Highwaystar's chart is absolute fail. I've seen that chart many times before, and I absolutely can't fathom why someone would tie gun ownership and firearm incedents. That's like trying to argue that countries with more cars aren't going to have more car wrecks - of course they are.
The real question is if gun ownership has an impact on overall crime rates. As Kasz has stated, the US has more crime in general than other developed nations - regardless of gun ownership (or the lack of it). What about areas in the US that have outright gun bans? Many places that have those still have rampant crime.
So I will bring out my chart. I compiled this concerning murders per capita in countries that have quantifiable statistics concerning gun ownership. I plotted both on the chart to look at trends. You'll notice I took an equal distribution of countries with high and low crime statistics:
Red indicates murders per capita, blue represents gun ownership per capita. As you can see, murders decrease, in general, where gun ownership either stays steady or increases slightly. 4 of the most murder-ridden countries in the world all have very low rates of gun ownership per capita (all under 15%). Compare this to countries with lower crime rates, and gun ownership tends to be slightly higher (20-25%) with a much reduced rate of murders per capita. The US is certainly an outlier concerning firearms and crime - it does not fit the pattern.
I've also done other analysis into the patterns of crime & various indicators. Truth be told, the most indicative thing concerning murders and violent crimes has to do with the GINI coefficent, which charts almost in paralell with murders per capita. That's what makes the US much different from Canda - we have a higher influx of poor people from other countries, and poverty on our own, which causes crime to soar in the US.
Hopefully this explains things. However, I have to say that your charts, Highwaystar, make absolutely no sense. The key metric to look at is if guns have an effect on crime. Not if the frequency of gun ownership affects crimes with guns, but if guns effect crime overall. Afterall, we want lower crime, not lower gun crime, since both are equally illegal. If you substitute gun crime from non-gun crime, it doesn't really change the picture, only the tools.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
