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Liquorstore Bear 
You better get the guest room ready at LBHQ because we are on our way.
In the UK there are around 6 guns per 100 people.
In Canda, approx 30.8 guns per 100 people.
In the US, 88 firearms per 100 people.
Only about 5% of all murders in the UK are with handguns.
In Canada 32% of all murders are by firearms.
In the USA it’s almost 68% of all murders.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state
The average number of murders in the UK is around 600.
The average number of murders in Canada is around 600.
In the US, it’s around 13,000.
The US population is 5 times larger in population than the UK. It has about 10,000 murders more (proportionally) per year than you’d expect compared to the UK.
Canada’s population is only half that of the UK, but it has about 300 murders more per year than you’d expect compared to the UK.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list
It certainly seems that in the English-speaking world, all things being relatively equal, the number of guns owned per 100 people in the country is a good predictor of the % of population that can expect to be murdered by gun each year.
Interestingly though, the US murder by gun rate is about 20% under what one would expect. Perhaps because in the US large numbers of guns can be owned by single individuals. So the number of guns per 100 people statistic for the US skews high.
(Love the poster, West Germany ceased to exist in 1990, but the gun stats per country have hardly changed in almost 25 years!)
I was in a frenzy when I put that graphic up yesterday. I knew it had nothing to do with my blog’s general subject matter, but I’d spent several hours with another parent watching news coverage of the Connecticut event, changing the channel whenever the kids came near. If they did happen to ask what was going on, and if they did get scared, I would tell them, “That happened in another country where there are a lot of guns and where there is poor gun control.” What would American parents say to their kids to comfort them?
Thanks so much for breaking down these statistics. I was trying to wrap my head around them yesterday. The whole thing is monstrous. I really think nations need to join together in shaming the US on its gun-control stance. The right to bear arms is untenable, and one day I want to hear Obama say that out loud.
I just don’t understand America’s love affair with guns… Thanks for posting this.
Thanks for reading. Turns out the graphic is out of date, but the stats apply to years past.