. The real causes of high rates of violent crime in the USA lie elsewhere.

  20. DB

    Mexico, Brazil, and Russia are OECD countries, but they are clearly at a much lower level of development than the US. They are all “middle income countries” which are in a clearly distinguished separate category from the “developed” countries which have much higher per capita incomes. If you throw out those 3 countries, and any others that do not have high Human Development Indexes, I would guess that your main conclusions don’t hold.

  21. Joel

    I don’t think the problem has so much to do with guns as it has to do with social factors. But if we put that issue aside there is a big problem with crime-statistics. It usually measures the end-result and not the event. Just looking at murders doesn’t really say anything as there is much that can make something go from assault to murder(the availability of quick and decent medical care for example). And then there is the issue that all murders aren’t “equal”. When a 16-year old girl that has been forced into prostitution, with the aid of violence and threat of violence, kills a customer(that is committing a crime) in a psychotic breakdown then the event is something else from when a man breaks into a house and kills someone just for the fun of it.

    The mechanism and reasons behind the murders are different and therefor there is a different solution to deal and prevent this two different events.

    So to get a clear picture of risks and reasons the focus must shift from the end-result of an event to an event.

  22. Tim Patten

    Did I just see LINEAR REGRESSION applied to a POWER LAW distribution? Where can that go wrong…

    • johnrlott

      Well, the simple linear relationship is exactly the comparison that gun control advocates make. One just needs to read the discussions cited at the beginning of the piece.

  23. Marc Kailes

    All this data seems to overlook another fact about the USA, and that fact is we are also a multi culture environment that melds as well as clashes over issues more than a lot of the other countries who are usually in step with each other on social/religious issues. That being a fact, is another possible reason for violent crimes I believe. Just look at some of the historically recent attacks at military bases for one example.

  24. Reziac

    U.S. homicide stats need to be split out to “gang homicides” and “everyone else” (bicoloring the bar chart would work). I recall seeing a stat that when gang homicides are removed, the remainder came to only about 0.3 per 100,000, making U.S. homicide rates among the general population the 3rd lowest in the world.

    It should also be noted that the average midwesterner is better-armed than the average gang-banger.

  25. John Weiss

    “The problem with this survey excludes weapons that are technically owned by the government. The vast majority of guns in Israel are technically owned by the government.”

    Your analysis is incorrect. Those Israeli gun owners have been background-checked and thoroughly trained by the Israeli military in safe and responsible usage. The same cannot be said of murderers and mass murderers, who get their guns on the street, or at American gun shows where there are no background checks.

    Therefor, in order to compare apples to apples, we need stats on the number of guns possessed by people who have NOT been trained by the military or background checked. The USA is #1.

    • johnrlott

      Your comment doesn’t in anyway contradict the point of the post and that is if guns are per se the problem, it is an issue of possession, not who technically owns the guns. This claimed relationship is made constantly in the media as illustrated at the beginning of our post. It is an attempt to correct the media claim, that we put up this post. You want to bring up other gun regulations not discussed in these media claims, and that is fine, but our posts on background checks and training and the books The War on Guns and More Guns, Less Crime deal extensively with those regulations. The point in this post was a simple one: saying that civilians in Israel possess guns at less than 1/10th the rate of Americans is wrong. The US is not remotely close to being number one in gun possession (particularly as a percent of the population with guns), but also by their less useful measure of number of guns per 100 people.

      As to background checks, among criminologists and economists there is no support for them lowering violent crime rates. It would be nice if they could do that. We have no problem with background checks if they make people feel better, but the problem of mistakes being made by the system and the cost of the fees that prevent poor people from owning guns need to be fixed.

  26. Sebastian

    “By the way, despite Israel and Switzerland having very high gun possession rates, their firearm homicide rates are extremely low. In the data shown below, Switzerland had a firearms homicide rate of 0.77 per 100,000 people and Israel has a rate of just 0.09 per 100,000.”

    You need to do more research when you decide to use data like that. I live in Switzerland and the way you are portraying this is completely misleading. The reason why so many people possess a gun in Switzerland is because military service is mandatory and you are required by law to keep your gun at home in case of a national emergency. Yet it is also forbidden to carry it around or to use it if it’s not a national emergency. Meaning that if even 1 shot gets of that gun outside of a shooting field in military property, the owner of the gun goes directly to jail. Which is very close to not even owning a gun.

    • johnrlott

      Sorry, Sebastian, but did you actually read what was written there: “The problem with this survey excludes weapons that are technically owned by the government. The vast majority of guns in Israel are technically owned by the government, but if people have possession of guns in their homes for decades, the issue should be that public possession, not who technically owned the guns. Similarly, at that time of the Small Arms Survey, all able-bodied Swiss males between the age of 18 and 42 kept their military weapons in their homes. After age 42, they could apply for permission to continue to keep their military weapons. Israeli guns are also excluded for the same reason.”

      Thus we noted that one reason for the high gun possession rate was because of this mandatory military service, but if possession of guns is the problem, it shouldn’t matter who technically owns the gun. It should just matter who has control of the weapon.

  27. Steve Miller

    You realize that your graphs are purposefully misleading in that Brazil and Russia are not not members of the OECD. Check your facts. This are the little lies of omissions that makes sure no one with influence on policy or policy debates will take you seriously. Those amongst the false first-person letters, blatant fabrications, and academic dishonesty, which is the hallmark of your work.

    • johnrlott

      All links are provided so that people can check things out themselves. So are you saying that Greece, Chile, Poland, Portugal, Turkey, and other countries shouldn’t be included in the OECD? They all have similar real per capita incomes to Russia. Look at the International Monetary Fund Purchasing Power Parity ranking of per capita income. The only reason that Brazil and Russia are not full-fledged members has to do with political issues, not whether they meet the criteria for being members.

  28. Paul Heckbert

    Don’t leave out suicides, because they make up the majority of gun deaths in most countries. Sometimes it’s not known whether a gun death is a homicide or a suicide, or is it intentional or accidental? If you use total gun deaths instead of gun homicides, you’re more likely to get accurate statistics.

    Have you seen the scatterplots at
    http://mark.reid.name/blog/gun-deaths-vs-gun-ownership.html

    They’re good. Among OECD countries, there’s a strong correlation between gun ownership rate and gun death rate.

  29. J Duane Robinson

    The “rich” in America and the United Nations knows that they cannot take over the world until they take away the guns of the American people; hence, they took control of the American press…

    Control of the media went into overdrive in America by the elite since J. P. Morgan bought out 100 newspapers (early 1900s) in order to turn the American people against the Germans, who were already being ‘badmouthed’ by the Commonwealth media for two Triumvirants [Stead, Lord Asher, Cecil Rhodes in one group…and Rothschild, Edward the Seventh (Victoria’s playboy son), and one count (forgive me for forgetting one of their names) in England]; the takeover of all the Empire’s press was to turn the world against Germany and its overtaking of the English industrial superiority which was happening at the time.

    This same media manipulation is being done by our media against America’s white population, and those who understand that only the 2nd Amendment can protect your 1st Amendment rights; which is the only things standing between us and the New World Order at present.

    Flouride enhances the effects of psychotropics drugs, and affects young boys more than females. This is being followed closely by another website, listing all the shootings and how the combination of total flouridation in an area combined with the young shooter’s being on psychiatric medication, plus MONARCH/Ultra K mind control is manipulating those who dare speak against our future Masters.

    Look at the FACTS after your emotions are under control: this is the Deep State, the United Nations, and the rich wanting to take away your roght to defend yourself!

  30. Terry Stanard

    I am an NRA member and own multiple guns, but I think this data reveals we have a gun-violence problem in the U.S. There is an important but missing factor to consider: wealth of the nation. If only “wealthier nations” are considered (let’s say countries making over $20k per capita), the U.S. has one of the highest death-by-gun rates in the world:

    27.31 Trinidad & Tobago
    18.30 Puerto Rico (U.S. territory)
    12.80 Russia
    3.20 UNITED STATES
    2.16 Chile
    1.34 Kazakhstan

    Other wealthy nations trail far behind. Even considering the ‘worst’ European nation (Switzerland, .77), the U.S. has over 4 times higher death rate by guns. Other comparisons are astounding: The U.S. has 22 times higher rate than Australia and 45 times higher rate than England and Wales,

    Gun Death Rate Between
    0.70-0.79: Italy, Lebanon, Switzerland
    0.60-0.69: Belgium, Bulgaria, Luxembourg
    0.50-0.59: Canada, Taiwan
    0.40-0.49: Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Cyprus, Serbia, Ireland
    0.30-0.39: Netherlands, Croatia
    0.20-0.29: Spain, Austria, Greece, Cuba, Denmark, Northern Ireland
    0.10-0.19: Slovenia, Belarus, Australia, Qatar, New Zealand, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany
    0.00-0.09: Hong Kong, Bermuda, Malta, Iceland, Bahrain, Japan, Singapore, S. Korea, Norway, Algeria, France, Hungary, England & Wales, Poland, Israel

    *It’s possible I made an error somewhere in here, but did my best without extensive proofing

  31. Jordan

    I would agree the U.S. has a problem. But, I must mention that gun control will neither increase nor decrease homicides/crime rate in the U.S. Statistics show that after gun bans in other countries, there is only a slight increase of homicide/crime briefly, but goes back to original rates.
    In your defense, yes, gun-related homicides/crimes have and will go down with gun bans.
    I’d rather get shot to death than stabbed to death, though, and to keep my freedom in check. I don’t know about you.
    Anyway, back to the age old saying, guns are NOT the problem, PEOPLE are.

  32. Barry

    I would note that of the gun related deaths over 60% are suicide in usa.

  33. NEIL C. REINHARDT

    FYI

    12 TIMES MORE AMERICANS ARE KILLED BY FEET AND FISTS THAN ARE KILLED BY GUNS

    AND SIX TIMES MORE BY KNIVES

    A THOUSAND TIMES MORE BY MEDICAL ERRORS

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Thursday News Links | Shall Not Be Questioned - [...] Comparing murder rates across countries. If you don’t cherry pick your data, there’s no correlation between gun ownership and…
  2. Small Arms Survey: Biased Reporting, Anti-Freedom Goals | Give Me Liberty - [...] Lott has recently published an article that reveals stark flaws in the Survey’s methodology – methodology that governments [...]
  3. Images of the Antis: “Gun Death” | Weer'd World - [...] I just found this great article that looks at homicide rates (just “Murder” is often counted wildly different in…
  4. Media Issues will get issues improper once more: “Gun Researcher John Lott Depends On Falsehoods To Downplay Gun Violence Menace To Ladies” | Xcuz Me - [...] a dialogue on this level please see these two posts here and here.four) “[m]ore than twice as many ladies are killed…
  5. Making up facts about guns | Desert Eagle Technologies - [...] any case, the total number of murders is the more important comparison and the U.S. murder rate is less than…
  6. Making up facts about guns – Fox News | Best hunting mart - [...] any case, the total number of murders is the more important comparison and the U.S. murder rate is less than…
  7. Is Russia Not an "Advanced or Developed" Country? | The Truth About Guns - [...] article from which the chart was taken by the Crime Prevention Research Center has a much more sophisticated analysis of…
  8. Russia not "advanced or developed" by Obama's Measure - [...] article that the chart was taken from at the Crime Prevention Research Center, has a much more sophisticated analysis…
  9. Russia Not “Advanced or Developed” By Obama’s Measure | Patriot Powered News - [...] article that the chart was taken from at the Crime Prevention Research Center, has a much more sophisticated analysis…
  10. Pro-gun doctor debunks American Psychological Association's anti-gun report - […] rates compared to other countries. These are chosen so as to avoid conveying that the U.S. actually lies about…
  11. Wanton Hyperviolent, Senseless Mass Murder : Now in Kid Friendly Form - Page 2 - DCSportbikes.net - […] Both Russia and China do not report accurate statistics on their military spending. In China's case, it is also…
  12. Gun crime all time low. Public unaware - […] by private citizens and yet ranks low in gun homicides. You can read further on this by following this…
  13. Homicides per 100,000 in G-8 Countries - […]  Chart from Crime Prevention Research Center […]
  14. HZ » Homicides per 100,000 in G-8 Countries - […]  Chart from Crime Prevention Research Center […]
  15. Poll Finds 6 in 10 Americans Believe Guns Improve Home Safety | Coastcontact - […] Comparing murder rates and gun ownership across countries […]
  16. U of Chicago Prof Harold Pollack Attacks Rand Paul, NRA and Second Amendment Rights | Illinois Mirror - […] has also been controversy over how European countries calculate their homicide statistics, but the bottom line is Pollack is…
  17. Bloomberg's Everytown Gun Control Claims To Talk Guns At Thanksgiving Dinner - […] with the contention that concealed carry does not make people safer and flawed assumptions on comparing murder rates with other […]
  18. CIA Torture Report - Page 7 - DCSportbikes.net - […] In the absence of facts...conjecture fits the bill. Switzerland is an almost entirely European...read white...populated country. I didn't say…
  19. GUN OWNERSHIP/CRIME / PER CAPITA - Social Vibes - […] ^ Jump up to:a b Crime Prevention Research Center (March 31, 2014). “Comparing murder rates and gun ownership across…
  20. America has a problem with gun insanity - Page 152 - […] Re: America has a problem with gun insanity Comparing murder rates and gun ownership across countries - Crime Prevention…
  21. crime in America…. | Engaging American Culture - […] Follow this link to get an overview of crime in America: http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us-united-states/cri-crime .  Then read this article and look at graphs…
  22. All the Chicago Mayoral Candidates Are Getting It Wrong: We Don’t Need More Cops | Chicago Activism - […] as a nation protected by armed militias, virtually all men between the ages of 18 and 42 have firearms in…
  23. Better Than Somalia - How to Feel Good About Gun Violence - Huffington Post - Wargeyska - […] really isn’t all that violent. John Lott, a discredited pro-gun academic, has drawn favorable comparisons of the U.S. with…
  24. Better Than Somalia: How to Feel Good About Gun Violence | Armed With Reason - […] really isn’t all that violent. John Lott, a discredited pro-gun academic, has drawn favorable comparisons of the U.S. with…
  25. empathyeducates – All the Chicago Mayoral Candidates Are Getting It Wrong: We Don’t Need More Cops - […] formation as a nation protected by armed militias, virtually all men between the ages of 18 and 42 have…
  26. President Obama Makes a Laughable Claim That It’s Harder for People to Buy Some Items Than Guns - NEWS | Phones | Nigeria Science | Technology |Computers - […] according to the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), the United States is an outlier. When the United States is…
  27. The NEW Hollow Earth Insider » Guns Equal Safety? Yes! - […] Crime Prevention Research Center also examined the data and came up with very similar […]
  28. Comparing murder rates and gun ownership across... - […]   […]
  29. Quora - When will Americans get real about our gun violence? http://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/ Honduras. Statistically my kid will never be shot in a…
  30. Why I am for gun control | Incomparably Jonah - […] [14] http://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/ […]
  31. Palumbo: Bogus gun control successes – U.K. edition | Jack's Newswatch (refresh frequently) - […] count murders in their statistic unless there’s a conviction. The U.S. could cut its murder rate in half by…
  32. Murder and homicide rates before and after gun bans | Logos and Liberty - […] are a lot of issues about how different countries measure homicide or murders differently, but that isn’t really relevant…
  33. Comparing murder rates and gun ownership across countries | Brown Dispatch - […] Read full story here […]
  34. Politics: Gun Violence and Mass Media | megatoncleric - […] http://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/ […]
  35. America has a problem with gun insanity - Page 302 - Talk About Marriage - […] Thor is online now   Quote Quick Reply post #4525 of 4525 (permalink) Old Today, 03:46 PM Thor Member…
  36. It’s Time to Face America’s Gun Problem | International Relations Today - […] [3] http://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/ […]
  37. Hate Crimes, Politics & Guns | Wizbang - […] and quit trying to offer “solutions” that criminals will ignore. Also, please get better analysis on murder rates and gun ownership.…
  38. Hate Crimes, Politics & Guns - - […] rights, and quit trying to offer “solutions” that criminals will ignore. Also, please get better analysis on murder rates and gun…
  39. Freedom Line Blog » Is the U.S. a Particularly Violent Nation? No. Five Must-Read Graphs Rebut 2nd Amendment Restrictionists - […] aren’t particular outliers.  Fortunately, the Crime Prevention Research Center provides a helpful set of five data graphs illustrating these…
  40. Blackmoor Vituperative » A brief review of the facts related to violent crime in the USA - […] Does the USA have the highest intentional homicide rate among “developed countries”? No. Is the rate of intentional homicide…
  41. A Farewell To Firearms Control | Sacred Cow Chips - […] conceptual problems discussed in this report by the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC): “Comparing Murder Rates and Gun Ownership…
  42. Guns and the Oregon Shooting | oldwhigblog - […] Jones shows the same, that gun violence tends to occur in places where there are no guns. The Crime Prevention…
  43. Is Opposing Abortion but Supporting Gun Rights Hypocritical? | No Lapdog Media - […] As you can see, this whole argument is rife with logical pitfalls and ideological mine fields. But one thing…
  44. Cost-Benefit of Gun Control More Difficult Than Social Media Memes - […] Internet memes and charts by gun control advocates routinely suggest that stricter gun control laws correlate with fewer gun…
  45. Will Brazil, long having some of the strictest gun control in the world and one of the highest murder rates, finally liberalize its gun laws? - Crime Prevention Research CenterCrime Prevention Research Center - […] Brazil has had one of the highest murder rates in the world (they are 24th in the first figure…
  46. You Will Die From Obamacare Before You Die from Guns | Western Free Press - […] CRIME PREVENTION RESEARCH CENTER […]
  47. Gun Control: Just the Facts, Please! – The Fiftyone Percent - […] to most sites America is somewhere as low as #12 or #17 or even #28 in world gun violence, the…
  48. Pointing Guns away from Violence – Woody Kang - […] Crime Prevention Research Center. (2014, March 31): Comparing murder rates and gun ownership across countries. Retrieved january 27, 2016,…
  49. Rebutting Leftist Talking Points – here we go… - […] “Comparing Murder Rates Across Countries” […]
  50. Here are Three Reasons Why You Should Buy a Gun After the Orlando Terror Attack | Think Hoover - […] and a lower violent crime rate such as Great Britain. But when examining all developed countries, there is a…
  51. Quora - Does one need a university degree in common sense to see that US stands out as an anomaly in gun…
  52. Gun Rights Expert John Lott Drops 5 Facts You Probably Didn’t Know - […] big problem with any comparison between countries is the quality of the data, the interpretations used, and […]
  53. While We Are On The Subject… | freewillobjector - […] http://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/ […]
  54. Why obsess about criminal justice? – criminologyresearchblog - […] Comparing murder rates and gun ownership across countries […]
  55. Japan Has Worst Mass Killing In 80 Years, Vox Credits Gun Control | Move Along People - […] countries, when accounting for government-owned guns which citizens keep in their homes, have higher gun ownership rates than America.…
  56. A Pro-gun Primer on Anti-gun Debate, Part 1 of 3 | - […] Even if we ignore that, though, and confine our arguments to “gun violence” itself, it’s important to note that…
  57. САЩ - Страница 31 - […] ето един доклад, който показва интересни резултати: Comparing murder rates and gun ownership across countries - Crime Prevention Research…
  58. Homicídios x Posse de Armas - Desmentindo o Desarmamento | Aventura Blog - […] Fonte e estudo completo em inglês: http://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/ […]
  59. American Police State Militarism And Gun Violence - Think Research Expose | Think Research Expose - […] While the US ranks number one in the world for gun ownership, Switzerland ranks fourth behind Yemen and Serbia.…
  60. What is going to stop the shootings? – ProfessorRamos.net - […] “COMPARING MURDER RATES AND GUN OWNERSHIP ACROSS COUNTRIES”, 31st March 2014, Crime Prevention Research Center, http://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/ […]
  61. The dishonest rhetoric of gun control advocates – The People's Government - […] data on gun control and homicide rates doesn’t support the claims of gun-control activists either. The U.S has a…
  62. The Increasingly Hysterical And Irrational Response To Orlando, Manchester, London, Paris, San Bernardino, Etc. | WARRIOR CAPITALIST - […] point out that similar rigor has been applied by CPRC to comparative homicides and murders overall (http://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/). As this…
  63. Guns in the United States: How bad is it? - News-Decoder - […] Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center says the United States has a relatively low gun violence rate considering its high rate of…
  64. Guns and America: What Can Be Accomplished and How I Can Help - […] An extensive study by the Crime Prevention Research Company in 2012 comparing murder rates and gun o… […]
  65. Blatant statistical bias: Gun ownership vs. gun deaths « TSI Blog - […] following charts from a 2014 article at crimeresearch.org contain relevant information. These charts compare homicide rates and gun ownership…
  66. Gun Control | The Egyptian Gold Blog - […] and removed all others for clarity. I will note a caveat on the data from the Small Arms Survey,…
  67. Gun control cannot protect victims - Justice For Gun Owners - […] shows that restricting firearms to the general public does not reduce homicide rates. Mass murders happen just as frequently…
  68. Natividad Meranto - Comparing murder rates and gun ownership across countries - Crime Prevention Research CenterCrime Prevention Research Center [...]Suicide takes away extra…
  69. A Defense of the Right to Bear Arms – The Libertarian Cinephile - […] Comparing murder rates and gun ownership across countries. (2014, March 21). Crime Prevention Research Center. Retrieved from https://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/ […]

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On The Michigan Talk Network: To Discuss Illegal Alien Crime

On The Michigan Talk Network: To Discuss Illegal Alien Crime

Dr. John Lott talked to Steve Gruber on the Michigan Talk Network about the illegal immigrant killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. They also discussed the relationship between illegal immigration and crime. (Thursday, February 29, 2024)