this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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[–] brown567@sh.itjust.works 22 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (4 children)

It should be noted that this chart compares gun homicides to gun ownership, which... of course those will correlate

If we plotted kangaroo injuries vs kangaroos per capita, we'd see a similar outlier in Australia

It would be more useful to see gun ownership compared to total homicides, to see if an overabundance of guns correlates with more murders. Even then, though, a correlation between the two might not be casual in that direction. It may instead be that in areas with a high homicide rate, people are more likely to own a firearm for defense.

What you would need to prove is that places with high gun ownership have significantly higher homicide rates, but places with high homicide rates don't have significantly higher rates of gun ownership

[–] freeman@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 hours ago

Well for most of the named countries using all homicides versus gun homicides makes little difference.

australia 0.8 belgium 1.08 canada 1.8 france 1.3 portugal 0.72 spain 0.69 usa 5.76

What you should look up is homicides/non-homicide crimes against gun ownership. You will find that the US does not in general have more crime except for homicides.

You also are not going to find a country with anywhere near the gun ownership that the US has, so I suppose your are safe there.

[–] Maroon@lemmy.world 13 points 14 hours ago

That's exactly the point! The whole, "it's the owner, not the gun" argument is dumb. If you have more guns, you have more gun-related homicides -- as simple as that.

When the populace don't have easy access to guns, then that's one weapon less they can use to hurt others.

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 8 hours ago

Another interesting tidbit is that homicides (among all violent crime) have fallen steadily since 1993 in the US, while firearms ownership has increased.

[–] Rakonat@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

Don't think everyone needs or should own a gun. But of course if you compare gun ownership to gun related deaths it's generally going to be higher when more guns per capita are present. You can do the same thing with cars, lawn mowers, dogs and even vending machines. The more of a thing there is, of course there is going to be more deaths and injuries related to it.