GREAT BRITAIN AND UNITED STATES GUN DEATHS COMPARISON By David MacArthur February, 2013

Great Britain is one big island and numerous smaller ones with a total land mass that is approximately 1,750 square miles smaller than the U.S. State of Oregon. The population of Great Britain is about one-fifth that of the U.S. 62,000,000 people. The population density of Great Britain is about 670 people per square mile about the same density as the states of Maryland and Connecticut have when you consider them as one population area. The population density of the entire U.S. is 87.4 people per square mile. There are approximately 4,000,000 guns in Great Britain, but only 2,125,000 are legal. And only 861,958 citizens out of its population of 62,000,000 are licensed to have a gun. Here in the United States there are, according to the Congressional Research Center, 310,000,000 guns. In 2010, the most current final figures available, There were 155 gun homicides in Great Britain and 11,079 here in the U.S. That makes it look like Great Britains gun laws are saving lives. But lets continue on. The British government, as you can see by the above figures, has very strict gun control laws. They even regulate paint ball guns, airsoft guns, Beebe guns, pellet guns, and replica guns. And, in truth, about the only people that are allowed to have a license for a real firearm (that also has to be registered) are those of the Nobility and their close relatives. But here is an interesting truth. If you count the number of homicides versus the number of firearms in each country you find that here in the U.S. there is one homicide by firearm for every 27,978 guns. In Great Britain, if you just consider the illegal guns there, there is one homicide by firearm for every 11,710 guns. And even when you consider all 4,000,000 guns in Great Britain, the homicide by firearm rate is 1 for every 25,806 firearms higher than the U.S. homicide versus firearms ratio. So here you have a valid comparison of how successful Great Britains very tight control of firearms really is versus what they say is our countrys irresponsible lack of gun control. It clearly shows that even with all their efforts and such strict laws to control guns and gun owners they arent even able to achieve as good a homicides to firearms ratio as the U.S. has. Now, lets consider some of the reasons Great Britain has a statistically lower overall homicide rate (1.2 per 100,000 people) than we do here in the U.S. (5.1 per 100,000). First of all, the society is a very structured and rather stagnate one where everyone either knows or is related to everyone else in the neighborhood. They arent as mobile or upwardly mobile as we Americans are. Second, its an island country smaller than our state of Oregon and not many ways to get away from it, so how far can a murderer on the run get anyway? And third, the common people dont have much to rob them of, and the wealthy aristocrats have guns or security guards and live in homes or work in offices that are very hard for anyone to get into.