Rath on 08 January 2012
It's not so much gun ownership that's a problem, it's gun culture.
You can have high gun ownership rates where guns are almost never used on humans. In New Zealand we have a lot of guns around but almost entirely they're used for hunting or sport - nobody carries guns around for self-defence and they're kept in locked cases when in the home. I believe this different idea of what guns are meant for is the reason why gun crime in New Zealand is so much lower than in the United States. By and large even the criminals here don't use guns and the police rarely use guns as well (and don't carry them with them normally).
