"Offensive Weapons" in the UK

[Something completely different]

Well if you're going to get all selective about it, lets look at Texas or Arizona. I imagine the murder rate in Texas is higher than eastern europe and south america combined, and that's only counting state sanctioned executions.

Lets take a look.

Homicide rate in Texas 2011: 4.4 per 100 000 people.
(2010: 4.9, 2009: 5.4)

source: http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/txcrime.htm

Homicide rate in Arizona 2011: 6.2 per 100 000 people.
(2010: 6.4, 2009: 5.4)

source: http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/azcrime.htm

Now the combined homicide rate of north America (Includes Canada) is 3.9 per 100 000 people.
The highest is in southern Africa with 30.5 per 100 000 people.
Central Americas homicide rate is 28.5 per 100 000 - and thereby the highest on the american continents.
South americas combined homicide rate is 20 per 100 000 - and thereby still higher than the one in all of north america - and twice as high than the combined homicide rates of Texas and Arizona.

The eastern european homicide rate is 6.4 per 100 000 people - so higher than north america, higher than the US (4.2) but lower than Texas and Arizona eaven when not combined.

The highest homicide rates in individual nations are:
Honduras (Central America): 91.6 per 100 000,
El Salvador (Central America): 69.2 per 100 000,
Ivory Coast (West Africa): 56.9 per 100 000,
Jamaica (Carabian): 52.2 per 100 000,
Venezuela (South America): 45.1 per 100 000,
Belize (Central America): 41.4 per 100 000,

The lowes homicide rates are:
Palau (Pazific): 0 - not a single murder last year
Hong Kong (Asia): 0.2 per 100 000
Iceland (Europe): 0.3 per 100 000 (one single murder in last year in the entire country)

Here`s a pic which shows where the homicide rates are the highest, (the darker the color - the higher the rate):

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And the most murderous cities in the World are:
10: Rio De Janero (Brazil), 9: Detroit (USA), 8: Karachi (Pakistan), 7: Grozny (Chechnya), 6: New Orleans (USA), 5: Capetown (South Africa), 4: Mogadishu (Somalia), 3: Bagdad (Iraq), 2: Ciudad Juarez (Mexico), 1: Caracas (Venezuela)

And if one simply counts the numbers of all murders as min. did, the most dangerous nations are:
10: Russia, 9: Colombia, 8: USA, 7: South Africa, 6: Nigerea, 5: Indonesia, 4: Ethiopia, 3: Mexico, 2: Brazil, 1: India

So when looking at it on a global scale, I wouldn`T say that the availability of firearms has that big of an impact.

I`d say that poverty, secterian conflict, ethnical conflict and political conflict are big contributers to a high homicide rate.

And when I first saw the statistics I was amazed how big the impact of drug trafficing was on the homicide rate.

Honduras, Brazil, Mexico, Panama,..... have higher or the same homicide rates than some of the worst civil war countries in the middle east, central asia and africa.

When looking at the picture on a smaller scale, say: comparing the US states or all "first world" countries, one would have to look at poverty statistics, political conflicts, ethnical divides and other of those and compare them.