"Every day in the U.S., an average of 289 people are shot. Eighty-six of them die: 30 are murdered, 53 kill themselves, two die accidentally, and one is shot in a police intervention" (Brady Campaign).
I'm still amazed that so many Americans think it's a good idea to carry a gun. Here in the UK we don't carry guns - we tend not to get shot either.
Thank you for proving my point about the use of bogus statistics and unsupported conclusions to promote gun control.
First of all, the UK has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world. So exactly what has that accomplished? Two of the more restrictive laws in the UK were passed in 1988 and 1997. The 1997 amendment to the 1968 Firearms Act essentially banned private ownership of handguns. Did this control handgun crimes? In 1997, there were approximately 2700 reported crimes involving the use of a handgun. By 2001, that figure had increased to just under 6000. It was not until the passage of other laws which significantly increased the penalties for violent crime that the firearms crime rate started decreasing again in the UK. But 2013 numbers are still higher than 1997 numbers.
Conclusion: even outright bans on firearms do not reduce crimes using firearms. Logical, since criminals, by definition, don't obey the law.
Looking at the overall statistics for homicide, the UK has sat consistently between 0.8 and 1.2 homicides per 100,000 people for over 5 decades. The U.S. has sat UNconsistently between 4.6 and a peak of 7.1. The major point of these numbers is NONE of the gun control acts in the UK made a significant change in overall homicide rates. They have ALWAYS been much lower than the U.S. So the comment "...we don't carry guns - we tend not to get shot either." has NOTHING to do with gun control, but the fact that the UK is and for a long time has been, over all, less violent prone than the U.S. Perhaps we should be examining why that is, instead of blithely blaming an inanimate object for the problem.
As for the figures from the Brady Campaign, the Brady Campaign is well known to be the biggest liars in the U.S. when it comes to using inflated, misstated, or outright made-up numbers to promote their agenda of banning private firearms. For instance, the 289 shooting per day: only because they count someone shot three times as three shootings.
They also fail to mention that 2/3 of civilian shootings are self defense. Yes, it's a sad comment on our society that people find it necessary to use a firearm to protect themselves and their loved ones. But is it due to lack of gun control laws? HARDLY. If those people did not have the means to protect themselves, many of them would be murder victims themselves, not to mention victims of robbery, rape, battery, and a host of other crimes their actions prevented.
Let's also look at the number of 53 suicides using a firearm. Approximately 1/2 of U.S. suicides occur using a firearm. Would those poor, sad people still be alive if they had not possessed a firearm to kill themselves with? Nope. The suicide rate in the U.S. was 12.6 per 100,000 in 2013. in 2013, the suicide rate in the UK was 11.1 per 100K. 51.6% in the U.S used a firearm. 1.8% in the UK used a firearm. Conclusion: lack of firearms will not significantly reduce suicides.
AS I stated before, there are no valid statistics available showing gun control laws resulting in a reduction of firearms related crime. Conversely, data DOES show that crime rates DO tend to decrease in areas where firearms laws are relaxed.