Guns in America

[Borodog]

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Funs facts:

From 2001-2005 in the US:

An average of 42,000 people die in auto-accidents.
An average of 20,000 people die from the common flu.
An average of 17,000 people die from gun-related suicide.
An average of 11,000 people die from gun-related homicide.

When examining violent crime in the US from 2001-2005:

98% of violent crimes committed are non-fatal.

Of those, less than 10% are gun-related.

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Another fun fact from the DoJ website -- "The FBI's Crime in the United States estimated that 66% of the 16,137 murders in 2004 were committed with firearms."

If your numbers are correct, this is pretty startling. Less than ten percent of violent crime involves a gun, yet two-thirds of murders involve a gun. I think that this seriously undermines the argument that would-be murderers would simply use a knife, baseball bat, etc. if guns were unavailable.

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No, it doesn't.



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The fact that total homicides track gun related homicides doesn't prove much. That was inevitable given that such a high percentage of homicides are committed with a gun. Secondly, the decrease in homicides in the last 15 years has a lot to do with improved emergency medical care (i.e. less people die). Violent crime as a whole has not decreased at nearly the same clip.

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That wasn't the point. The point is that total homicide and gun homicide is not related to the per capita gun supply, which has increased steadily for 4 decades. Since the murder rate appears to be independent of the gun supply, the argument that substitution would not take place appears to be false.