Reply #359: Gun related death stats are MEANINGLESS, yet people keep trying to use them.

[eqfan592]

If you want to compare nations to see if guns really do cause an increase in violent crime, then you can't compare gun-related deaths in a nation with high gun ownership and gun-related deaths in a nation with low gun ownership. That is a useless comparison for the argument that you are trying to make (that guns inherently cause an increase in violent crimes).

The key is the VIOLENT CRIME RATE! You must compare the violent crime rates of all those nations to demonstrate that guns really do increase the number of VIOLENT CRIMES. And guess one of the top nations of the violent crime rate list (per capita when looking at western nations).

UNITED "We can't trust our citizens with just about any guns" KINGDOM!

Even when looking at assaults, while the US is on top of the other western nations at 7.56 per 1000 people, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia are all immediately behind the US with numbers between 7 and 7.47. In that listing you have a mix of nations with very low levels of private firearm ownership and nations with very high levels of private firearm ownership (again, all per capita). To point only to firearms as the reason for violent crimes is beyond ludicrous, when there are so many more obvious factors that can be taken into account.

Guns do NOT increase the violent crime rate. Poverty, poor education, urban decay, etc. THESE are the issues we must be facing, and we could face them better if people like YOU were to get off your anti-gun bandwagon and get on board with making some progress on REAL issues.

Source for info on Assaults: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_percap-crime-assaults-per-capita
Source for info about UK: http://blog.taragana.com/n/uk-is-europes-most-violent-crime-capital-european-commission-97667/
(note that Home Office disputes these numbers, but as has been shown in the past, home office is NOT above fudging the numbers to make themselves look better)