Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Civilian Gun Ownership By Country - What Does It Tell Us?

The Numbers Game

The proposition that gun related homicides escalates with the number of guns in the possession of a civilian population can only be regurgitated either by liars or the ignorant. In fact, there’s no rhyme or reason - correlation - between a nation’s gun related homicides and the number of guns held privately by a nation’s citizens. Indeed it could be said that the opposite proposition is true, that the homicide rate by guns declines as a nation’s civilian gun ownership increases, but that too would be a gross over simplification masquerading as a lie.

With a civilian population in possession of 500,000 guns in 2007, the homicide rate in Honduras by guns was a staggering 68.43 homicides per 100,000 that year.¹ With private ownership of guns in El Salvador running at 400,000 - 4/5s of Honduras' numbers - the homicide rate by guns of 39.9 per 100,000 is much lower in Honduras, but not as low as the statistic should be - at approximately 54.7 homicides per 100,000² - if there's a linear correlation between gun related homicides and the number of guns held in private possession. Jamaica has approximately half the number of civilian gun ownership (215,000) than El Salvador, yet has the same homicide rate by guns as does El Salvador, 39.4 per 100,000. Belgium, on the other hand, has 1.8 million guns in private ownership, nearly four times that of Honduras, yet its homicide rate by guns is a miniscule 0.68 per 100,000. Indeed, Switzerland has 3.4 million guns in the hands of its citizens - twice the number than in Belgium - but its homicide rate for guns is similar to Belgium’s,  0.77 per 100,000. The United States is the preeminent civilian gun owning nation, where private ownership of guns runs at an astronomical 270 million, yet the homicide rate by guns is a mere 3.2 per 100,000 when the rate should be - if greater gun numbers equals greater gun homicides, and using ultra violent Honduras as the standard -36,952.2 homicides per 100,000!³ Now we can more fully appreciate the sophistry of those who regurgitate their scripted lines that posit a linear relationship between civilian gun ownership numbers and the homicide rate by guns.

It won't be fighting zombies where civilian ownership of guns will come in handy for the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand... 

...it will be in deterring the People's Liberation Army (China) from invading those nations, more sinister from of zombie - its officers have no discretion, they follow any order given by their superiors, regardless of the order's morality.⁴


Within the developed nations we witness the same non-linear association between the number of a nation’s private ownership of guns and the homicide rate by guns. England and Wales have a combined total of 3.4 million civilian owned guns with a matching homicide rate for guns of 0.07 per 100,000. However, in France civilian ownership of guns is more than five times that of England and Wales with 19 million civilian owned guns, but the homicide rate by guns is lower  in France than in England and Wales, 0.06 per 100,000 in France vs. 0. 07 per 100,000 in England and Wales.

Contrary to the sophism's unintended argument, guns don’t hypnotize their owners into using the weapons against others! Gun violence has varied reasons - personnel/group/political - and the numbers of guns each nation’s civilian population owns plays no part in a nation’s gun related homicides. In order to comprehend gun violence we must pivot  one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, taking our trance-like gaze off of the weapon and instead fixate on the personal/group/political dynamics of a nation.

Self Defense

If the Second Amendment...

'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'

...were to be removed from the Constitution, that would only negate the Second Amendment's militia rationale, but not the greater right to defend oneself and family, and that right is embedded in the Ninth Amendment...

'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'
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(1) Gun homicides and gun ownership by country

(2) 68.43 - 1/5 = 54.7

(3) 270,000,000/500,000 = 540 x 68.43 = 36,952.2

(4) “Since at least the early 1970s, the Communist party of China has been poised to create a spectacular but controlled “democratization” at any appropriate time. The party had by then spent two decades consolidating its power, building a network of informants and agents that permeate every aspect of Chinese life, both in the cities and in the countryside. Government control is now so complete that it will not be seriously disturbed by free speech and democratic elections; power can now be exerted through the all-pervasive but largely invisible infrastructure of control. A transition to an apparently new system, using dialectical tactics, is now starting to occur.”
"A campaign for a new system of World Government will be launched at Summit level...The Chinese will by then have adopted a ‘reformed’, pseudo-democratic system.”

“Behind the impressive smokescreen of pseudo-democracy, pseudo-capitalism and pseudo-reform, this Russian-Chinese 'cooperation-blackmail' strategy is irreconcilably hostile to the West. Again, this is no mere presumption. It was explicitly confirmed in May 1994 to Clark Bowers, a member of an official US Republican delegation to Peking, by Mr Mo Xiusong, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, who is believed to be the highest-ranking Chinese Communist official ever to have answered questions put to him by a knowledgeable Western expert on Communism: BOWERS: Is the long-term aim of the Chinese Communist Party still world Communism? Mo XIUSONG: Yes, of course. That is the reason we exist.”