Crime and Firearm Statistics (US vs England & Australia)

[JohnC]

Guy did some research of his own and came up wit the below info:

His post: http://www.moddedmustangs.com/forums/politics/381113-crime-firearm-statistics-us-vs-england-australia.html

I recently did some research on crime in the US vs crime in England and Australia to dispel the myth that the US is such a dangerous, violent country due to the 2nd Amendment. Yes, the US has more gun crimes than either of those two countries, but lets look at the big picture here. I will go based on percentages, not total numbers, since the population of the US is roughly 314 million, compared to 53 million in England and 23 million.

Lets get started:

Australia has 100% more assault victims than the US (2.4% vs 1.2%)
Australia has 150% more rape victims than the US (1% vs 0.4%)
Australia has 43% more total crime victims than the US (30.1% vs 21.1%)

England has 133% more assault victims than the US (2.8% to 1.2%)
England has 125% more rape victims than the US (.9% to 0.4%)
England has 25% more total crime victims than the US (26.4% to 21.1%)

NationMaster - Crime stats: Australia vs United States
NationMaster - Crime stats: United Kingdom vs United States

Now let us do the math of how much more total crime there would be in the United States if crime were increased to the rates of Australia (assuming 314 million US population):
5,104,000 more assaults
1,884,000 more rape victims
28,260,000 more total crime victims

I found those numbers quite shocking, and revealed that Australia and the UK are not safer than the United States a a whole.

Next, I researched gun deaths. People like to throw around the statistic that 30,000+ people are killed by guns each year. According to the CDC:
"Firearm—In 2010, 31,672 persons died from firearm injuries in
the United States (Tables 18 and 19), accounting for 17.5% of all injury
deaths in that year. The two major component causes of all firearm
injury deaths in 2010 were suicide (61.2%) and homicide (35.0%)"
The majority of gun deaths are suicides, which should not be included in gun violence statistics. The number of gun homicides in 2010 would be 11,085.

As for all of the people vilifying "assault weapons", in 2011 there were 8583 total murder victims from firearms. 6,220 (~72%) were handguns, and only 323 (~4%) were rifles, forget "assault rifles". In the same year, an American was 524% more likely to be killed by a knife then by a rifle, 153% more likely to be killed by blunt objects then by a rifle, and 225% more likely to be killed by hands or feet then by a rifle.

Here are more of the sources:
FBI ? Expanded Homicide Data Table 8
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf

[JohnC]

Here's some more info:

"It has now been over 10 years since gun owners in Australia were forced by new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by their own Government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars.

The statistics for the years following the ban are now in:

Accidental gun deaths are 300% higher than the pre-1997 ban rate

The assault rate has increased 800% since 1991, and increased 200% since the 1997 gun ban.

Robbery and armed robbery have increase 20% from the pre-97 ban rate.

From immediately after the ban was instituted in 1997 through 2002, the robbery and armed robbery rate was up 200% over the pre-ban rates.

In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 171 percent"



"Let's examine the overall murder rate and the gun murder rate in Australia. Take note both are virtually unchanged and unaffected by the gun ban. The Australian experience and the other historical facts above prove it. While the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not, and criminals still possess their guns"



"The trend in assaults shows an average growth of five percent each year from 1995 to 2007. The Australians "banned" guns in 1997 as you will recall."



"Oh look how armed robbery increased after the gun ban. Look how robbery increased too. Note that incidence of armed robbery as compared to unarmed robbery never changed after the gun ban. It's almost as if the only affect the gun ban had was to increase the number of people that were robbed (or assaulted)." (although the numbers seem to have fallen back down to pre-ban levels. The end result appears to be about a decade of more robberies, followed by a return to normal).



People are still going to kill people, with or without guns.



"Reported sexual assaults have increased by 51 percent since 1995, at an average of four percent each year."

"I pulled it all straight from the Australian Institute of Criminology"

I did a cursory check, and the statistics seemed to be correct.

[thundersnow]

That is all very enlightening... Funny how most of those numbers are swept under the rug when it comes to the media.