International gun comparisons
Don Kates compares international gun ownership stats with murder rates:
Anti-gun advocacy is built on decades of erroneous claims that the United States, with the world’s highest gun ownership rate (true), has the highest murder rate (false). Russia’s recently disclosed murder rates since 1965 have consistently exceeded U.S. rates despite Russia’ ban of handguns and strict control of long guns. Since the 1990s Russian murder rates have remained almost four times greater than American.
And:
If more guns mean more violence, nations with high gun-ownership rates should have high murder rates. But two international studies comparing gun ownership with murder rates in 36 and 21 nations (respectively) found “no significant correlations.”
Via David.
November 29th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
Interestingly, the same is largely true for abortion statistics. There’s no significant correlation between the legality of abortion and its frequency.
I’ve long contemplated a post describing the uncanny similarities between gun opponents and abortion opponents (and, conversely, their supporters). Both issues tend to have activists (for and against) who misuse statistics, over-rely on slippery-slope arguments, etc.
One of these days, maybe I’ll get to that post. 🙂