There have been more mass shootings than days so far this year, for the year 2023 only, the US experienced and lived 128 massacres as a result of horrific mass shootings, data base shows, this older article, one of many, explains and warns of loose regulations adjusting the ownership of lethal guns and assault armaments.....
Ubiquitous gun violence in the United States has left few
places unscathed over the decades. Still, many Americans hold their right to
bear arms, enshrined in the US Constitution, as sacrosanct. But critics of the
Second Amendment say that right threatens another: The right to life. America's
relationship to gun ownership is unique, and its gun culture is a global
outlier. As the tally of gun-related deaths continue to grow daily, here's a
look at how gun culture in the US compares to the rest of the world.
How firearm
ownership compares globally The United States is the only nation in the world
where civilian guns outnumber people. Falkland Islands Rate of civilian firearms
per 100 people 120.5 US 62.1 Falkland Islands : 33 Note: Gun ownership rates are
estimates as of 2017. Some entries have been combined to calculate rates for
Cyprus, United Kingdom and Somalia. Data not available for Christmas Island,
Nauru and Vatican City. Source: Small Arms Survey (Civilian Firearm Holdings
2017) There are 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to the
Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey (SAS). No other nation has more civilian
guns than people. The Falkland Islands -- a British territory in the southwest
Atlantic Ocean, claimed by Argentina and the subject of a 1982 war -- is home to
the world's second-largest stash of civilian guns per capita.
But with an
estimated 62 guns per 100 people, its gun ownership rate is almost half that of
the US. Yemen -- a country in the throes of a seven-year conflict -- has the
third-highest gun ownership rate at 53 guns per 100 people. While the exact
number of civilian-owned firearms is difficult to calculate due to a variety of
factors -- including unregistered weapons, the illegal trade and global conflict
-- SAS researchers estimate that Americans own 393 million of the 857 million
civilian guns available, which is around 46% of the world's civilian gun cache.
About 44% of US adults live in a household with a gun, and about one-third own
one personally, according to an October 2020 Gallup survey.
Some nations have
high gun ownership due to illegal stocks from past conflicts or lax restrictions
on ownership, but the US is one of only three countries in the world where
bearing (or keeping) arms is a constitutional right, according to Zachary
Elkins, associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin
and director of the Comparative Constitutions Project. Yet the ownership rate in
the other two -- Guatemala and Mexico -- is almost a tenth of the United States.
The gun debate in those countries is less politicized, Elkins said. In contrast
to the US, Guatemala and Mexico's constitutions facilitate regulation, with
lawmakers more comfortable restricting guns, especially given concerns around
organized crime, he said. In Mexico, there's only one gun store in the entire
country -- and it's controlled by the army. In the US, firearm manufacturing is
on the rise, with more Americans buying guns.
In 2018, gun makers produced 9
million firearms in the country -- more than double the amount manufactured in
2008, according to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
(ATF). More recently, January 2021 marked the biggest annual increase since 2013
in requests for federal background checks necessary for purchasing a gun -- a
nearly 60% jump from January 2020. And in March 2021, the FBI reported almost
4.7 million background checks -- the most of any month since the agency started
keeping track more than 20 years ago.
Two million of those checks were for new
gun purchases, making it the second highest month on record for firearms sales,
according to the National Shooting Sports Federation, the firearms industry
trade group that compares FBI background check numbers with actual sales data to
determine its sales figures. The US has the highest firearm homicide rate in the
developed world In 2019, the number of US deaths from gun violence was about 4
per 100,000 people. That's 18 times the average rate in other developed
countries. Multiple studies show access to guns contributes to higher
firearm-related homicide rates. Rate of guns owned per 100 people Gun-related
homicide rate per 100K people.
Bulgaria Gun-related homicide rate Rate of guns
owned 0.6 8.4 US Gun-related homicide rate Rate of guns owned 4.1 120.5 Note:
Developed countries are defined based on the UN classification, which includes
36 countries. Source: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (Global Burden
of Disease 2019), Small Arms Survey (Civilian Firearm Holdings 2017) Almost a
third of US adults believe there would be less crime if more people owned guns,
according to an April 2021 Pew survey. However, multiple studies show that where
people have easy access to firearms, gun-related deaths tend to be more
frequent, including by suicide, homicide and unintentional injuries. It is then
unsurprising that the US has more deaths from gun violence than any other
developed country per capita.
The rate in the US is eight times greater than in
Canada, which has the seventh highest rate of gun ownership in the world; 22
times higher than in the European Union and 23 times greater than in Australia,
according to Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) data from 2019.
The gun-related homicide rate in Washington, DC -- the highest of any US state
or district -- is close to levels in Brazil, which ranks sixth highest in the
world for gun-related homicides, according to the IHME figures. Globally,
countries in Latin America and the Caribbean suffer from the highest rates of
firearm homicides, with El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala, Colombia and Honduras
topping the charts. Drug cartel activities and the presence of firearms from old
conflicts are both contributing factors, according to the 2018 Global Mortality
From Firearms, 1990-2016, study.
But gun-related violence in Latin America and
the Caribbean is also exacerbated by weapons that come from the US. About
200,000 firearms from America cross Mexico's border every year, according to a
February 2021 US government accountability office report, citing the Mexican
government. In 2019, about 68% of firearms seized by law enforcement in Mexico
and sent to the ATF for identification were traced back to the US. And around
half of guns the ATF checked after they've been seized in Belize, El Salvador,
Honduras and Panama were manufactured in or officially imported to the US.
The
US was home to 4% of the world's population but accounted for 44% of global
suicides by firearm in 2019 The country recorded the largest number of
gun-related suicides in the world every year from 1990 to 2019. Afghanistan
Gun-related suicides United States 23,365 44% of global suicides by firearm in
2019 Mexico 914 Argentina 1,204 Brazil 1,259 Pakistan 710 India 6,145 France
1,748 Venezuela 702 Russia 1,053 Germany 899 Nigeria 458 Canada 686 Turkey 585
Iraq 428 SouthAfrica 397 Ukraine 525 Italy 507 Colombia 478 China (mainland) 467
DRCongo 395 : Note: American Samoa, Antigua and Barbuda, Brunei, Cook Islands,
Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Sao Tome and
Principe reported no gun suicides in 2019. Source: Institute for Health Metrics
and Evaluation (Global Burden of Disease 2019), UN Population Division While
personal safety tops the list of reasons why American gun owners say they own a
firearm, 63% of US gun-related deaths are self-inflicted. Over 23,000 Americans
died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds in 2019. That number accounts for 44% of
the gun suicides globally and dwarfs suicide totals in any other country in the
world.
At six firearm suicides per 100,000 people, the US rate of suicide is, on
average, seven times higher than in other developed nations. Globally, the US
rate is only lower than in Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory with
relatively high gun ownership (22 guns per 100 people). Multiple studies have
reported an association between gun ownership and gun-related suicides. One of
those studies, conducted by researchers at Stanford University, found that men
who owned handguns were almost eight times as likely to die of self-inflicted
gunshot wounds as men who didn't own a gun. Women who owned handguns were 35
times as likely to die by firearm suicide, compared to those who didn't,
according to the 2020 study, which surveyed 26 million California residents over
a more than 11-year period.
No other developed nation has mass shootings at the
same scale or frequency as the US Half of the world's developed countries had at
least one public mass shooting between 1998 and 2019.* But no other nation saw
more than eight incidents over 22 years, while the United States had over 100 —
with almost 2,000 people killed or injured. * Mass shootings are defined as
gun-violence incidents in a public locations within a 24-hour period that result
in four or more deaths, excluding the perpetrator, with victims chosen at random
or for their symbolic value. They exclude incidents involving profit-driven
criminal activity, state-sponsored violence and familicide. † The dataset
includes casualties from the only three mass shootings involving organized
terrorism that occurred in the developed world in the timeframe (May 2014 Jewish
Museum of Belgium shooting, January 2015 Île-de-France attacks and November 2015
Paris attacks). Note: Developed countries are defined based on the UN
classification and those with no mass shootings are not shown. Source: Jason R.
Silva of William Paterson University Regular mass shootings are a uniquely
American phenomenon. The US is the only developed country where mass shootings
have happened every single year for the past 20 years, according to Jason R.
Silva, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at William
Paterson University.
To compare across countries, Silva uses a conservative
definition of a mass shooting: an event that leaves four or more people dead,
excluding the shooter, and that excludes profit-driven criminal activity,
familicide and state-sponsored violence. Using this approach, 68 people were
killed and 91 injured in eight public shootings in the US over the course of
2019 alone. A broader definition of mass shootings reveals an even higher
figure. The Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit based in Washington, DC and which
CNN relies on for its reporting of mass shootings, defines a mass shooting as an
incident leaving at least four people dead or injured, excluding the shooter,
and does not differentiate victims based upon the circumstances in which they
were shot. They counted as many as 417 mass shootings in 2019. And this year,
641 incidents have been recorded. State gun policies also appear to play a role.
A 2019 study published in the British Medical Journal found that US states with
more permissive gun laws and greater gun ownership had higher rates of mass
shootings. President Joe Biden's administration has renewed calls for gun reform
after mass shootings in Colorado, South Carolina and Texas this year. In March,
the House of Representatives passed legislation that would require unlicensed
and private sellers, as well as all licensed sellers to do federal background
checks before all gun sales -- and to ensure that buyers are fully vetted before
making the sale. The bills are now stuck in the Senate where, despite some
Democrats' efforts to build bipartisan support, there has been no indication
they have the votes to overcome the 60-vote filibuster.
For decades, political
roadblocks have stalled such efforts in the US. And that partisan divide is
reflected in the population as well, with 80% of Republicans -- and 19% of
Democrats -- saying gun laws in the country are either about right or should be
less strict, according to the April Pew survey. Meanwhile, mass shootings
continue to drive demand for more guns, experts say, with gun control activists
arguing the time for reform is long overdue. Researchers from Washington
University at St Louis' Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute presented this
argument to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2018, saying that
the US government's "failure" to prevent and reduce gun-related violence through
"reasonable and effective domestic measures has limited the ability of Americans
to enjoy many fundamental freedoms and guarantees protected by international
human rights law," including the right to life and bodily integrity.
UN bodies
have also underlined these concerns, pointing to America's "stand your ground"
laws, which allow gun owners in at least 25 states to use deadly force in any
situation where they believe that they face an imminent threat of harm, without
first making any effort to deescalate the situation or retreat. A 2019 United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights report said that the law can
encourage people to respond to situations with lethal force, rather than use it
as a last resort. In a 2020 essay published by the Center for American Progress,
a liberal Washington think tank, gun control advocate Rukmani Bhatia said that
the US gun lobby has seized a rights-based narrative "to justify, dangerously,
the right to bear, carry, and use firearms." Stand your ground legislation, she
said, "warps people's understanding about their rights to security and, in the
worst cases, empowers them to take away another person's right to life."
Gun-related deaths reduced after the introduction of stricter laws in these
countries Shortly after a mass shooting in Tasmania, Australia banned rapid-fire
rifles and shotguns and tightened licensing rules. Over the next decade, gun
deaths dropped by 51%. A decade of rising gun deaths in South Africa prompted
the government to pass new laws prohibiting certain firearms, mandating
background checks and tightening licensing requirements, which capped gun
ownership numbers. A mass shooting in 1996 prompted the UK Parliament to further
tighten the country's gun laws and ban private gun ownership.* Gun-related
deaths fell by a quarter over the decade that followed. Three mass shootings in
three years prompted Finland to overhaul its gun laws in 2011. Gun deaths were
already falling, yet there was an additional 17% drop between 2011 and 2019.
After a 2002 shooting by a 19-year-old.
Germany's parliament passed gun
restrictions for young people, including banning large-caliber weapon sales and
requiring psychological evaluation before purchase. It later mandated gun
registration and storage security checkups after another mass shooting.
Meanwhile, countries that have introduced laws to reduce gun-related deaths have
achieved significant changes. A decade of gun violence, culminating with the
Port Arthur massacre in 1996, prompted the Australian government to take action.
Less than two weeks after Australia's worst mass shooting, the federal
government implemented a new program, banning rapid-fire rifles and shotguns,
and unifying gun owner licensing and registrations across the country. In the
next 10 years gun deaths in Australia fell by more than 50%. A 2010 study found
the government's 1997 buyback program -- part of the overall reform -- led to an
average drop in firearm suicide rates of 74% in the five years that followed.
Other countries are also showing promising results after changing their gun
laws. In South Africa, gun-related deaths almost halved over a
10-year-periodafter new gun legislation, the Firearms Control Act of 2000, went
into force in July 2004. The new laws made it much more difficult to obtain a
firearm. In New Zealand, gun laws were swiftly amended after the 2019
Christchurch mosque shootings. Just 24 hours after the attack, in which 51
people were killed, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the law would
change. New Zealand's parliament voted almost unanimously to change the
country's gun laws less than a month later, banning all military-style
semi-automatic weapons.
Britain tightened its gun laws and banned most private
handgun ownership after a mass shooting in 1996, a move that saw gun deaths drop
by almost a quarter over a decade. In August 2021, a licensed firearms holder
killed five people in Plymouth, England, marking the worst mass shooting since
2010. After the incident, police said the gunman's firearm license had been
returned to him just months after it was revoked, due to assault accusations.
The British government then asked police to review their licensing practices and
said that they would be bringing forward new guidance to improve background
procedures, including social media checks. Many countries around the world have
been able to tackle gun violence. Yet, despite the thousands of lost lives in
the US, only around half of US adults favor stricter gun laws, according to the
recent Pew survey, and political reform remains at a standstill. The deadly
cycle of violence seems destined to continue. An interesting study by the CNN
journalists, it's affecting the entire world, and mostly the U.S and its
neighbors. Unfortunately many people still don't realize or don't want to
acknowledge the problem.
My thanks to all my good readers all over, stay safe
and well.
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