[Jedd]

> Do you have the numbers to back that up?

Seriously?

Do you mean car .vs. gun, or gun harm/death differentials between countries with (broadly) different attitudes towards gun ownership and use?

The latter is pretty easy to find numbers. Wikipedia [1] (sort by last column) for countries by fire-arm death, or [2] estimated number of guns (ownership) per capita. Comparing gun deaths around the world, humanosphere[3] has some nice stats (from 2016-06) dispelling the 'other countries without so many guns just use knives' argument. Actually, that article has some hugely sobering comparisons with some highly risky parts of the planet. CBS posted an article in 2016-02 [4] comparing gun deaths in the USA with other countries - quoting a study published in the AMA earlier in the year.

If you mean the former - that's a trickier thing to evaluate. Less people have access to a gun than a car, for starters, and most people use a car much more often than they use a gun. Cars are designed to transport people and goods - guns are designed to cause damage - so defining 'accidental use' of both is an interesting question. A bit of quick googling comes up with some numbers, suggesting guns are now - in absolute terms - the cause of death for more USA citizens than cars ... but naturally there's some dispute about how those numbers are determined, and some strong interest in not comparing those stats to other countries.

On the other hand, if you think gun ownership should be legal, popular, loosely regulated, and enshrined in law, then you're probably well prepared to disregard any argument to the contrary. Any 'but people die from car accidents' rebuttal <sic> is pretty disingenuous.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_c... [3] http://www.humanosphere.org/science/2016/06/visualizing-gun-... [4] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-u-s-gun-deaths-compare-to-ot...

[literallycancer]

>If you mean the former - that's a trickier thing to evaluate. Less people have access to a gun than a car, for starters, and most people use a car much more often than they use a gun. Cars are designed to transport people and goods - guns are designed to cause damage - so defining 'accidental use' of both is an interesting question. A bit of quick googling comes up with some numbers, suggesting guns are now - in absolute terms - the cause of death for more USA citizens than cars ... but naturally there's some dispute about how those numbers are determined, and some strong interest in not comparing those stats to other countries.

I'm interested in both car accidents vs gun accidents and car accidents vs all gun related deaths, especially in countries with sane gun (e.g. well thought out, not let's ban everything) regulation that aren't the US.

Here's some stats that I've found just now:

Switzerland: gun related deaths per 100k people: 3.01, with 3.3 being the traffic accidents number.[1][2]

Czech Republic: gun related: 1.8, traffic accidents: 6.1.[3][2]

1 - http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/switzerland

2 - http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/czech-republic

3 -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

[Jedd]

> ... especially in countries with sane gun (e.g. well thought out, not let's ban everything) regulation that aren't the US.

Sanity is in the eye of the permit-holder, I suspect.

Most countries seem to rarely change their gun laws, having inherited them from various historical events (or fears of possible events).

In Australia we had a major gun law change back in the 1990's in response to a lunatic shooting several dozen people - but I don't know offhand of any other societies that have successfully re-considered their laws and attitudes towards gun ownership.