Gun Ownership and Homicide - Worldwide
A common argument that is made is that, countries with more guns have higher homicide rates, and country's with less guns have lower homicide rates. The general idea is that, more guns = higher homicide rates. Since gun ownership is a rough way to determine the restrictive nature of gun control (obviously, the more regulated guns are, the less guns people can obtain) in general, it also can be considered a rough consideration for that, as well. Is there any proof that more guns = higher crime or murder rates, as has been suggested by gun control proponents?
The shorter answer is, well, no. For the sake of this comparison, I'll take a look at the top 25 countries with the lowest homicide rates (of whom possess reliable information regarding their total firearm ownership and gun laws), whom possess information regarding their total civilian firearm ownership, and compare that to the world average. According to the United Nation's small arms survey, there are approximately 875 million firearms total in the world, and 650 million in civilian hands (Page 1). The world population on July 15th 2015, according to the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, was approximately 7.3 billion. Doing simple math, that means there are approximately 8.9 guns per 100 people in the world on average, in civilians hands.
20 out of the 25 (80%) have a higher gun ownership rate higher than the world average. Of these, 15 have a gun ownership rate higher than 15 per person (60%), and 7 (28%) have a firearm ownership rate of 30 per 100. Another common association is that the U.S. has a significantly higher homicide rate than Europe. While Europe does in fact have countries with lower homicide rates than the U.S., the average is about 3.0, while it was about 4.5 in the U.S. suggesting a not so extreme difference. Comparatively, Russia had a homicide rate of 13, Greenland 19.4, Brazil 25.2, Venezuela 48, and El Salvador 65.
This is a comprehensive list of the UNODOC's self reported homicide and civilian firearms ownership rate.
The Information
20 out of the 25 (80%) had a higher gun ownership rate higher than the world average. Of these, 15 had a gun ownership rate higher than 15 per person (60%), and 7 (28%) had a firearm ownership rate of 30 per 100.
What about country's with high homicide rates, do they have lots of guns? Of these countries, 8 out of 25 (32%) had higher than the world average. Only 2 out of 25 (8%) had a rate at or above 15.0, and zero had a rate higher than 30.0. Of these, very few made it slightly above the 8.9 figure. As it seems, countries with higher homicide rates had significantly lower rates than the world average.
For a comprehensive list of countries, see here.
Edited by Manoka, 02 November 2016 - 08:52 PM.