The United States owns way, way more guns per capita than the rest of the world. And the best research on gun violence suggests that's probably contributing to our homicide problem — as exemplified by Sunday's horrific shooting at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
Here's a map of firearm ownership around the world, using 2012 data compiled by the Guardian. The United States has nearly twice as many guns per 100 people as the next closest country, Yemen — 88.8 guns per 100 as opposed to 54.8 in Yemen:
Now, gun ownership doesn't translate directly to more homicides. For instance, the United States has more than 12 times as many guns per person as Honduras, but the 2012 US gun homicide rate per 100,000 people (2.97) is 1/22 of Honduras's (68.43). That's because while guns make murder easier, internal instability or weak governance, or especially a recent history of internal conflict, can also contribute to this sort of violence. [...]
Interestingly, these results tended to hold true even when you exclude the United States and its super-high homicide and gun-ownership rates. "More guns are associated with more homicides across industrialized countries," Hemenway and Miller conclude. Another study, by Berkeley's Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins, found that the US has crime rates comparable to those in similarly developed countries, but much higher rates of lethal violence — owing in significant part to our high rates of gun ownership.
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