Since this story has come out, it seems like a good time to revisit the issue of guns and safety.
GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.
U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.
I hate guns, but that’s a personal preference. I’d change my mind about having them if it were clear that they made a community or a nation safer.
Alas, it doesn’t seem to be so. It turns out that the USA ranks eighth worldwide in handgun deaths per capita, and twelfth in rifles, shotguns, and other large firearms. And there’s this heartbreaking statistic that places the U.S. second in the world in handgun-related suicide.
I know this is an old horse, the Left has abandoned this issue, and that most Americans classify a certain percentage of deaths as ‘acceptable’. But every once in a while I get little reminders of how glad I am to be in Australia, where gun availability is low, and if someone gets stabbed in Melbourne, we hear about it in Perth.
The gun suicides here are still a bit high though, apparently.
30 August 2007 at 3:01 am
I understand all the top 8 except number 5. What the hell is going on in Luxembourg?
30 August 2007 at 3:09 am
I guess I should also ask about the fact that Australia has double the amount of guns per capita as Colombia yet not even close to the number of gun related killings. So is it the guns or the culture?
11 November 2008 at 3:30 am
Well said.
11 November 2008 at 9:01 pm
Why is it whenever I get a compliment it always turns out to be a spammer????
20 July 2010 at 9:24 pm
Guns make people safer. Chicago has the some of the worst gun violence in the nation yet guns are banned. You cant stop a criminal by making a law.