https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/the-10-sa...
Five states with lowest rates of gun death: Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_Uni...)
States with constitutional carry: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho (residents only), Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota (residents only; concealed carry only), Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_carry#U.S._juri...)
Vermont = lots of guns and safe
Louisiana = lots of guns and unsafe
Hawaii = not so many guns and safe
Illinois = not so many guns and unsafe...
May as well tie it into most popular music if we're using sample sizes that small.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/u...
1. The compare gun deaths. This includes suicides and excludes all other murders. So it is a totally biased metric.
They even admit most gun deaths are suicides.
2. Ignore by far the most salient variables for predicting murders.
Don't even get me started on the "suicide is always terrible" bullshit. Many suicides are rational responses to untenable situations. I'm glad that my grandfather had a gun, when AEC and his physicians had both failed him completely.
Looks like your numbers are badly off (those countries have less than half the guns the US does per capita, so not all that high), and in Switzerland there are a ton of restrictions on the guns (and on the ammunition!) compared to the US, to boot.
As to legal restrictions in Switzerland, that is absolutely true but orthogonal to the point I've made. The issue lies in the number of guns per person (and I'd personally argue the culture surrounding guns which spurs it), not the legal framework. South Africa has tighter gun laws than the US but still suffers from greater gun deaths (again, in total not mass shootings).
Guns are an efficient tool for killing people, much more so than knives or baseball bats.
This is, incidentally, the same reason other things that are efficient for killing people and not constitutionally proteced, like dynamite, are not something you can walk in and buy in Walmart.
It's a bit 'noisy' because there are a lot of 3rd world places that are simply quite violent. The US has a lot more than, say, a lot of Europe.
Also, don't discount suicide: guns make that easier too. Some will find a way without, but some would be prevented if it's 'too much effort'.
Are you arguing that the police are more likely to kill people at random in areas with higher amounts of gun ownership?
I'm not sure I follow you.
Cops have to make split second decisions with their own lives on the line. In a country where it's very likely that the person they're interacting with in a tense situation could be armed with a gun, it's going to make them more likely to shoot.
Perhaps not quite so relevant to this particular case, as the caller said the person was armed, but I think this would have played out differently in a lot of other countries.
This is precisely why the USA needs to reform its approach to police use of deadly force.
The problem is in the police culture towards discharging a firearm, not the greater ownership of guns. American society bears much of the blame for lionizing cops instead of scrutinizing them.
Many cases of police officers killing innocent civilians involved civilians who were either fleeing, submitting, or already subdued and pinned down. Cops in the US tend to be exonerated for using deadly force, even when the victim could not arguably have endangered others.
Wrong, police in e.g. UK or Japan do not customarily carry guns. And SHOCKER these countries have fewer police-related homicides.
Do a graph of legal gun ownership versus murder rate (comparing US states, or countries). No relationship, in fact slightly negative.
Do a graph of other demographic factors against murder rates. Bingo!