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International Violent Death Rates

Summary

The frequent manipulation of gun death statistics, a table of international violent death rates showing gun and non-gun homicide, suicide, and total violent death rates, and a brief discussion of whether gun ownership and violent death rates are correlated are presented.

International Violent Death Rate Table Discussion

"Gun death" statistics are frequently cited, in the manner above, to strongly suggest that guns are the cause behind the high violent death rate in the U.S. As in the case of the Los Angeles Times article, no mention is made that over half of those violent deaths are suicides. The CNN article mentions gun homicides and gun suicides, but fails to show us the total violent death rate of other countries, not just gun deaths. For example, in Japan, where gun ownership is rare, its total suicide rate is higher than our total suicide rate.

Combining gun suicide and homicide deaths creates a sensational comparison with other countries, but only clouds and distorts the many factors actually behind violent death rates. Looking at only gun deaths, it is easy to get the false impression that, because of guns, the United States is the most violent country on earth.

Rather than being the "league leader" in violent death rates, as the sensational and misleading media reports suggest when focusing exclusively on guns, though the U.S. is still high, its violent death rate is not orders of magnitude higher than other countries. (See also international homicide comparisons.)

The "gun death" statistic is seldom referenced within its proper perspective and context. Also rare is the article that mentions the number of lives saved through defensive gun use and that our homicide rate is at a thirty year low and still declining (FBI Uniform Crime Reports).

International Violent Death Rate Table (Death rates are per 100,000)

Country Year Population Total Death Total Homicide Firearm Homicide Total Suicide Firearm Suicide % Households With Guns
Estonia 1994 1,499,257 70.76 28.21 8.07 40.95 3.13 n/a 
Hungary 1994 10,245,677 39.01 3.53 0.23 35.38 0.88 n/a 
Slovenia 1994 1,989,477 33.37 2.01 0.35 31.16 2.51 n/a 
Finland1 1994 5,088,333 30.72 3.24 0.86 27.26 5.78 23.2
Brazil 1993 160,737,000 25.34 19.04 10.58 3.46 0.73 n/a 
Denmark 1993 5,189,378 23.46 1.21 0.23 22.13 2.25 n/a 
Austria 1994 8,029,717 23.36 1.17 0.42 22.12 4.06 n/a 
Switzerland2 1994 7,021,000 22.80 1.32 0.58 21.28 5.61 27.2
France 1994 57,915,450 22.67 1.12 0.44 20.79 5.14 22.6
Mexico 1994 90,011,259 21.74 17.58 9.88 2.89 0.91 n/a 
Belgium 1990 9,967,387 20.77 1.41 0.60 19.04 2.56 16.6
Portugal 1994 5,138,600 18.95 2.98 1.28 14.83 1.28 n/a 
United States3 1993 257,783,004 18.57 5.70 3.72 12.06 7.35 39.0
Japan 1994 124,069,000 17.34 0.62 0.02 16.72 0.04 n/a 
Sweden 1993 8,718,571 17.12 1.30 0.18 15.75 2.09 15.1
Germany4 1994 81,338,093 17.00 1.17 0.22 15.64 1.17 8.9
Taiwan5 1996 21,979,444 15.00 8.12 0.97 6.88 0.12 n/a 
Singapore 1994 2,930,200 15.77 1.71 0.07 14.06 0.17 n/a 
Canada 1992 28,120,065 15.64 2.16 0.76 13.19 3.72 29.1
Mauritius 1993 1,062,810 15.42 2.35 0 12.98 0.09 n/a 
Argentina 1994 34,179,000 15.25 4.51 2.11 6.71 3.05 n/a 
Norway 1993 4,324,815 14.75 0.97 0.30 13.64 3.95 32.0
N. Ireland 1994 1,641,711 14.74 6.09 5.24 8.41 1.34 8.4
Australia 1994 17,838,401 14.65 1.86 0.44 12.65 2.35 19.4
New Zealand 1993 3,458,850 14.63 1.47 0.17 12.81 2.14 22.3
Scotland 1994 5,132,400 14.46 2.24 0.19 12.16 0.31 4.7
Hong Kong 1993 5,919,000 11.52 1.23 0.12 10.29 0.07 n/a 
Netherlands 1994 15,382,830 11.25 1.11 0.36 10.10 0.31 1.9
South Korea 1994 44,453,179 11.17 1.62 0.04 9.48 0.02 n/a 
Ireland 1991 3,525,719 10.68 0.62 0.03 9.81 0.94 n/a 
Italy 1992 56,764,854 10.42 2.25 1.66 8.00 1.11 16.0
England/Wales6 1992 51,429,000 9.53 1.41 0.11 7.68 0.33 4.7
Israel 1993 5,261,700 9.80 2.32 0.72 7.05 1.84 n/a 
Spain 1993 39,086,079 8.97 0.95 0.21 7.77 0.43 13.1
Greece 1994 10,426,289 4.61 1.14 0.59 3.40 0.84 n/a 
Kuwait 1995 1,684,529 3.50 1.01 0.36 1.66 0.06 n/a 
Country Year Population Total Death Total Homicide Firearm Homicide Total Suicide Firearm Suicide % Households With Guns

Notes:
  1. The United Nations International Study on Firearm Regulation reports Finland's gun ownership rate at 50% of households.
  2. Percent households with guns includes all army personnel.
  3. Total homicide rate and firearm homicide rates are for 1999, FBI Uniform Crime Report (1999).
  4. Percent households with guns excludes East Germany.
  5. Number of homicides: Ministry of Interior, National Police Administration (link not always active), Taiwan.

    Population: As of April 1999, Government Information Office, Taiwan.

    Gun Homicides: Central News Agency, Taipei, November 23, 1997.

  6. Total homicides and gun homicides for 1997: Criminal Statistics, England and Wales, 1997.

    Population: 52.2 million in mid-1997, Office for National Statistics Monitor, press release.

Sources:

The first eight columns of data are from the International Journal of Epidemiology (1998). The "Total Death" column was calculated by including homicides, suicides, and unintentional and undetermined firearm (not shown here) rates.

Column "% Households With Firearms": Can Med Assoc J, Killias, M (1993), except United States (Gallup [2000] and Harris [2001] polls.)

Note:

Argentina, Brazil, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, Mauritius, Slovenia, Portugal, and South Korea are classified as upper-middle-income countries by the World Bank. The remainder are considered high-income countries.


Additonal International Violent Death Tables

Is Gun Ownership Correlated with Violent Deaths?

In 1993 a Swiss professor, Martin Killias, published a study of 18 countries concerning gun ownership, homicide and suicide. He in part concluded there was a weak correlation between total homicide and gun ownership. For a partial criticism of his study see Dunblane Misled where using the countries studied by Killias, these researchers found a much stronger correlation between firearm homicides and car ownership. More seriously, when the United States was included in the Killias study, a stronger correlation between total homicide and gun ownership was found. When two countries were excluded, the U.S. (high gun ownership, high murder rate) and Northern Ireland (low gun ownership, high murder rate) the correlation was marginally significant. Gary Kleck writes, "Contrary to his claim that 'the overall correlation is not contingent upon a few countries with extreme scores on the dependent and independent variable', reanalysis of the data reveals that if one excludes only the United States from the sample there is no significant association between gun ownership and the total homicide rate." (Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, p 253. Walter de Gruyter, Inc. New York, 1997.) Kleck concludes that "the homicide-guns study was not international at all, but merely reflected the unique status of the United States as a high-gun ownership/high-violence nation...Since the positive association Killias observed was entirely dependent on the U.S. case, where self-defense is a common reason for gun ownership, this supports the conclusion that the association was attributable to the impact of the homicide rates on gun levels."

Using homicide and suicide data from a larger sample of countries, 35, (International Journal of Epidemiology 1998:27:216), Kleck found "no significant (at the 5% level) association between gun ownership levels and the total homicide rate in the largest sample of nations available to study this topic. (Associations with the total suicide rate were even weaker.)" (Targeting Guns, p 254.)

A more recent study, by Killias, concludes "no significant correlations with toal suicide or homicide rates were found, leaving open the question of possible substitution effects."

This article by Rutgers University professor Dr. Goertzel offers sound advice regarding statistical analysis: "When presented with an econometric model, consumers should insist on evidence that it can predict trends in data other than the data used to create it. Models that fail this test are junk science, no matter how complex the analysis."

Other Links Related to International Violence and Gun Control


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