US versus the rest

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America is an exceptional country when it comes to guns. It's one of the few countries in which the right to bear arms is constitutionally protected, and presidential candidates in other nations don't cook bacon with guns. But America's relationship with guns is unique in another crucial way: Among developed nations, the US is far and away the most violent — in large part due to the easy access many Americans have to firearms. These charts and maps show what that violence looks like compared with the rest of the world, why it happens, and why it's such a tough problem to fix.

Gun violence in America, in 17 maps and charts - Vox

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To keep and bear arms

Aug 10th 2015, 10:09 BY THE DATA TEAM


WITH one of the highest murder rates among OECD countries—second only to Mexico—America retains its reputation as a disproportionately dangerous country. The number of violent assaults in America is comparable to those of other western countries, yet murders are much more common. The prevalence of guns goes a long way toward explaining America's terrible record—they are used in two-thirds of all murders. Americans are five times as likely to be murdered as Brits but over 40 times as likely to be murdered with a gun.


INTERACTIVE: ”The means to an end”, American gun ownership and suicide rates

America has become a much safer place over the past two decades however, but public sentiment has yet to catch on to the fact. In 1993, near the peak of America's crime wave, 7 out of every 100,000 people aged 12 and up were gunned down. That number has since halved. But guns play a large role in suicides too. In 2013, 21,175 Americans killed themselves with guns, while 11,208 were killed by others. Men are four times as likely to kill themselves despite making fewer attempts, in no small part because their preferred method (guns) of suicide is so much more reliable than the alternatives. The rate at which people kill themselves with guns has increased since 2006.


There is no national database of gun ownership, because the gun lobby sees that as a first step towards disarmament. The number of guns in America therefore has to be inferred from survey data, commercial records and background checks. None of these measures are perfect: a gun owner may not necessarily need a background check if he or she buys a weapon at a gun show; a customer may have one background check and buy three weapons; or have a background check and decide not to buy any weapon at all. Put them together, though, and these different sources become more useful. In 2007 the Small Arms Survey estimated that 270 million guns were in the hands of American civilians, or 0.9 per person. That number has almost surely risen since. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives publishes annual data on how many guns are manufactured and (legally) imported in the United States. Their figures suggest a sharp increase in gun sales since Barack Obama was elected president. In 2013 about 16 million new guns entered circulation, FBI background checks corroborate this trend.


Mr Obama’s presidency has stirred up anxiety among gun owners, which gun makers have profited from handsomely. The share prices of America’s two largest publically traded gun manufacturers, Sturm Ruger and Smith & Wesson, have increased over 700% and 450% respectively since Mr Obama was elected. The increase in sales seem to be driven by a relatively small slice of the population—individuals seemingly amassing personal stockpiles—as The University of Chicago’s General Social Survey shows that an ever smaller percentage of households have guns.


What keeps America’s firearms in headlines around the world (and perhaps also what keeps news of decreasing overall gun murders out of them) are mass shootings. In the last decade, media reports of incidents such as the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and the June 2015 Charleston church killings have resonated around the world with increased frequency. Even so, such atrocities are still drastically underreported. There’s no comprehensive government database of mass shootings as there is with homicides in general, and for every Sandy Hook, dozens fail to get the country's attention. One group that tries to make up for the gap in the numbers is the Stanford University Geospatial Centre, which aggregates data from the FBI and from news reports. Their findings support the idea that mass shootings are indeed on the rise in the United States.


Despite recent tragedies, support for stronger gun control has wavered. A 2014 Gallup poll showed that just 26% of people wanted to ban handguns, down from 60% in 1959. Moreover, an increasing number of Americans believe that having a gun in the house would make them safer. Some states have actually relaxed their gun laws in recent years.


People are also increasingly keen to take their weapons with them when they travel. The number of guns confiscated at airport checkpoints has tripled over the last decade. In a series of recent experiments, undercover agents were able to sneak in fake weapons and explosives 96% of the time, suggesting that the actual number of guns on planes may be far higher than the number detected.

Even given the link between guns and gun violence, which seems obvious to the rest of the world, America is unlikely to implement significant gun control in the near future.

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Responsible gun ownership is actually possible:

Here’s how the Swedish system works: Only responsible people are trusted with firearms. Sweden licenses guns in much the same way we license cars and drivers. You can have up to six guns but can get more with special permission. To apply for a firearm permit you must first take a year-long hunter training program and pass a written and shooting test. You can also apply for a gun permit if you’ve been a member of an established shooting club for six months. In addition to undergoing training, Sweden’s gun owners must store their firearms safely. Guns must be locked away in a vault, not stored beneath your car seat or in the nightstand where your kids can find them. Responsibility in Sweden goes further yet: Convicted of a felony? No guns for you. Beat your wife? No guns. Under a restraining order? No guns. Drive drunk? No guns.

Sweden may have the answer to America’s gun problem - Vox

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Must see interactive graph on US gun deaths:

This interactive graphic is part of our project exploring the more than 33,000 annual gun deaths in America and what it would take to bring that number down. See our stories on suicides among middle-age men,homicides of young black men and accidental deaths, or explore the menu for more coverage

Gun Deaths In America | FiveThirtyEight

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A normal day in the US..

It was just another day in America. And as befits an unremarkable Saturday, 10 children and teens were killed by gunfire. They died in altercations at gas stations, accidents in bedrooms, standing on stairwells and walking down the street, in gangland hits and by mistaken identity. Like the weather, none of them would make the national news because, like the weather, their deaths did not disturb the accepted order of things.

Every day, on average, seven children and teens are killed by guns in America. Firearms are the leading cause of death among black children under 19, and the second greatest cause of death for all children of the same age, after car accidents.

I picked this day at random, and spent two years trying to find out who these children were. I searched for their parents, pastors, baseball coaches, and scoured their Facebook and Twitter feeds. The youngest child was nine, the oldest 19.

Four years ago, for a moment, there was considerable interest in the fact that large numbers of Americans were being fatally shot. On 14 December 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his mother, then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School and shot 20 small children and six staff dead. Mass shootings comprise a small proportion of gun violence, but they disturb America’s self-image in a way that the daily torrent of gun deaths does not. “Seeing the massacre of so many innocent children … it’s changed America,” said the Democrat senator Joe Manchin, who championed a tepid gun-control bill. “We’ve never seen this happen.” The truth is, it’s happening every day, only most do not see it; 23 November 2013 was just one of those days. Here are two of the boys’ (they were all boys) stories.

America's war: the killing of Jaiden Dixon and Tyler Dunn | World news | The Guardian

Really moving stories..

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The rates of gun violence in the 10 states with the weakest gun laws are more than three times higher than those in the 10 states with the strongest gun laws. That's one of the major findings of a new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) that analyzes 10 indicators of firearm violence—including suicide, murder, fatal gun accidents, and mass shootings—in all 50 states and finds a "strong" correlation between gun violence and weak gun laws.

The states with the highest levels of gun violence include Louisiana, Alaska, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Alabama, which also have some of the weakest gun laws in the nation, according to CAP. States with relatively strict gun laws, such as Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, experience significantly lower levels of gun violence. While the report does not assess the impact of specific laws, it does note previous examples of how specific laws have affected gun crime. For example, when Connecticut implemented laws requiring a permit to purchase a gun and mandated background checks, gun-related homicides dropped 40 percent. In contrast, when Missouri eliminated the same requirements, its gun homicide rate increased by 25 percent.

Even More Proof That Gun Laws Work | Mother Jones

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It isn't really rocket science..

Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun crime in the world. In 2014 there were just six gun deaths, compared to 33,599 in the US. What is the secret? If you want to buy a gun in Japan you need patience and determination. You have to attend an all-day class, take a written exam and pass a shooting-range test with a mark of at least 95%. There are also mental health and drugs tests.

Your criminal record is checked and police look for links to extremist groups. Then they check your relatives too - and even your work colleagues. And as well as having the power to deny gun licences, police also have sweeping powers to search and seize weapons.

That's not all. Handguns are banned outright. Only shotguns and air rifles are allowed. The law restricts the number of gun shops. In most of Japan's 40 or so prefectures there can be no more than three, and you can only buy fresh cartridges by returning the spent cartridges you bought on your last visit.

How Japan has almost eradicated gun crime - BBC News

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Gun violence in the U.S. isn’t just tragic — it’s also incredibly costly. Firearm-related injuries that resulted in hospitalizations (from self-inflicted wounds, unintentional gunshots and those from assaults) cost more than $6.6 billion in the U.S. from 2006 to 2014, an average of $734.6 million per year. That number doesn’t even include emergency-room visits, rehab or other long-term costs, but just the initial hospital visit after an injury. It also does not include medical costs for patients who are treated shortly after they are injured but die before being admitted to the hospital for an in-patient stay.

This is how much gun injuries cost the U.S. every year - MarketWatch

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No other developed country in the world has anywhere near the same rate of gun violence as America. The US has nearly six times the gun homicide rate as Canada, more than seven times as Sweden, and nearly 16 times as Germany, according to UN data compiled by the Guardian. (These gun deaths are a big reason America has a much higher overall homicide rate, which includes non-gun deaths, than other developed nations.)

To understand why that is, there's another important statistic: The US has by far the highest number of privately owned guns in the world. Estimated in 2007, the number of civilian-owned firearms in the US was 88.8 guns per 100 people, meaning there was almost one privately owned gun per American and more than one per American adult. The world's second-ranked country was Yemen, a quasi-failed state torn by civil war, where there were 54.8 guns per 100 people.

2) More guns mean more gun deaths. Period.
The research on this is overwhelmingly clear. No matter how you look at the data, more guns mean more gun deaths.
This is apparent when you look at state-by-state data within the United States, as this chart from Mother Jones demonstrates:



And it's clear when you look at the data across developed nations, as this other chart by Tewksbury Lab shows:

America's gun problem, explained - Vox

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In December 2012, a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 children, six adults, and himself. Since then, there have been at least 1,399 mass shootings, with at least 1,564 people killed and 5,515 wounded. The counts come from the Gun Violence Archive, a database that tracks events since 2013 in which four or more people (not counting the shooter) were shot at the same general time and location. .

Mass shootings since Sandy Hook, in one map