Busting the "Gun Control Equals Less Crime" Myth

Opposing views ^ | GOA

[marktwain]

1. Fact: The murder rates in many nations (such as England) were ALREADY LOW BEFORE enacting gun control. Thus, their restrictive laws cannot be credited with lowering their crime rates.(1)

2. Fact: Gun control has done nothing to keep crime rates from rising in many of the nations that have imposed severe firearms restrictions.

* Australia: Readers of the USA Today newspaper discovered in 2002 that, "Since Australia's 1996 laws banning most guns and making it a crime to use a gun defensively, armed robberies rose by 51%, unarmed robberies by 37%, assaults by 24% and kidnappings by 43%. While murders fell by 3%, manslaughter rose by 16%."(2)

* Canada: After enacting stringent gun control laws in 1991 and 1995, Canada has not made its citizens any safer. "The contrast between the criminal violence rates in the United States and in Canada is dramatic," says Canadian criminologist Gary Mauser in 2003. "Over the past decade, the rate of violent crime in Canada has increased while in the United States the violent crime rate has plummeted."(3)

* England: According to the BBC News, handgun crime in the United Kingdom rose by 40% in the two years after it passed its draconian gun ban in 1997.(4)

* Japan: One newspaper headline says it all: Police say "Crime rising in Japan, while arrests at record low."(5)

3. Fact: British citizens are now more likely to become a victim of crime than are people in the United States:

* In 1998, a study conducted jointly by statisticians from the U.S. Department of Justice and the University of Cambridge in England found that most crime is now worse in England than in the United States.(6)

* "You are more likely to be mugged in England than in the United States," stated the Reuters news agency in summarizing the study. "The rate of robbery is now 1.4 times higher in England and Wales than in the United States, and the British burglary rate is nearly double America's."6 The murder rate in the United States is reportedly higher than in England, but according to the DOJ study, "the difference between the [murder rates in the] two countries has narrowed over the past 16 years."(7)

* The United Nations confirmed these results in 2000 when it reported that the crime rate in England is higher than the crime rates of 16 other industrialized nations, including the United States.(8)

4. Fact: British authorities routinely underreport crime statistics. Comparing statistics between different nations can be quite difficult since foreign officials frequently use different standards in compiling crime statistics.

* The British media has remained quite critical of authorities there for "fiddling" with crime data. Consider some of the headlines in their papers: "Crime figures a sham, say police,"910 and "Police figures under-record offences by 20 percent."(11) "Police are accused of fiddling crime data,"

* British police have also criticized the system because of the "widespread manipulation" of crime data: a. "Officers said that pressure to convince the public that police were winning the fight against crime had resulted in a long list of ruses to 'massage' statistics."(12) b. Sgt. Mike Bennett says officers have become increasingly frustrated with the practice of manipulating statistics. "The crime figures are meaningless," he said. "Police everywhere know exactly what is going on."(13) c. According to The Electronic Telegraph, "Officers said the recorded level of crime bore no resemblance to the actual amount of crime being committed."(14)

* Underreporting crime data: "One former Scotland Yard officer told The Telegraph of a series of tricks that rendered crime figures 'a complete sham.' A classic example, he said, was where a series of homes in a block flats were burgled and were regularly recorded as one crime. Another involved pickpocketing, which was not recorded as a crime unless the victim had actually seen the item being stolen."(15)

* Underreporting murder data: British crime reporting tactics keep murder rates artificially low. "Suppose that three men kill a woman during an argument outside a bar. They are arrested for murder, but because of problems with identification (the main witness is dead), charges are eventually dropped. In American crime statistics, the event counts as a three-person homicide, but in British statistics it counts as nothing at all. 'With such differences in reporting criteria, comparisons of U.S. homicide rates with British homicide rates is a sham,' [a 2000 report from the Inspectorate of Constabulary] concludes."(16)

5. Fact: Many nations with stricter gun control laws have violence rates that are equal to, or greater than, that of the United States. Consider the following rates:

High Gun Ownership Countries Low Gun Ownership Countries

Country Suicide Homicide Total* Country Suicide Homicide Total*

Switzerland 21.4 2.7 24.1

Denmark 22.3 4.9 27.2

U.S. 11.6 7.4 19.0

France 20.8 1.1 21.9

Israel 6.5 1.4 7.9

Japan** 16.7 0.6 17.3

6. Fact: The United States has experienced far fewer TOTAL MURDERS than Europe does over the last 70 years. In trying to claim that gun-free Europe is more peaceful than America, gun control advocates routinely ignore the overwhelming number of murders that have been committed in Europe.

* Over the last 70 years, Europe has averaged about 400,000 murders per year, when one includes the murders committed by governments against mostly unarmed people.(17) That murder rate is about 16 times higher than the murder rate in the U.S.(18)

* Why hasn't the United States experienced this kind of government oppression? Many reasons could be cited, but the Founding Fathers indicated that an armed populace was the best way of preventing official brutality. Consider the words of James Madison in Federalist 46:

"Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger . . . a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands."(19)

For a full list of references, click here.

[marktwain]

I believe you can get to the reference list from the link. I am sure there is a way to get the table right, but I do not know how.

[Kitanis]

Got news to you..

I agree that the 2nd amendment should not be tampered with any further.. I own more than five weapons..

But the opposition.. care little for facts...

[NTHockey]

Kennesaw, GA has no crime because all inhabitants are required to own firearms. Myth Busted!

[BruCru]

ping

[TET1968]

Maybe we should insist that planes stolen in Canada be prevented from flying over our border, never mind landing unscathed in Missouri.
Maybe we should focus on possession of box cutters rather then firearms.

Maybe we should demand that beheadings of white men and footage of the attacks on 911 be lifted from the mainstream media’s “Never show or discuss list”.

Maybe Time Warner and CNN are more of a threat then someone who owns three shotguns.

After over 65 years,most adults know what your talking about if you mention the name Belsen.

In just a few years after September 11th, there are Manhattan residents who think BO Bowing should be taught in the public school system....and will probably push for it.

[TXnMA]

Here's your data in a simple table:

~~~~~~~~~~~

5. Fact: Many nations with stricter gun control laws have violence rates that are equal to, or greater than, that of the United States. Consider the following rates:

High Gun Ownership Countries		Low Gun Ownership Countries
Country	Suicide	Homicide	Total*
Switzerland	21.4	2.7	24.1
Denmark	22.3	4.9	27.2
U.S.	11.6	7.4	19.0
France	20.8	1.1	21.9
Israel	6.5	1.4	7.9
Japan**	16.7	0.6	17.3

[TXnMA]

Ooops! Too simple! Back to the HTML editor...

[CholeraJoe]

You mentioned Suicide rates. Most of the countries with the highest rates have no significant gun ownership:

Suicides per 100,000 people per year^[1]

Country	Males	Females	Total pop.	Year
Lithuania	68.1	12.8	38.6	2005
Belarus	63.3	10.3	35.1	2003
Russia	58.1	9.8	32.2	2005
Slovenia	42.1	11.1	26.3	2006
Hungary	42.3	11.2	26.0	2005
Kazakhstan	45.0	8.1	25.9	2005
Latvia	42.0	9.6	24.5	2005
South Korea	29.6	14.1	21.9	2006
Guyana	33.8	11.6	22.9	2005
Ukraine	40.9	7.0	22.6	2005
Japan See: Suicide in Japan	34.8	13.2	23.7	2006
Sri Lanka	N/A	N/A	21.6	1996
Belgium	31.2	11.4	21.1	1997
Estonia	35.5	7.3	20.3	2005
Finland	31.1	9.6	20.1	2005
Croatia	30.5	9.7	19.7	2005
Serbia and Montenegro	28.4	11.1	19.5	2006
Hong Kong[2]	22.0	13.1	17.4	2005
Moldova	31.5	5.1	17.8	2006
France	26.4	9.2	17.6	2005
Switzerland	24.7	10.5	17.5	2005
Poland	27.8	4.6	15.8	2005
Austria	24.7	7.0	15.6	2006
Czech Republic	25.5	5.6	15.3	2005
Uruguay	24.5	6.4	15.1	2001
People's Republic of China[3]	13.0	14.8	13.9	1999
Denmark	19.2	8.1	13.6	2001
Seychelles	N/A	N/A	13.2	1998
New Zealand[4]	20.3	6.5	13.2	2004
Sweden	19.5	7.1	13.2	2002
Bulgaria	19.7	6.7	13.0	2004
Germany	19.7	6.6	13.0	2004
Trinidad and Tobago	20.9	4.9	12.8	2000
Slovakia	22.3	3.4	12.6	2005
Romania	21.5	4.0	12.5	2004
Cuba	18.5	6.2	12.4	2004
Suriname	17.8	6.4	12.1	2000
Bosnia and Herzegovina	20.3	3.3	11.8	1991
Norway	15.7	7.4	11.5	2005
Canada	17.3	5.4	11.3	2004
Iceland	16.2	6.1	11.2	2005
Portugal	17.5	4.9	11.0	2003
United States	17.7	4.5	11.0	2005
Luxembourg	17.7	4.3	10.9	2005
Australia	17.1	4.7	10.8	2003
India	12.2	9.1	10.6	1998
Chile	17.8	3.1	10.4	2003
Singapore	12.9	7.7	10.3	2006

[ClearCase_guy]

I know I'm looking at this at a very simplistic level, but if there were no laws (of any kind), there could be no crime (of any kind). When you pass a law, you invent a situation where people can break that law and thus "commit a crime".

This is not necessarily a bad thing.

But just on its face, you cannot (ever) pass laws to end up with less crime. You pass laws to have more crime -- pretty much by definition.

[Fee]

Socialist nations tend to have higher suicide rates. Life is boring, little or no religion, and ones path is life is set very early. There are no second chances if you screw up academicly. Free spirit entrepreneurs are hemmed in by gov regulations and taxes. Net result is more spiritually unhappy people and higher chances for suicide.

[CholeraJoe]

Notice also that the 8 of the top 10 are former Soviet Republics or satellites. Alcoholism is rampant in these countries particularly among men. This no doubt contributes to the high suicide rate.

[TXnMA]

Better?

~~~~~

5. Fact: Many nations with stricter gun control laws have violence rates that are equal to, or greater than, that of the United States. Consider the following rates:

High Gun Ownership Countries				Low Gun Ownership Countries
Country	Suicide	Homicide	Total*	Country	Suicide	Homicide	Total*
Switzerland	21.4	2.7	24.1	Denmark	22.3	4.9	27.2
U.S.	11.6	7.4	19.0	France	20.8	1.1	21.9
Israel	6.5	1.4	7.9	Japan**	16.7	0.6	17.3

[mbynack]

Kennesaw, GA has no crime because all inhabitants are required to own firearms. Myth Busted!

Well according to Marion Barry, Washington DC doesn't have much violent crime if you don't count the murders.

[Tahoe3002]

ping

[aNYCguy]

Adding rates for suicide and homicide is a pretty strange thing to do. Calling the sum “Total violence” is even stranger, because no one lives in fear of strangers’ suicides.

[TXnMA]

Almost like adding apples & oranges...

OK -- if you are making fruit salad -- I guess...

OTOH, "homicide" does not equal "murder". There are many cases of "good shoots" in these parts...