You can't make such a conclusion from that site Ricter, it doesn't give any data on gun ownership. To really get at the issue you need to look at murder rates since this variable is supposed to be influenced both postively and negatively by the ownership of guns according to both sides of the argument. After all, the whole point is to reduce violence and what good would eliminating guns be if people simply switched to knives or poison? I have seen many liberal leaning sites include suicide and accidents as part of their argument, which of course is deceitful. In America the murder rate for African Americans is 6 times higher per capita than whites, and about half of muders are with a gun (it's interesting but a lot of murder is by arson). We live with same availablity of guns, so how can anybody make such a simple correlation as higher number of guns = higher gun violence? Norway has much higher gun ownership than England but lower homicide rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate I was actually going to this myself, but this guy did it for me. Confirms my suspicions- there is actually a slightly negative correlation between availabilty of firearms and murder in developed countries. Check out the scatter plot http://www.pagunblog.com/2011/02/11/guns-and-murder-internationally/
I made the attached, sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/tables/oracetab.cfm http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvinco.html Fraction of total homicides with a gun versus gun ownership tries to see if gun availablity makes that method of killing more prevalent. Logically it should. Total homicides versus gun ownership should give an idea if guns promote killing that would not normally be there. This is the best way to asses the question. The answer, of course, is that it is the people and not the guns. I really can't understand why people cannot see that bit of obvious reality, other than if your religion prevented it.... I can't make any conclusions other than culture dominates, there may be a very weak correlation positive when you compare fraction of total homicides with a firearm with gun ownership, but if you throw out the USA it looks very weak. If you compare overall homicide rates, about the only problem you can say with the USA is that blacks should not have guns. Other than that we are just like the europeans. Notice that Englands homicide rate is higher than those gun loving swedes. Full data set upon request.
My intended point was the theoretical one (though of course impractical at this time in the US) that if the populace did not have guns they couldn't shoot each other with guns, so that we could move past "gun control doesn't work". Now, on to the really predictive (as much as any one variable can be) variable. You probably won't like it, either.
and if fire didn't exist then nobody could commit arson- so what? You are not asking the right or an even relevant question. It isn't "how do people want kill", it's "do people want to kill?" availability of guns might only influence only the means but as we see in the case of England versus Sweden, you are safer in the gun culture. Doesn't bother me. First it's not an outstanding correlation. Second correlation is not causation, using that variable is selective to the liberal agenda. I highly doubt that making 100K vs. $4M a year makes you more likely to commit murder. $10K a year maybe... Last and most important, you didn't read what I posted. If you remove minorities from the equation, white americas' homicide rate is about the same as the northern European rates. The american crime problem is therefore a minority problem- especially blacks. Income is largely driven by intelligence and education. Blacks underperform in IQ tests, achievment tests, and commit homicide at 6-7 times the white rate. Quite inconvienent for the diversity and economic egalitarians, but they don't want to seem to be bothered with reality. I added to your chart some ranking according to percent white population, with 1 being high. There is your crime problem.
c'mon ricter I expected better than a quote from the liberal bible (I forget which gospel that is from - Matthews, Marx, Luke, or Noam). Two fundamental errors: you have the independent variable wrong and you hold too many others constant. But one fact does address this directly: studies have shown that when normalized to income levels and schools, black kids still perform worse than whites. Do black and latino minorities kill because they are poor? or are they poor because they kill? Logic and evidence points to the latter. You have more cash than I, why don't you buy this? http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.23...id=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21101100155451