The best way to reduce homicides in the US is to stop raising our sons and daughters to be cowboys.
The ridiculously massive number of guns in our culture both predicates and is the result of celebration of violence as a plausible solution to conflict.
I wonder how the Egyptian revolution would have gone down if the NRA had had a hand in it. Change every rock thrown into a bullet.
And didn't the Egyptians recently put lie to the claim that the primary rationale for 2nd Amendment that personal gun ownership is necessary to protect the citizenry from the government?
The NRA Claims Government to Blame For Tucson Shootings
Commenter Blouise on the article:
The United States leads the world's richest nations in gun deaths -- murders, suicides, and accidental deaths due to guns - according to a study published April 17, 1998 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
The U.S. was first at 14.24 gun deaths per 100,000 people. Two other countries in the Americas came next. Brazil was second with 12.95, followed by Mexico with 12.69.
Japan had the lowest rate, at 0.05 gun deaths per 100,000 (1 per 2 million people). The police in Japan actively raid homes of those suspected of having weapons.
The 36 countries in the study were the richest in the World Bank's 1994 World Development Report, having the highest GNP per capita income.
The gun-related deaths per 100,000 people in 1994 by country were as follows:
U.S.A. 14.24
Brazil 12.95
Mexico 12.69
Estonia 12.26
Argentina 8.93
Northern Ireland 6.63
Finland 6.46
Switzerland 5.31
France 5.15
Canada 4.31
Norway 3.82
Austria 3.70
Portugal 3.20
Israel 2.91
Belgium 2.90
Australia 2.65
Slovenia 2.60
Italy 2.44
New Zealand 2.38
Denmark 2.09
Sweden 1.92
Kuwait 1.84
Greece 1.29
Germany 1.24
Hungary 1.11
Ireland 0.97
Spain 0.78
Netherlands 0.70
Scotland 0.54
England and Wales 0.41
The United States accounted for 45 percent of the 88,649 gun deaths reported in the study, the first comprehensive international scrutiny of gun-related deaths.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=6166
The unintentional firearm-related death rate for children 0-14 years old is NINE times higher in the U.S. than in the 25 other countries COMBINED (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, p. 101).The mortality rate from accidental shootings is 8 times higher in the four states with the most guns compared to the four states with the fewest guns (Miller, 2001, p. 481).
For kids ages 5 to 14, the mortality rate is 14 times higher in high gun states than low gun states (Miller, 2001, p. 481).
For kids ages 0 to 4, the mortality rate is 17 times higher in high gun states than low gun states (Miller, 2001, p. 481).
For every age group, where there are more guns there are more accidental deaths (Miller, 2001, p. 483).
For adults, keeping a gun in the home quadruples the risk of dying of an accidental gunshot wound (Wiebe, 2003).
A gun in the home is 4 times more likely to be used in an unintentional shooting than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense (Kellermann, p. 263).
Most unintentional shooting deaths occur in the home (65 percent), based on data from 16 states. The most common context of the death (30 percent) was playing with the gun (Karch, 2010).
In almost half of unintentional shooting deaths (49 percent), the victim is shot by another person. In virtually all of these cases, the shooter and victim knew each other (Hemenway, p. 1184).
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence/gvunintentional
hat tip Blouise
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