Is that true when you compare cities of similar size / population density? Sure, Montana has a ton of guns and little crime, but it's also rural and has no people. Looking at cities >250k, the high-crime cities (let's say, those over 10 violent crimes per 1,000 inhabitants) don't seem to skip states with loose gun laws: St. Louis, MO; Memphis, TN; Indianapolis, IN; Kansas City, MO; Atlanta, GA; Houston, TX; and Tulsa, OK; are all high on the list.
(Data from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...)
Houston also has a significant low-income population, and experienced white flight to the suburbs on a massive scale through the 70s and 80s; leaving behind a wrecked shell of a city (downtown has only recently started to come back to life; when I lived in Houston, downtown real estate was dirt cheap, but everyone was afraid to go there after dark).
In short, I don't think it's anywhere near as simple as "guns lead to more/less crime".
NYC's another interesting data point (but merely that) -- violent crime rate is roughly the same as Phoenix's... one city with a heavily armed citizenry and one virtually defenseless, same results. Obviously, other factors matter more.
If you go down the list of US cities with violent crime problems in order, the unmistakable trend is they're all at the bottom end of the economic spectrum. Safe bet that the local unemployment rate has a lot more to do with crime than gun laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...
I could see Houstion being a little more laid back about recording every little gunshot. For one, guns in texas are sorta like bread and butter. For another, it doesn't look good to have an excess number of reported gunshots in a given annual report.
The population point is interesting and I'm not sure about that. Maybe something to do some looking into at some point, I'd be curious to know more.
Edit: This seems almost comically biased and appeals to emotion a lot, but does cite some stats - http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493636.html
More Guns Less Crime is a snappy title, but mostly seems like a work of ideological pro-firearm propaganda in light of its author's many documented ethical issues.
This wouldn't be so much of a big point, except that he did spend a lot of time trumpeting about this single year of slight rise in crime. If you read his studies at the time, he also grossly misrepresents things like doing that trick where you report going from 4 to 5 incidents a year as "OMG! 25% increase!" (can't remember the exact number)
Kleck is another guy with crazy stats. In one report he mentioned that concealed handguns saved 230k lives per year in the US. I crunched the numbers to see how that would translate to our 'lawless', 'gunless' country, where criminals 'have free reign', and it would mean we would have 15k deaths because we don't do concealed gun laws. Turned out that our annual murder rate from all sources combined is about 300. Part of the pro-gun propaganda is the implicit assumption that every crime involves death or rape.
I've spent a lot of time looking at gun issues over the years and started out from a total anti-gun perspective, with the exception of farmers and security. As I've examined it, the problem really seems to be handguns. Rifles don't seem to be so much of an issue - anecdotally at least, it's hard to conceal a rifle. The armed Swiss that's so often reported are armed with rifles, too (interestingly the 'armed society is a polite society' people always seem to leave out west Africa...). When you start looking at the statistics in the US, it really jumps out at you how bad handguns are there. I've also never, ever, seen any pro-gun argument make note of the role of the startling increase in US incarceration have an affect on crime rates. It's an interesting topic and blinkered passion rise on all sides, that's for sure.
Port Arthur was a very large massacre with ~35 dead and made up about 10% of our annual murders, but usually spree killers comprise a much lower percentage. Legislation shouldn't be made based on the outlier case. It's even worse in the US - the high visibility spree killers would only total 100-200 per year, but there are about ~17k murders annually in the US (11k of those are with handguns). The spree killers that make the headlines are a drop in the bucket in the US, and in Australia they're actually pretty rare - separated by years, not to mention that we haven't had much in the way of such things this millenium.
In short, focusing on spree killers misses the bigger picture. The sheer number of spree killers is immense in the US as compared per capita to its contemporaries, but even there it's still a drop in the bucket.
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six degrees of separation: one of my teachers at high school taught Julian Knight (Hoddle St bloke) how to shoot, in the school's army cadet programme...
six degrees of embarrassment: I had been seeing a lass from Tasmania for a month or two and was making a short series of dark jokes (my MO) about the Port Arthur massacre. She waited patiently to the end of it, then let me know her aunt died there. She said it was worth waiting to see my suitably embarrassed expression...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,_Virginia : Richmond was ranked overall as the 5th most dangerous city and the 12th-most dangerous metropolitan area in the United States for the year of 2005.
In Switzerland, though, I think it's important to keep a few things in mind when you look at the statistics, before you judge it as a heavily armed country:
- It's mandatory for every male to serve in the army, where we are all issued rifles. We get to keep the rifles at home when not on duty, and get to keep them after our duties are complete should we wish to. This makes up a huge part of the guns owned in CH. Military rifles are very hard to conceal and do not make for very good armed robbery weapons.
- While guns are common, ammunition is hard to come by. Military ammunition is only given while on-duty, and must be returned to the arsenal when not on-duty. While many people have guns, few have ammunitions.
- For almost everybody, guns remain locked in the attic / basement to be used only should the military call.
Please let me know if you ever find a truly unbiased study on gun laws and their impact on crime. Seems like everyone's got an agenda, which is unfortunate because it's really a pretty interesting topic.
It seems that Switzerland has a low gun-crime rate but I wouldn't be so quick to give credit to their gunlaws for this. Switzerland and the United States are very different places.
Again this is just my $0.02
I lived in Ballymun for a year and witnessed all sorts of craziness - arson, vandalism, stabbings - but not once a gun crime. I've never been attacked or robbed myself either, thankfully.
I think the difference is that due to demographics the Irish don't face the constant threat of the urban zombie hordes attacking.
That's not true in the slightest. Prevalence of guns directly equates to a greater incidence of gun crime, on both an international (say, U.S. vs. other nations) and intranational basis.
The most dangerous places are places where there's access to firearms for criminals, but they're illegal or prohibited for citizens. The most heavily armed states in the USA actually have lower gun crime and violent crime. Likewise, extremely heavily armed countries like Switzerland and Israel also have low violent crime rates.
You've got to go to one side or the other to be safe. Near complete removal and prohibition of firearms (like Japan) works. Arming all legitimate citizens who want arms works. But having firearms available easily for purchase on the black market, but restricted/prohibited legally tends to promote the worst of both worlds.