I don't know how many of the murders are committed using guns though.
Not that many in the UK; it's mostly knives these days.
I also believe that Harold Shipman skewed a few years' worth of UK murder statistics.
In the U.S. handguns seem to be strongly preferred and young adults are most likely to murder.
The number of people murdered in the US per capita each year appears to be about three times higher than in the UK. I don't know how many of the murders are committed using guns though.
Once again, you need to factor in the rather different composition of the population in the United States for a realistic comparison.
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_43.html
Let me give you a chance to clarify, Carl. Are you actually suggesting that the United States has a higher crime rate than the United Kingdom because there are more black people here? Really?
What am I supposed to be drawing from the numbers though? I expect differences in violence between different racial and ethnic groups are indicative of social ills that contribute to crime such as poverty in densely populated areas, inequality of opportunity, poor social rights, and remnants of segregation in terms of where many people live. Or perhaps the problem is rooted in certain sub-cultures? I don't really know for certain one way or another, but it is an interesting puzzle.
Perhaps it would be more pertinent to this discussion for us to explore the reasons why folks commit violence crimes in the first place (i.e. is it even relevant in terms of the public interest whether gun control laws stop all criminals from getting guns?). To be honest, I do not know how many people who murder premeditate their act(s), would go through the trouble of procuring a gun illegally in advance, and to what extent folks may be more reluctant to kill with a knife than a firearm. If you have thoughts on the matter they would be quite interesting to see shared.
I have yet to make up my mind about whether gun control effectively reduces crime, mind you.
