Proud to be an American
Via, well, everyone comes this:
The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.
U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.
About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said. [but the anti-gunners tell us that gun ownership is at historic lows – ed]
“There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people,” it said.
You say that like it’s a bad thing. In other countries:
India had the world’s second-largest civilian gun arsenal, with an estimated 46 million firearms outside law enforcement and the military, though this represented just four guns per 100 people there. China, ranked third with 40 million privately held guns, had 3 firearms per 100 people.
Germany, France, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil and Russia were next in the ranking of country’s overall civilian gun arsenals.
On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38.
France, Canada, Sweden, Austria and Germany were next, each with about 30 guns per 100 people, while many poorer countries often associated with violence ranked much lower. Nigeria, for instance, had just one gun per 100 people.
“Firearms are very unevenly distributed around the world. The image we have of certain regions such as Africa or Latin America being awash with weapons — these images are certainly misleading,” Small Arms Survey director Keith Krause said.
So, places prone to mass violence have fewer weapons? Who knew? Last bit:
Weapons ownership may be correlated with rising levels of wealth
August 29th, 2007 at 10:09 am
More than likely, honesty in answering polls from random people about one’s ownership of an item that some people want banned is what is actually declining. And if I’m right about that, then that’s an excellent sign.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:10 am
My poli-science major friend would always say the reason there are genocides is due to the lack of a “monopoly of violence” by a political entity. I would respond pointing out that the soviet union had a complete monopoly of violence, which he replied was was a rare occurance, but then I began to list all the atrocities committed in the 20th century by governments with monopolies of violence and he began to understand what that term really meant. It is precisely the lack of a monopoly of violence that some of our natural rights are respected in this country – not because of some piece of paper no one has ever read or cares about.
August 29th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Serious logic disconnect here: having a _weapon_ does NOT equal having a _firearm_. The converse is true though (well, usually). I have no doubt that “certain regions such as Africa or Latin America” are “awash with weapons” — the weapons just don’t happen to be firearms. Rwanda ring a bell?
August 29th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I have some of the Japanese firearms, the Swedes, the Swiss, the Argentines, the Germans, the Belguimics and probably a couple for some headhunters and eskimos. Somewhere I have them. Not here. I don’t think. Let me look around and get back to you.
I’ve got Jesse Jacksons Garand, but he doesn’t know it. Shoots left.
August 29th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
“Weapons ownership may be correlated with rising levels of wealth”
Certainly. Burundi was so poor even the army couldn’t afford a full kit of guns and ammo, so they had to commit genocide with machetes while a few armed troops kept the next victims covered… If you can’t afford a knife, you can always break a sapling off and use it as a club.
August 29th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Since most of the firearms owners I know have multiply guns, I’d be much more interested in the % of the population that owns a weapon than the shear number of weapons for the entire population.