GUNS, SUICIDES, AND HOMICIDES
In the U.S.
In 2010 there were 31,672 deaths by firearms. Of those, 19,392 were suicides, 11,078 were homicides, and 606 were accidental; the few hundred more were either legal intervention (police shootings adjudicated to be justifiable or private citizen shootings adjudicated to be self-defense) or unidentified[1]. In addition, 73,505 persons were treated for non-fatal gunshot wounds in emergency rooms[2]. These numbers are far higher than in any other First World country.
These numbers are not unusual for the recent past. Figure 1 shows the data over a recent 18 year period.
FIGURE 1
Since 2010 such deaths have increased. Part of that increase is due to population increase, but the death rate has also been going up, from 10.2 deaths per 100000 population in 2010 to 12.0 in 2016. On the other hand, the proportions in each category haven’t changed much: suicides range from 53% to 65% and homicides range from 33% to 41%, neither with any clear up or down trend. The latter three categories (accidental, legal, and undetermined) are a small fraction, each numbering in hundreds per year.
These large numbers of homicides (more than 10,000 every year) make it clear that mass shootings, shocking and tragic though they may be, are only a small part of the problem. Total gun homicides average over 32 per day for the whole 18 year period.
In First World Countries
The United States has much higher gun ownership than any other country. In fact we own nearly 46% of all the privately owned guns in the world[3]. Often when large compilations of gun ownership and gun homicides for countries of the world are published, opponents of gun regulation seize on the numbers to note the very small correlation between the two variables. For example, the Washington Post published such a compilation on 17 December 2012 which included more than 100 countries: there was no clear-cut relation between the two quantities. Although the United States had by far the greatest ownership rate, there were countries with higher firearms homicide rates. I should note that “gun ownership rate” is somewhat deceptive: the measure is just the number of guns divided by the population of the country. “Gun availability” may be a better name. There are about as many guns in the U.S. as people but many households (nearly 70%) have no guns[4]; other households have more guns than people. I should also note that the 2012 Washington Post article listed U.S. gun ownership as 88.8 guns per 100 people, while reference 1 from 2018 says 120.5 guns per 100 people.
However, lumping all the countries of the world together can be misleading because many Third World countries are afflicted with private armies fighting each other or the more legitimate government, or carrying out ethnic cleansing, and using terror to dominate ordinary citizens. Even though there are not many guns compared to the population, almost all are in the hands of these brutal groups (or in the hands of an equally brutal government) which have no compunction about using them. Clearly such countries weight the overall statistics toward high gun homicide rates with low gun ownership. To compare these countries with the industrialized democracies of the world is to compare apples with oranges.
A truer picture for the U.S. is obtained by considering just “First World” countries, which are economically developed countries with democratically elected governments. A study[5] done using 14 developed countries in 1993 found a positive correlation between firearm ownership rate and firearm homicide rate. Another study[6] from 2000 used 26 high-income countries and had similar findings.
For my own study I started with the countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This organization developed from the postwar Marshall Plan. The members are ostensibly committed to democracy and the market economy. In some cases, the commitment to democracy may be questionable. There are 35 member nations including all those we think of as “First World”. Member state Turkey is pretty much a straight-up dictatorship now and member state Mexico is afflicted with the private armies of drug cartels which form a shadow government ruling by bribery and terror. Mexico has by far the highest gun homicide rate of all OECD countries and just removing it from the OECD list leads to a statistically significant positive correlation between gun availability and gun homicides for the other 34 countries. The correlation coefficient is 0.59 and the coefficient of determination is 0.35. The probability that these values would arise purely by chance is only about 0.01%
However I wanted a more objective criterion for paring the list of countries, so I removed all countries with GDP/capita below $20,000 (2017). That took out Chile, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Mexico, Poland, Slovakia, and Turkey, none of which I consider a First World country. That left me with the 26 countries listed below, most of which have a GDP/capita value more than twice $20,000. They would all be recognized as First World countries except, perhaps, for Slovenia although it has a GDP/capita slightly above Portugal.
26 FIRST WORLD COUNTRIES
The 26 countries of reference 6 are a different set. They have Scotland and Northern Ireland listed separately from England and include Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Kuwait. They omit the Czech Republic, Iceland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia, and South Korea. Iceland is a special case with a zero firearms mortality rate.
Despite the discrepancies in the included countries, my calculations (using the 2012 Washington Post numbers) arrived at the same statistically significant, positive correlation as theirs. That is, a correlation coefficient of 0.74. The probability of a correlation coefficient as high as 0.74 occurring just due to chance is less than one in a million: 0.00005% to be exact. It is very likely that there is a real, positive relationship between gun availability and gun homicides, and the coefficient of determination indicates that up to 55% of more numerous U.S. homicides could be due to more guns.
Figure 2 and Figure 3 show gun availability and gun homicides respectively in these countries. Figure 4 shows the scatterplot and regression line for the two variables.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 4
As Figure 1 shows, gun homicides are only part of the gun violence problem. Suicides actually outnumber homicides. We are therefore justified in asking if gun suicides also correlate strongly with gun availability across these 26 countries. The answer is a resounding “yes”. In this case the correlation coefficient is 0.88 and the coefficient of determination is 0.78. Figure 5 shows gun suicides and Figure 6 shows the scatterplot and regression line for these two variables.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 6
Figures 2 through 6 show the U.S. to be an extreme outlier among First World countries, and not in a good way. We may ask why our country is so far out of line with the other wealthy democracies. Is it just the greater availability of guns or are Americans measurably more violent in all ways than citizens of the other 25 countries?
Actually, the answer to the last question is “No”. In 2000 a study[7] showed the incidence (number of incidents per 100 population) of theft, burglary, vandalism, robbery, and assaults combined was only a little above average for the U.S. among 17 industrialized nations. Figure 7 shows that the U.S. is conspicuously mediocre (Catalonia is a region of Spain and England includes Wales). We are not more criminal, we just excel at murder by firearms.
FIGURE 7
The middling position of the U.S. in crime incidence also negates the NRA assertion that more gun availability prevents crime. Since we more about twice the gun availability as the next country (Switzerland or Finland, see Figure 3), if that assertion were true we would expect the lowest crime incidence by far in Figure 7.
In the States
The most convincing evidence that it is really the ready availability of guns that is the reason for our extraordinarily high gun suicide and homicide rates does not consider other countries at all, but rather just compares a set of high gun ownership states with a matched set of low gun ownership states[8]. The two different sets are closely matched in total population, percent of population reporting depression or suicidal thoughts (to control for mental illness), and number of non-lethal violent crimes in 2010. The difference is that the high gun set[9] has a gun ownership rate of 50% (of households) while the low gun set[10] has only 15%. The data cover the period 1999 to 2007. Figure 8 summarizes some of the results.
FIGURE 8
There are almost twice as many homicides by firearms in the high gun availability states as in the low gun availability states, and nearly four times as many suicides by firearms. On the other hand, the homicides and suicides by other means are quite similar for the two sets. This latter fact indicates that people don’t just find other methods to commit these acts if guns aren’t available.
Wayne LaPierre’s childishly simplistic scenario of “a bad guy with a gun” and “a good guy with a gun” does not really fit the facts. A more likely scenario is two ordinary guys in an altercation, but the ready availability of a gun results in one of them dead by gunshot wound or wounds. And each thought he was the “good guy”.
But, for the moment, forget bad guys, good guys, and ordinary guys. What about women? Table 1.3 of reference 2 actually has the numbers broken down by gender; I just added male and female together to get the totals shown in Figure 8. Figure 9 shows the numbers for women only.
FIGURE 9
Ready gun availability is particularly dangerous for women. As shown in Figure 7, there were about eight times as many gun suicides and more than three times as many deaths from gun homicides in the high gun states as compared to the low gun states. Again, the numbers for suicides and homicides by other means were close to the same. Both total suicides (by any means) and total homicides were higher in the high gun set of states than in the low gun set.
Gun rights enthusiasts often spout nonsense about the availability of guns as protective of women, especially in abusive relationships. Figure 7 blows that argument out of the water. Another study of women murdered by their intimate partners found that a gun was present in the house in 65% of the cases, but only in 24% of the cases of non-fatal abuse[11]. As reference 2 says, “Access to a firearm by the battered women had no protective effect.”
The Second Amendment
A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The above is the totality of the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. It is a bit cryptic, especially the first clause. What is a “well-regulated militia”? Regulated by whom, If not by government elected by the citizens? And does “arms” in the second clause mean every weapon in existence in the 1780’s and every one invented since?
Some of the more extreme gun rights advocates would say yes to this second question, often with what they consider a discussion-ending rhetorical question, “What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ don’t you understand?” Of course the answer is that it is not a matter of what I understand or the gun rights people understand: it is a matter of what the federal courts, and ultimately the Supreme Court, understand.
A landmark SCOTUS decision in 2008 in the case of Washington D.C. v Heller answered, at least partially, some questions about the Second Amendment[12]. The court held that the “Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” This opinion makes the first clause concerning “militia” superfluous and who regulates the “militia” a moot point. In accordance with this finding they ruled that the D.C. law which outlawed all handguns was unconstitutional.
The ruling also noted, “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” And, “The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places.” The Court also reaffirmed an earlier ruling that “dangerous and unusual weapons” do not fall under Second Amendment protection. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no judicial definition of “dangerous and unusual weapons”.
Second Amendment rights are not unlimited! Like all individual rights they are circumscribed, limited by considerations of the greater good of society. Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are not unlimited: there are laws against libel, slander, inciting to violence, etc. There are restrictions against owning fully automatic machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. More than 100 years ago, during World War I, the Supreme Court ruled that the military draft was constitutional, even though the Thirteenth Amendment (upon which the challenge was based) expressly states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment of a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” What is conscription into the armed forces, other than “involuntary servitude”? In fact, there are rights even more fundamental and enumerated earlier, than those in the Constitution.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Conscription into the armed services certainly abrogates your “unalienable” rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and may also cancel your right to life in case of combat. If there are greater societal considerations than any individual’s right to life, then there are certainly greater societal considerations than any individual’s right to possess firearms.
In Colorado
My home state of Colorado has recently passed two gun-related laws that have brought down the wrath of the NRA and more radical gun rights groups. The first, in 2013, banned the sale, possession, or transfer of high capacity magazines (HCM’s) that hold more than 15 rounds of ammunition. Despite most other states that have HCM bans limiting the capacity to 10 rounds[13], the NRA and the more radical Rocky Mountain Gun Owners jumped in with a lawsuit claiming the ban was unconstitutional. It is extremely doubtful that the Founding Fathers had HCM’s in mind when they specified “arms” in the Second Amendment. The first repeating firearm, the 1836 Paterson Colt, was invented about 50 years after the writing of the Constitution. The lawsuit has lost twice in lower courts and is now before the state supreme court. No HCM ban in any state has yet been overturned in the courts.
There are two arguments that I have heard the NRA use against HCM bans, and they contradict each other. The first is that such bans will not help in the case of a mass shooting because an empty ten (or 15) round magazine can be changed out for a loaded one in a few seconds. That is dead wrong: those few seconds can save many lives. Their argument is disproved by the events of the 2011 Tucson mass shooting and attempted assassination of Gabbie Giffords in which six people were killed and thirteen others wounded. The shooter fired at least 31 times (that’s how many shell casings were found at the scene) from his Glock pistol before he tried to change out to a new loaded magazine. However he dropped the loaded magazine to the ground and a woman snatched it away, allowing others in the crowd to subdue the shooter with weapons like a folding chair. Here was a case of “a bad guy with a gun” being stopped by a smart woman with quick reflexes. There certainly would have been less carnage if he had only had a 10-round magazine.
The second argument insists that firing 10 or fifteen times without reloading is not sufficient firepower to protect your home. In other words, the few seconds to change out an empty for a loaded magazine is not long enough to ameliorate a mass shooting, but too long to allow an adequate defense of your home from “bad guys”. One has to wonder what kind of violent fantasy world these would-be Rambos inhabit. Their puerile fantasies are like nothing so much as Ralphie’s in A Christmas Story, protecting his home from Black Bart and his minions with his Daisy “Red Ryder” BB gun. Only the adult fantasy is about repelling black helicopters carrying black, African U.N. troops invading to take over the country. Ralphie’s fantasy is more realistic.
The second Colorado law that roils the NRA is the Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) bill, also often known as a red flag bill, which passed in 2018. The purpose of the law is to remove firearms from the possession of a person deemed to be a significant risk to self or others. A law enforcement officer or family or household member can petition the court to issue such an order by signing an affidavit under oath which sets forth the supporting facts. If the temporary ERPO is issued by the court on the basis of “a preponderance of the evidence” then the respondent must surrender all firearms to a law enforcement agency or federally licensed firearms dealer.
The temporary ERPO can be issued without the respondent’s knowledge or day in court. However, what the opponents of the law never mention is that when the temporary ERPO is issued, a second court hearing within a week must be scheduled at which the respondent can defend himself or herself while the petitioner must establish by “clear and convincing evidence” that the respondent is a significant risk. Only at that time can a 182 day ERPO be issued by the hearing court. The order expires automatically after 182 days unless the petitioner again comes to court with clear and convincing evidence of continuing risk.
In short, the original ERPO expires after one week and the continuing one expires after six months without the submission of clear and convincing evidence. If the signed affidavit is false, the petitioner is guilty of perjury. I suppose the concern of the gun rights groups is that the black helicopters will arrive during the week that a “good guy with a gun” is disarmed by perjured testimony.
Conclusions
It’s not really that complicated. The United States has far and away the greatest gun availability and gun homicide and suicide rates of any First World country. It takes an extreme twisting of logic to conclude that the last two facts are not connected to the first. The correlations are all there if one considers just developed nations with democratically elected governments and no private armies or civil wars.
As a smoke screen the NRA throws up ”mental illness” or “violent video games” or “violent movies”. But every one of the other developed countries in the list of 26 has just as much mental illness and just as much access to violent video content. Only we have such extreme gun violence rates.
Gary Waldman
[1] Data from www.gun-control.procon.org
[2] D. Webster & J. Vernick, editors – Reducing Gun Violence in America – The Johns Hopkins University Press (2013), p. 23
[3] Ref. 1
[4] D. Webster & J. Vernick, editors – Reducing Gun Violence in America – The Johns Hopkins University Press (2013), p. 30
[5] Killias, M. – “International correlations between gun ownership and rates of homicide and suicide.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 148(10): 1721-1725
[6] Hemenway, D. & Miller, M. – “Firearm availability and homicide rates across 26 high-income countries.” Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, 49(6), 985-988
[7] J. van Kesteren, P. Mayhew, & P. Nieuwbeerta – Criminal victimization in seventeen industrialized countries – Netherlands Ministry of Justice: Research and Documentation Center (2001)
[8] Ref. 2, Table 1.3, p. 37
[9] Louisiana, Utah, Oklahoma, Iowa, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Idaho, North Dakota, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alaska, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming
[10] Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York
[11] Ref. 2, p. 35
[12] Text of the decision can be found on the SCOTUS website, www.supremecourt.gov/opinions
[13] California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, D.C., and Vermont (for long guns)
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