Gun deaths per country per gun per year - fun with Wikipedia

[Atreus21]

So I've been looking to compare gun deaths per country in a way that controls for gun ownership, since the US has by far the highest gun ownership per capita in the world: about 113 per 100 citizens.

Wikipedia has data on that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

Assuming these numbers to be accurate, if a bit dated (some as old as 2010), one can craft a graph like this in Excel:

I include most other first world countries, but I also included Serbia, who has the second highest gun ownership per capita at about 76 per 100. China and Russia had no data here.

The only consistent information I can glean from this, again assuming the numbers are accurate, are two things:

1. The US is not an outlier in terms of gun deaths.
2. Europe has a serious freaking gun suicide problem. One would think the entire firearms industries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland were kept afloat by people killing themselves.

Germany, the UK, NZ, and Australia have pretty strict gun laws. But so do France and Japan.

 

[JSt0rm]

deaths per gun per year seems like an odd statistic to me. Dont we have like 400 million guns? So wouldnt the number of guns dilute the numbers?

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Your first conclusion is incorrect. In first world countries the number of gun deaths in the United States is absolutely an outlier. It's not about how many guns there are. It's how many times they are used. I mean you are bookended by Uruguay and the Philippines as far as deaths per 100,000.

Aim higher.

 

[Maxima1]

deaths per gun per year seems like an odd statistic to me. Dont we have like 400 million guns? So wouldnt the number of guns dilute the numbers?

Yep. A lot of people in the US own 20+ guns.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

deaths per gun per year seems like an odd statistic to me. Dont we have like 400 million guns? So wouldnt the number of guns dilute the numbers?

That list is horribly flawed too. Weird samplings on it. Random years. Some single some multiple years. Many incomplete.

 

[JSt0rm]

so atreus is either a pants shitting retard or complicit in trying to deceive the nation regarding gun deaths.

 

[brycejones]

so atreus is either a pants shitting retard or complicit in trying to deceive the nation regarding gun deaths.

Can't we have both?

For a more specific view related to mass shootings and how the large number of guns in the US fit into the picture:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/...o-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

"But there is one quirk that consistently puzzles America’s fans and critics alike. Why, they ask, does it experience so many mass shootings?

Perhaps, some speculate, it is because American society is unusually violent. Or its racial divisions have frayed the bonds of society. Or its citizens lack proper mental care under a health care system that draws frequent derision abroad.

These explanations share one thing in common: Though seemingly sensible, all have been debunked by research on shootings elsewhere in the world. Instead, an ever-growing body of research consistently reaches the same conclusion.

The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns."

 

[Atreus21]

Can't we have both?

Haha wow.

 

[woolfe9998]

Haha wow.

Why do you think that deaths per gun sheds any light on the gun control issue when in fact the total number of guns is directly affected by gun control?

 

[brycejones]

Haha wow.

Really THINK about the stat you tried to use and the quality of the data you are using.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Just going to put this here.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

What is the murder rate per per hundred thousand, not just guns?

 

[JSt0rm]

Just going to put this here.

freedumb.

 

[fskimospy]

So I've been looking to compare gun deaths per country in a way that controls for gun ownership, since the US has by far the highest gun ownership per capita in the world: about 113 per 100 citizens.

Wikipedia has data on that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

Assuming these numbers to be accurate, if a bit dated (some as old as 2010), one can craft a graph like this in Excel:

I include most other first world countries, but I also included Serbia, who has the second highest gun ownership per capita at about 76 per 100. China and Russia had no data here.

The only consistent information I can glean from this, again assuming the numbers are accurate, are two things:

1. The US is not an outlier in terms of gun deaths.
2. Europe has a serious freaking gun suicide problem. One would think the entire firearms industries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland were kept afloat by people killing themselves.

Germany, the UK, NZ, and Australia have pretty strict gun laws. But so do France and Japan.

You would need to do it as deaths per gun OWNER for it to be at all meaningful.

I appreciate you shooting for (hat) a fact based approach but when gun ownership is so heavily concentrated in people who own large numbers of guns you can’t just do a guns to deaths ratio.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Why do you think that deaths per gun sheds any light on the gun control issue when in fact the total number of guns is directly affected by gun control?

So..... we should be celebrating that in Texas the rate of death was only 6.5 deaths per gun?

Well that's not nearly as bad.

 

[woolfe9998]

So..... we should be celebrating that in Texas the rate of death was only 6.5 deaths per gun?

Well that's not nearly as bad.

? I don't think deaths per gun is a particularly valid measure, which is why I asked him the question. Not sure what your response implies.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

? I don't think deaths per gun is a particularly valid measure, which is why I asked him the question. Not sure what your response implies.

Sarcastic comment pointing out the absurdity of his argument looking at just the Texas shooting.

I failed

 

[woolfe9998]

What is the murder rate per per hundred thousand, not just guns?

It's listed in MoS' chart right above your post, where it says "total homicide rate."

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

It's listed in MoS' chart right above your post, where it says "total homicide rate."

Thanks, I missed that.

 

[woolfe9998]

Thanks, I missed that.

Interestingly, our non-firearms death rate is also above average, second highest on the list. This suggests that gun availability isn't the only reason we murder more often here. However, the fact that the gun homicide rate is more than twice as high also suggests that gun availability is a significant factor.

 

[Maxima1]

Just going to put this here.

Demographics should be accounted for as well. If you exclude blacks, it is significantly less. Even with comparable demographics, however, total homicide in US is higher than European countries.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Interestingly, our non-firearms death rate is also above average, second highest on the list. This suggests that gun availability isn't the only reason we murder more often here. However, the fact that the gun homicide rate is more than twice as high also suggests that gun availability is a significant factor.

Yeah the gun homicide rate is more than 10x higher than all others. The non firearm homicide rate is higher than the average but not by nearly the same factor.

 

[woolfe9998]

Thanks, I missed that.

Np. As clarification, "homicide" /= "murder." Homicide by legal definition includes murders and manslaughters. It also includes justified killings, including police shootings which are justified.

 

[woolfe9998]

Yeah the gun homicide rate is more than 10x higher than all others. The non firearm homicide rate is higher than the average but not by nearly the same factor.

Yes, it suggests that gun availability is a problem, but also leads me to wonder why else we're killing so many people here. Let's say we adopted strict gun control and that this brought the gun homicide rate down to .3 which is average, reducing the rate by 3.3. If half of those 3.3 would have been committed by means other than a gun, we still end up with 3.6 which is quite far above the average. Even if NONE of those 3.3 would have been committed by other means, we're still well above average.

 

[pmv]

What a strange statistic to calculate. Particularly considering that many of the guns in the US are in the possession of a small number of people, who own umpteen guns each. Not at all sure that it is a particularly meaningful statistic, given that point. Someone with 30 guns isn't going to kill themselves 30 times over, and even a spree killer is likely to only get any effective benefit to their killing rate from 2 or 3 at most.

I would expect the killings-per-gun to be lower in the US due to the sheer number of guns that are held as part of large collections, merely out of a compulsive collecting impulse, and never used. But the existence of those 'display pieces' probably does increase the flow of guns into the criminal market (due to thefts and dodgy sales).

On the other hand, even though it seems a very dubious stat, it's still data, and possibly there's something interesting in there somewhere.

Curious that the gun suicide rate in the UK is so low, even when expressed per-gun. Brits just don't go out that way, apparently. I wonder if that's partly cultural, that different cultures have different traditions of self-annihilation?

The mention of Serbia brings up a tangential thought - that there are a lot of guns in the Balkan countries, and Schengen makes it much easier to move those guns to the rest of the EU. And if Kosovo or Serbia join the EU that issue will get worse.

Another point is that as far as I am aware, France doesn't have particularly strong gun control anyway - nothing like the UK. Not all European countries are the same in that respect.

I wonder why Ireland is so high in that table? Does it have a lot of gun deaths, or do Irish gun-killers just get a lot of use out of the few guns they have? I wonder if that's due to a lot of the guns in the country being in the possession of a few criminal gangs? Or is it isolated farmers wielding shotguns (so tempted to add 'while drunk', but that's probably unfair stereotyping).