Quote:
Originally Posted by Derwood
many European countries have extremely strict gun control laws and their gun-related homicide rates are 1% of America's
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Which ones?
I know Germany's Gun-related homicide rate is about 1/10'th that of the United States, and I believe that to be the lowest in Europe. It certainly isn't 1%. Let's at least keep approximations to the same order of magnitude.
It should be worth noting, that despite the lack of guns in european countries, non-gun related homicides are also a fraction of non gun-related homicides in the united states.
The only European country with a higher non-gun related homicide rate is N Ireland, which also has a higher gun-related homiced rate than the US.
People just aren't mixing it up in Europe the way they do in the United States. It's cultural. Sure, firearms provide an easy instrument for the commission of a crime, but they also allow for easy defense.
Like those determined to commit suicide, if you take away a single method available, most people will simply use whatever is still available to get the job done; but they will get the job done.
Shit, even if you remove all gun-related homicides altogether from the United States Homicide Statistics, we would still have a higher murder rate than most of Europe, and Australia.
Oh, and how do you account for the Swiss, with their love of automatic weapons and a very heavily armed populace? Their murder rate is one of the lowest in Europe, below England, Germany, France, etc.