The debate over gun controls is not a US only issue. This has been a topic that countries all around the world have grappled with for the past century.
All western nations face the same metal health problems, play the same violent video games, have access to the same provocative music, however these countries don’t have the same high gun murder rate or frequent public shootings that the US experience…
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, the US is far away from having the highest firearm related deaths (adjusted for population), however it consistently finds itself in the top 15 worst performing countries by this metric.
US Statistics
3.5 deaths per 100,000 per year (2014)
112 Guns per 100 Citizens (2014)
I live in the UK, and believe that the US is our closest socially aligned country in the world. This is however one issue that we do find ourselves poles apart on…
But why?
Regulation!!!
Canada:
In 2012 there were 0.5 deaths per 100,000 (StatsCan report from 2012) from gun related homicides. This is in spite of gun ownership being 23 firearms per 100 citizens.
Canada does have a relatively liberal gun policy, however there is no legal right to ownership. It takes 60 days to buy a gun, and the owner is required to have a license which entails, third party references, training courses and background checks.
The license agent is also required to notify the next of kin before granting a license, and applicants are denied if there is any history of domestic violence.
United Kingdom
In 2011, the UK had 0.07 per 100,000 deaths associated to gun violence in comparison to the US having 3.5 (50x higher). There were only 6.7 firearms per 100 people. With these numbers, this puts the UK in the lowest 10 countries in the world by the firearm deaths per 1000 measurement.
The UK does have very strict gun laws which can be attributed to these low numbers. I live in the UK, and remember vividly the “Shot Gun Certificate’ official turning up to my house when I was a child. He forced my farther to lock the Gun up in the loft, where access was limited, and came back to check he had done so before re-issuing his license.
Over 90% of police officers don’t carry firearms, tazer or pepper spray, which explains the zero ‘justifiable homicide’ in the UK in 2013 compared to 416 in the US in the same year. An interesting article by the Washington Post in this topic (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/18/5-countries-where-police-officers-do-not-carry-firearms-and-it-works-well/).
Japan
Japan’s gun laws are amongst the strictest in the world, where citizen are not even permitted to touch a firearm without a license. This has resulted in Japanese citizens holding 0.006 guns for every person.
In 2007 there was national outrage when there was 22 gun related murders. To put perspective on this, Japan has double the population of the UK, but in the same year the UK was around 130 gun homicides.
Summary
The common denominating factor (of countries with low levels of gun related homicides) is regulation, the higher the regulation, the lower the level.
I would be interested to hear from people as to what they think about gun regulation in general, and feel free to let me know if you have a problem with the way I have presented the argument..
Photo from http://www.freepik.com