High gun ownership makes countries less safe, US study finds

[Deleted]

I searched the forums and didn't see this anywhere.... I can't believe this didn't get any discussion.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...n-deaths-study

High gun ownership makes countries less safe, US study finds
American journal expedites publication of study in wake of navy yard shooting that debunks belief guns make a nation safer.

The US, with the most guns per head in the world, has the highest rate of deaths from firearms.

Guns do not make a nation safer, say US doctors who have compared the rate of firearms-related deaths in countries where many people own guns with the death rate in countries where gun ownership is rare.

Their findings, published Wednesday in the prestigious American Journal of Medicine, debunk the historic belief among many people in the United States that guns make a country safer, they say. On the contrary, the US, with the most guns per head in the world, has the highest rate of deaths from firearms, while Japan, which has the lowest rate of gun ownership, has the least.

The journal has fast-tracked publication of the study because of the shootings at the Washington navy yard. It was originally scheduled for later this week.

It follows an emotional appeal from a doctor at the trauma center in Washington where the victims of Aaron Alexis' random violence were taken. "I would like you to put my trauma center out of business," Janis Orlowski, chief medical officer at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, told reporters in the aftermath of the massacre. "I would like to not be an expert on gunshots. Let's get rid of this. This is not America."

The fraught question of whether gun ownership protects populations from crime or makes them less likely to be killed has been debated for 200 years, say the authors, Sripal Bangalore of NYU Langone Medical Center, and Franz H Messerli of St Luke's Roosevelt hospital, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York. They say the arguments began as soon as the second amendment stating "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" was passed in 1791.

At one end is the argument that gun control laws are an infringement on the right to self-defense and on constitutional rights, and that there is no evidence that banning assault weapons would reduce crime. At the other end is the view that fewer firearms would reduce crime rates and overall lead to greater safety, they say.

In some of the recent mass shootings – for instance those in Aurora, Tucson, Oak Creek, Virginia Tech – it has been suggested that the killer was mentally ill and that lack of treatment was a bigger issue than gun ownership. With this in mind, the New York-based doctors looked in their study not only at the relationship of gun ownership to firearms deaths but also mental illness.

They examined data from 27 developed countries, using gun ownership figures from the Small Arms Survey and deaths from the World Health Organisation, the National Center for Health Statistics and others. They also looked at crime rates compiled by the United Nations for an indication of the safety of each country.

More guns meant more deaths, they found. "The gun ownership rate was a strong and independent predictor of firearm-related death," says Bangalore. "Private gun ownership was highest in the US. Japan, on the other end, had an extremely low gun ownership rate. Similarly, South Africa (9.4 per 100,000) and the US (10.2 per 100,000) had extremely high firearm-related deaths, whereas the United Kingdom (0.25 per 100,000) had an extremely low rate of firearm-related deaths.

"There was a significant correlation between guns per head per country and the rate of firearm-related deaths with Japan being on one end of the spectrum and the US being on the other. This argues against the notion of more guns translating into less crime. South Africa was the only outlier in that the observed firearms-related death rate was several times higher than expected from gun ownership."

High rates of mental illness in any country, on the other hand, did not predict more gun deaths.

"Although correlation is not the same as causation, it seems conceivable that abundant gun availability facilitates firearm-related deaths. Conversely, high crime rates may instigate widespread anxiety and fear, thereby motivating people to arm themselves and give rise to increased gun ownership, which, in turn, increases availability. The resulting vicious cycle could, bit by bit, lead to the polarized status that is now the case with the US," the doctors write.

"Regardless of exact cause and effect, the current study debunks the widely quoted hypothesis that countries with higher gun ownership are safer than those with low gun ownership."

[flyingjunkie]

The thing that pisses me off to my core about these numbskulls is that they're only looking at "here are people that died at the hands of firearms. They don't take into account that "this guy got shot because he tried to rape a woman" or "this guy got shot because he held a gas station at gun point with his illegal gun." None of these "studies" take into account that the number of firearm uses in the case of lawful self-defense where the victim would have died or been severely injured instead of the perpetrator. And of all the incidents that those idiots named, how many of them were in their sacred sanctuaries committed by people who had illegal owned guns? It's not guns that are evil, it's people that are evil. Even if you took away all the guns in the world, you could not take away the evil in a person's heart. They will just find another instrument to perpetrate their crime with. Unfortunately, these "scientists" and "doctors" will never comprehend this and my rant is just me preaching to the choir...

[American1776]

What nonsense. It's so clearly propaganda it's not even laughable.

They claim that fiream ownership make a country 'less safe', then talk about those countries having more firearm deaths. So I guess death by firearm is the only danger anyone has to worry about in terms of safety. That means before guns were invented, we were all 100 percent safe? Yes, I wish I lived during the Middle Ages, when there were zero guns, and roving bands of knights would slaughter entire villages with swords and axes. But there were no firearm deaths, so it was completely safe.

Whenever someone says that getting rid of guns is the answer for a safe world, remind them of the horrors of the Middle Ages, the crusades, and the brutality of antiquity. That's when good guys needed guns. We'd have to reinvent guns to protect ourselves from the evil.

Just look at states, homicide rates, and firearm ownership. A state with lots of guns could have higher gun deaths, but lower murder rates than a state with fewer guns, fewer gun deaths, but that state has more overall murders.

Also, Japan is a feudal society where the people are subjects to the governemrnt. The police have broad powers to search homes whenever they like, and the subjects of japan like that. They are welcome to that, but for me, no thank you. Safety is also a function of the means that the government has for having a monopoly of armed force over the people. When the people are subjects and slaves, there can never be any safety.

[PocketProtector]

Yeah. You're so much safer with no means to protect yourself, who knew??

[BestDefense=StrongOffense]

Why, yes! By golly England is safer because there aren't any guns! Sure, a poor bastard got run over and the people in the car sawed his head off with a rusty knife, but at least only one person died instead of two people getting shot.

And don't mind the youths. They'll riot at the drop of a hat, burn half the city, but it's because they're misunderstood. You can just rebuild your home or business when they're done.

Might as well hand over your pointy kitchen knives too. Parliament doesn't think you need them. They would know. They asked a chef.

[father-of-five]

The writer of the article appears to like salad bars, where one can pick and choose only what one likes and ignore the rest.

[Boots_DE]

Should we prefer being killed by a baseball bat than a gun?

I guess they never read the book "More Guns, Less Crime".

[Palerider]

"Regardless of exact cause and effect, the current study debunks the widely quoted hypothesis that countries with higher gun ownership are safer than those with low gun ownership."

I really do not recall that statement, the entire premise of this study, to ever be widely discussed as a reason for gun ownership. In fact, it feels like a bastardization of John Lotts work "More Guns' Less Crime" which they reference in the study. Lott did not compare countries but rather cities/states that allowed gun ownership compared to those which heavily restricted it.

I'd love to see the study if Chicago, DC, NY and any other large US cities banning guns were removed from the US data.


Edit to add, I know that statement isn't from StillercityK9.

[OwnTheRide]

In related news, more people drown in the ocean than in the desert.

[harold63]

Of course deaths related to guns are higher in countries with guns. Any retard knows that. These doctors had to go to school for how long to finally figure it out. They are too smart for their own good.

Here's what really pisses the doctors off. They get a few gun shot victims here and there. Some of those go straight to the morgue, so there's a loss of revenue to them...no need in fixing a bullet hole in a dead person. What's left? Guy falls off ladder or kid gets hit by car on bike. He said 'he'd like his trauma to go out of business'. Well, even if it went out of the gun shot wound business, it would gain tons of business repairing rape victims injuries, people getting robbed injuries, plain old bat to the head injuries, and all the other 'business is a booming' injuries that would result from us not having a gun.

So...it's ok to get your ass handed to you and go to the trauma center to get stitched up or reglue what's left of your skull, or have knives and screw drivers removed from your windpipe, but you cannot cause a gunshot wound/death to the person that wants to hand your ass to you. What fucking planet are these doctors from??? Sorry boys, you're just going to have to live with a few gunshot perps at the trauma center verses the booming business of violent crime and the crates full of people (aka 'victims) that would show up because they got no guns.

I agree with the other poster...take out the three or four large cities with big gun control and our gun crimes probably get cut in half. I laugh more and more at these dopey bastards that call themselves doctors. Oxymorons, all of them.