Take this from a guy who has traveled around Europe and the US.
Homicides by guns...have nothing to do with gun control. It may sound shocking but I’ve come to notice a few interesting things.
First, if you split the US statistics up into state numbers and did it by population numbers...then several states like New Hampshire and Hawaii would easily match up with Germany or the Netherlands. You can easily fit ten states up to various European countries which have very tough gun laws...yet these states have the same laws as states like Mississippi or Louisiana...which have huge homicide numbers.
Second, you start to look for odd differences and then start to note drug usage in a lot of these shootings. When you look around DC...with over 100 homicides per year...when the cops do come to some conclusions in the homicide, there’s usually drug usage involved. Figure cocaine, meth, crack, or PCP...it usually clouds your judgement and you start making irrational thoughts.
Third, if you look around Europe....you don’t have any serious drug issues except marijuana or LSD. Guys who take plain marijuana....don’t usually get violent...which tends to something as well about the nature of people who are doped up.
As for the Swiss...if you ever travel around the country, you find almost no drug use noted. There are a handful of clusters of LSD usage in major cities....but even marijuana use isn’t that big of a deal there. If there are homicides with weapons....it’s usually from some jealous rage over a wife or husband...a rare event.
I personally think the gun-control nuts are looking at the wrong cause to the homicide numbers. If you cleaned up an area of hardcore drug use...you might notice a downward trend on gun homicides...course, you wouldn’t want to admit it was drugs as the issue.
Those who are serious about gun control probably know this, but will not admit it. They do not have another "hook" to get gun control, though they have been trying to demonize the possession of military firearms, which I think is one of their primary objectives.
Josh Horowitz, one of the further thinking gun control advocates, has said that they should decouple their desire for citizen disarmament from crime control for quite a while now.
Vermont had 8 murders in 2011, with a population of 600,000 people. That's a rate of 1.33 per 100k people in a state where >40% own a gun. Germany's rate is 0.9 (with 30% gun ownership) and the Netherlands is 1.1 (with 3.9% gun ownership).