If nobody else (including the police) has guns criminals don't need them either.

Lets take a situation of a robbery though as thats one of the more common gun crimes. Everybody is obviously safest when nobody has a gun, but as you said criminals have access to guns illegally so lets look at the situation when the criminal has a gun. Is everybody safest when;

a) Everybody else is unarmed

b) Other people are armed

Situation a) is likely to end up with the criminal getting away with the robbery at least for the time being. Situation b) is likely to end up with someone being shot.

Edit: @MrStick. You are listing outliers against a trend. It doesn't make the trend false. Also there was a reason developed countries were used in the graph, it reduces the huge confounding variables found in countries such as Mexico where there is practically civil war between the cartels and the police.

You are correct. So if b is the case, what are the chances the robber even wants to risk his life for the crime? That is the core of the issue. Usually, robberies are comitted because the robber wants to....You know...Obtain money or goods and use them. If he's dead or maimed, he really can't use it, can he?

Well that's because BY FAR the biggest amount of gun deaths are SUICIDE.

That's where Rath's chart is horribly misleading. 

He's also not counting the fact that... less crime in general is going to happen.

Are you going to rob a bank if eveyrone is armed?  Or people if they may be armed?  

Hell no.

That's why Crime always happens in the area the police aren't... criminals want to avoid risks. 

Additionally it should be noted that a chart like Rath's is horrible flawed in that it attmepts to compare different countries without taking into account culture and cultural legacies, gini coeefficent and a number of other things.

Inter country studies will ALWAYS be more valid in such cases.

Thats because his chart is virtually the only one that insinuates guns cause death. I debunked the chart the last time we had a gun debate. I did in-depth trend analysis concerning violent crime and murder vs. gun proliferation by country using the SAME data points that his chart does.

Guess what? When you look at overall violent crime, there is a negative correlation between firearm proliferation and violent crime. 

Here's the chart for interested parties:

Here is the chart explanation:

I used the same countries listed in Rath's report, and the same amount of firearms per capita as his chart. The only difference is that we're looking at murders per capita instead of firearm deaths. Afterall, if you have a society with more of anything - guns, cars, airplanes, fatty foods, ect - your going to find a higher number of incedences with that particular item.

The real question is (as I have stated over and over) is "does higher proliferation of this item, in this case firearms, correlate to more deaths overall?" - After all, the idea is that if more guns exist, then there must be a higher incedent rate of activies since guns are bad, right?

But the fact of the matter is that as firearms per capita increase the number of murders decrease.

The fact is that as much as anti-gun opponents want to argue about the atrocities of American gun control laws, America is an anomaly when it comes to violent crime and gun ownership. For every violent country with a high number of firearms (America), you have many multiples more of violent countries with low guns (Columbia, South Africa, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, ect). Likewise, on the other end, safer societies tend to have firearm proliferation at a similar or higher level as do the 'violent' countries. So either guns are not correlated at all, or are correlated in favor of more guns equaling less violence.

Also, one could bring up historical trends in violence in America. Again, the argument is that "Since America has guns and is violent, then guns must be the cause!". But this ignores historical trends in firearm ownership and violent crime in America.

Interesting, no?

Can you post the sources for your last post please?

It's interesting, if only because there really aren't many credible gun studies out there.... They have 2 big ones and they're both stupid.


The first, that says guns cause crime, doesn't consider you stopping a crime unless your shot at, or stabbed or something. So if someone came at you with a knife, or pulled out a gun on you it wouldn't be considered stopping a crime.

The second, counted stopping a crime anytime you felt threatened, so if you pulled a gun on someone who randomly came up on you in the ally no matter why he was walking up to you.

So basically both studies were done by other sides of the debate?

Pretty much.

The second one has slightly more validity, i'd say, since it's only problem is REALLY paranoid people. 

Vs the second study who's method is really quite insane.  (We're supposed to assume someone charging with a knife is coming in for a hug?)

but both are pretty crappy.

Those are the two big studies debated in Academia though.

There are very few gun studies that are legitamite so even amatuer stats work done with available numbers is helpful. (no offense stick.)

To be fair, it's even tough to do a study like that in the USA just because of how different every state is.

Here you go.

The chart I built was my own conconction.

My points of data for reference on my chart was:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_ownership (Y1)
• http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita (Y2)
• I correlated countries that only met criteria for having available data for Y1 and Y2 sources. Therefore, we had to know firearm ownership per capita plus murders per capita.

The second chart uses (as stated in the chart) BATE firearm ownership estimates and the NCV survey for violent crimes. I can pull up more references for those if you like..