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Proponents of arms control (media, politicians, lobbies, etc.) often say that in the United States there are 30,000 people killed every year by firearms. A very high figure even for a population that groups more than 300 million people. Is this figure realistic?
In the United States they draw statistics for everything. (Those who follow the day of the Stock Market will know it well). The figure of 30,000 is the highest of all we can find, that's why anti-guns use it. The truth is that it has some problems. Suicides. Every 17 minutes a person dies of suicide in the United States. Although it seems a lot, in Sweden and Japan more people commit suicide in percentage. The suicide rate in the United States varies each year, but firearm suicides account for between 47% and 54% of the total (according to the Violen Policy Center, FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). To use a single percentage, say that of the 30,000 deaths from firearms, 50% are due to suicide (neither 47% nor 54% above). That leaves us with a staggering 15,000 deaths a year from a firearm in the United States. It is a bit absurd to say that weapons contribute to suicide. A person commits suicide with what is most at hand. As psychologist Andrew Edmund Slaby says, the suicide bomber does not want to kill himself but to end his pain. Homicide. According to the estimation of some authors, using different sources, 40% of the crimes with firearm are due to disputes or clashes between criminals and rival bands. That is, they kill each other. It is somewhat similar to suicides. A crime professional is not going to stop because of the law's restrictions on crime. A delinquent is not really an exemplary citizen. In fact, criminals use illegal weapons bought on the black market, and on the black market do not demand arms licenses. That leaves us about 9,000 dead by gunfire in the United States. Are many over a population of 300 million? We would have to buy it with other figures. Accidents. One of the arguments against guns is that they cause accidents. Of all the accidents of all kinds that occur in the United States, the most lives that starts each year is - as in all the industrialized countries - the traffic accidents. Approximately 40% of the total. Out of here, other more peculiar causes of death by accident are (involuntary) 18% poisoning; Falls by 16%, and only 0.6% of accidental deaths are due to firearms. In the United States, there are more than 40,000 deaths a year from traffic accidents. This means 4.5 times more dead than for guns. Do you have to ban cars? In fact, they kill a lot more people. In fact, and looking ahead, traffic accident increases are faster than those of firearm as drivers increase more steadily year after year than gun owners. In 1996, according to the National Center for Injury Prevention, 25 children aged 5 to 9 were killed in firearm accidents. No doubt it is horrible, but accidents happen, whoever wants to obviate it is not in this world. In fact, in that same year more than 1,900 children of that age died in a car accident, more than 800 drowned and 738 burned. As economists Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt (in his book Freakonomics) say, it is more irresponsible for a father who does not let his son go to a friend's house because he has a weapon, rather than let him go even if he has a pool. According to statistics, swimming pools are more dangerous to children than guns. Even more. What is the main cause of death in the United States accidental or not? The biggest cause of death in the country are medical errors, followed by heart attacks and cancer. According to the Institute of Medicine, in the United States, 44,000 to 98,000 people die from medical errors. This will not read in the press. Why do not doctors be required more responsibility? By the way, what is the figure in Spain? Nobody knows. The system is too opaque here. Benefits of weapons Albert Esplugas recently pointed out something very interesting in one of his articles: "You have to balance costs and benefits, not just highlight the costs. And the balance is not precisely favorable to the prohibitionist cause. Up to 15 studies since 1976 account for between 760,000 and 3.6 million defensive uses of firearms per year (an average of 1.8 million). One of the most rigorous studies places 400,000 in annual defensive uses that "save or total certainty" save a life, excluding police and military uses. Even supposing that a percentage of the people surveyed exaggerated the description of the event, this is an extraordinarily higher number than the annual number of dead and wounded by firearms (30,000 and 70,000 respectively). " More >> Any decent analysis must have its pros and cons. Defensive uses of weapons. One of the largest studies that has been conducted on the defensive use of weapons came from the hand of the criminalist Gary Kleck. According to his conclusion, in the United States there are between 2.2 and 2.5 million uses of defensive weapons. In the poll found that about 400,000 people a year use their weapon to stop an imminent attack on their lives. This is not what newspapers say either. Subsequently, and with a smaller sample, the National Institute of Justice, I affirm that in the United States there are about 1.5 million uses of defensive weapons. In addition, thirty polling firms claimed that weapons have between 800,000 and 2,000,000 defensive uses a year in the United States. Even taking the most conservative number, the weapons stop 800,000 crimes a year. Another question to ask is: if there is freedom of arms, do decent people have more opportunities to defend themselves, but do criminals have no access to weapons as well? In most places of the United States it is necessary to take out at least one license (there are several according to the use that one wants to make of it). Of course, criminals do not take out the arms license, they buy it on the black market so they will not be identified if they have to use the weapon. According to the United States Department of Justice, about 5.3 million crimes are reported each year (2008 data). Curiously, only 8% of all of them were perpetrated with a firearm. That is to say, the myth of the black with a weapon docking a poor miser, according to the same Government of the United States is a myth that only appears in the films because in real life does not occur. A society that allows weapons to its citizens is potentially a safer society that does not. In fact, the growth of arms sales in the United States has been exponential since Obama was elected. In the month of November 2009, sales rose by more than 40%. As of today, the figure continues to rise. This together with the violent crisis they have (and we have) suggests that violence has been fired in the streets and the shootings are increasing. It has happened the opposite, the crime in the United States is of the lowest of its history being located in the one that had in the year 1973. And why in the United States people buy a gun? In the North American country there are approximately 50 million legal users of arms, less than 20% of the total citizens. Crimes occur, of course, among "non-legal" users of these weapons, meaning they do not fall into the statistics. Definitely. The issue of weapons focuses terribly partisan on its detractors. The Government uses the propaganda of the security to practice the disarming of the citizen and so that this one is dependent of the State. Weapons not only serve for defensive use as we have seen, but also for sport, hunting and collecting. The prohibition on arms is no longer freedom, it is not granted by the State as if we were its slaves, it is a right of man. More guns do not dignify more crime, backwards. The country with the most armed people is Switzerland and is, at the same time, the safest country in the world. The national sport in Switzerland is not football, but the shot. This note is not an exhaustive report, but it does intend to give a different point of view that invites a little reflection. References:
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