Girard wrote:
>
> Why not look at the statistics? Here are some :
>
> Percent of households with a handgun:
>
> United States 29%
> Finland 7
> Germany 7
> Canada 5
> Norway 4
> Europe 4
> Netherlands 2
> United Kingdom 1
>
> Murders committed with handguns annually:
>
> United States 8,915
> Switzerland 53
> Sweden 19
> Canada 8
> United Kingdom 7
>
> Murder rate (per 100,000 people):
>
> United States 8.40
> Canada 5.45
> Denmark 5.17
> Germany 4.20
> Norway 1.99
> United Kingdom 1.97
> Sweden 1.73
> Japan 1.20
> Finland 0.70
>
> Who needs long dissertations to prove that guns kill?
The "dissertation" question is primarily about the *marginal* effect of
gun control laws. On the one hand, they make it more of a pain to be a
criminal because it's harder to get a gun; but on the other hand they
make it better to be a criminal because victims less likely to shoot
back. Net effect? Not obvious, even if the pattern above were a plain
picture.
Someone other than me can surely do a better job of pointing out
problems in that picture, but they are surely likely to point out
widespread gun (if not handgun) ownership in Switzerland, and wonder how
6x the handgun ownership rate in the U.S. leads to a 1000x increase in
the handgun murder rate. (If that's not a typo).
--
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Department of Economics George Mason University
http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"[T]he power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in
those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous."
-- Edward Gibbon, *The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire*
