(February 11, 2016 at 9:21 pm)Rhythm Wrote: I have to stop you here, higher rates of gun ownership -do not- equal higher rates of gun related death, in the US..precisely the opposite. Again, most guns and gun owners in the US are in areas with -lower- rates of gun death. As in more than 9 out of 10. It is a fantastically small minority of the public -and- guns that is being grossly over-represented in our overall stats. I cannot stress this enough, our gun problem is a cops and robbers problem, not an ownership problem.
(February 11, 2016 at 9:40 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: There has been a continual growth in gun ownership in America, yet the firearms death and injury rates have continued to fall. If gun deaths are directly proportional to the number of guns available (on a rough basis, of course), should we not be seeing a spike in gun deaths?
The opposite is true in Australia and almost every other country: almost universally, the ones with the lowest gun ownership rates have the lowest gun-related death rates. The metadata is staggeringly clear on this and we shouldn't be surprised: at an over-simplistic level, if all guns were gone there would be no gun-related death. But I don't pretend that ownership is the sole factor. The stats for the US are equally as clear as the metadata (thanks for the link Thump, I'll assume for the sake of argument that the trend continues past 1997, your numbers didn't go further): something is being done in the US which is counteracting the nominal relationship between ownership & death. Has that analysis been conducted?
Sum ergo sum
