Firearm Violence in America and Around the Globe

ratlaw · Post by **ratlaw** » Tue May 06, 2003 8:41 am

The thread on Michael Moore's Columbine documentary got me interested in the topic. Being the google fu master that I am, I went straight to the World Health Organization and downloaded their World Report on Violence and Health. Having done that I quickly coded up an HTML table so I could easily see the statistics I cared about. For the purposes of this thread, that table can be found here.

Inclusion in the table means a country is one of the first 50 countries (by GDP) to appear in the WHO's numbers. All numbers are for the year indicated in the table unless otherwise noted. Just so you know almost all of the population numbers came from the CIA World Fact Book because I was having trouble finding statistics for the given year. Additionally, total death numbers, when provided, are from the The Human Mortality Database. If you know of or find numbers for the given year, let me know and I'll update the table. I'll have more to say later when I've had some time to look over the numbers some more.

(Side note: If someone is willing to host the data someplace that doesn't have pop-up advertising, I'd take it as a personal favor.)

Instant Cash · Post by **Instant Cash** » Tue May 06, 2003 1:00 pm

ratlaw wrote: Having done that I quickly coded up an HTML table so I could easily see the statistics I cared about.

You're so geeky you're cool

ratlaw · Post by **ratlaw** » Tue May 06, 2003 8:52 pm

Instant Cash wrote: You're so geeky you're cool

Gee, thx

So, now that I've had some sleep and am looking things over, some items of interest...

The United States is 40th out of 54 countries in terms of total numbers of homicides (6.9 per 100k) and somewhere in the middle in terms of suicides (10.4 per 100k). We're really high in terms of the numbers of firearms used in homicides and suicides, but that's not surprising when you consider how many guns there are floating around. One thing I found interesting is that several Western European countries come in a good bit higher than the US in terms of numbers of suicides per 100k: Belgium, France, Denmark and Switzerland just to name the first four on the table. Also odd, New Zealand and Australia both come in a good bit higher than the US in numbers of suicides as well.

England and Wales come in second in terms of lowest numbers of homicides per 100k. I found that to be pretty cool, as well as that Israel rates lowest in total homicides. I'm curious if that counts suicide bombings, or perhaps '97 was an off year for terrorists.

One final note to make, if you go through this table and combine Firearm Homicides with Firearm Sucidies, the US comes out very high. Of course, that's not a really useful number because all it tells you is that firearms are easily available. Still, looking at countries by GDP the US is still looking pretty violent compared to Europe. Though I suppose if you consider suicide to be violence, then things change a bit. Personally, I don't. *shrug*

Oh. If someone could find population figures for the three regions of the UK (England and Wales, N. Ireland, Scotland) that would be very cool. All I can find are figures for the entire UK and no good way of dividing them up by region.

Anguirel · Post by **Anguirel** » Wed May 07, 2003 1:58 am

Israel probably doesn't count its military actions as homicides, and besides the occasional bombing is a damned safe place... <voice class="Really Uninformed Stereotype From Reading Semi-fictional Accounts">Of course, everyone is carrying at least a submachine gun and they're all constantly looking around like they're Secret Service agents, but such paranoia breeds security -- unlike the American thought that if everyone is packing then no one will shoot, in Israel it actually works because not only are they all packing, they have their weapons out and ready.</voice>

I wonder if some of those high 'suicide' rates are just a very efficient underworld with good connections in the local police...

PMWrestler · Post by **PMWrestler** » Wed May 07, 2003 2:07 am

I think if anything our suicide rate iis higher than what is on the chart. There are tons of car v. wall MVA's that are actually suicide's, but aren't reported as such, because there is no real hard evidence to back it up, so the police or the FD just report it as an accident as a courtesy to the family.

FlakJacket · Post by **FlakJacket** » Wed May 07, 2003 2:28 am

ratlaw wrote:Oh. If someone could find population figures for the three regions of the UK (England and Wales, N. Ireland, Scotland) that would be very cool. All I can find are figures for the entire UK and no good way of dividing them up by region.

Well, the best I could find are government 2002 population estimates since the 2001 census results wont be out until later this year. They have the figures at:

Combined UK Population - 59.5 million
England - 49.9 million
Wales - 2.9 million
Scotland - 5.1 million
Northern Ireland - 1.6 million

Instant Cash · Post by **Instant Cash** » Wed May 07, 2003 2:37 am

ratlaw wrote:Gee, thx

I did mena that as a compliment by that way, that is very cool stuff you found, and the fact that you made a web table of it just adds to it.

Jestyr · Post by **Jestyr** » Wed May 07, 2003 3:07 am

PMWrestler wrote:I think if anything our suicide rate iis higher than what is on the chart. There are tons of car v. wall MVA's that are actually suicide's, but aren't reported as such, because there is no real hard evidence to back it up, so the police or the FD just report it as an accident as a courtesy to the family.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any kind of source on this?

Firearm Violence in America and Around the Globe

Firearm Violence in America and Around the Globe

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