9 guns to every 10 US civilians

[Roofus]

Private citizens should be allowed drugs because, believe it or not, there are people that still get high.

That line can be applied to all sorts of things.

Yeah but I don't know anyone who gets high because it helps them properly feed their family on a very scant income

And, you know, getting high isn't a Constitutional right.

[JellyWarrior]

...for Australia, there is .5 deaths for every 15,000 guns (15 guns for ever 100 people) which gives us about .003 gun deaths per gun. not much smaller than America's .004 gun deaths per gun. (numbers generated again using Boneycorks post and the first post by JellyWarrior).

From what I gather, Switzerland had around 50 firearm homicides in 2004 (on a side note, I think it is wrong to combine firearm suicides with firearm homicides, as many people like to do). The high balled number of guns in Switzerland is around 3,000,000. So .000016 deaths per gun.

Why are you both using such a ridiculous metric for comparing the number of gun deaths in different countries?

We've already established that the reason the number of guns per citizen is so high in the US is because a number of people like to keep multiple firearms. Using "deaths per gun" instead of "(gun) deaths per x of the population" will only end up inflating the percieved amount of gun crime in countries where fewer people own guns, and where those that do will rarely own more than one because of the more restrictive laws that govern posession of them.

Like I said, I still hear of plenty of gun deaths on the news here in OZ, mostly in Sydney and Melbourne.
They're almost all related to gangs, hired killings, etc

Q. What does that prove?
A. That criminals have guns no matter what and if they want to use them then they will.

That fact aside, it is SO SO short sighted and stupid to say "it's just as safe allowing people to keep guns". I think that if anyone does say that then they're lying to us and themselves. It's simple logic, the more guns that there are, the more chance you have of getting injured from one, either in a random event or in some kind of fight.

Recently four people were killed in Iraq by bullets falling back to earth, after their football team beat Saudi Arabia 1-0 and people celebrated by going out into the street and firing their guns into the air.

Source
Here is another story from the US

There is one example of how randomly firing guns in the air kill people, although I have heard of plenty of other cases, I've heard of dozens of people being killed by falling bullets in new year celebrations in some countries, and there are numerous deaths in America every year from falling bullets that have been fired into the air.

Q. Where are you most likely to see guns be randomly fired into the air?
A. Any place where there is a greater concentration of guns.

[mkfreak]

This doesn't surprise me at all. I myself own more than one firearm, from to hunting rifles to an ak-47. I also know tons of people who own more than one, infact just about everyone I know owns a firearm.

[I.M. Weasel]

Vermont, a state in the north east of the US, has the second if not the lax-est laws in the country. Among lose regulations, carrying a concealed gun is completely legal... barring entry into certain places, etc.. ANd they also have lowest if not second lowest murder rate per capita.

Just wanted to throw that out there to grease the arguement. How does this work? I dont know. For one thing, its not a southern state.

[|darc|]

Private citizens should be allowed drugs because, believe it or not, there are people that still get high.

That line can be applied to all sorts of things.

Yeah but I don't know anyone who gets high because it helps them properly feed their family on a very scant income

And, you know, getting high isn't a Constitutional right.

Neither is habeas corpus.

[Lartrak]

Private citizens should be allowed drugs because, believe it or not, there are people that still get high.

That line can be applied to all sorts of things.

Yeah but I don't know anyone who gets high because it helps them properly feed their family on a very scant income

And, you know, getting high isn't a Constitutional right.

Neither is habeas corpus.

It's only implied, right?

[DaMadFiddler]

Private citizens should be allowed drugs because, believe it or not, there are people that still get high.

That line can be applied to all sorts of things.

Yeah but I don't know anyone who gets high because it helps them properly feed their family on a very scant income

And, you know, getting high isn't a Constitutional right.

Neither is habeas corpus.

It's only implied, right?

[Lartrak]

That's what I was alluding to. Heh. What a douche.