[btilly]

For your information I grew up in Canada. A long time ago I would have immediately agreed with you.

But then I made the mistake of posting my views on Usenet. Unlike most people on either side of these arguments, I actually followed up on the deluge of references I got in return from both sides. And did my best to create an informed opinion for myself. Here are some basic points off of the top of my head from what I have learned over the following two decades.

- Gun ownership and gun violence are nothing like linearly correlated. For example Canada has a third the guns/capita that the USA does, and a fifth the gun violence.

- The USA's violence problems are tied closely to racial problems. Over half of homicides are committed by blacks, and over half of the remainder by hispanics, despite the fact that there are more whites than either of those other racial groups. I just ran across a reference that I'm not sure is trustworthy indicating the the homicide rate among US whites is actually 0.32 per 100,000. If true then that is down with Singapore and Iceland - and is under half of most European countries.

- When two areas have easy transport between them, the one with more restrictive gun rules tends to experience worse gun problems tied to crime.

- There is some evidence that removing guns increases levels of violent crime, but reduces odds of death during that crime. Whether you consider this an improvement is likely to depend on your politics.

- I've seen and found believable (but have not researched) the claim that in the short term after a major gun ban, the use of guns in crime actually goes up. (It is believable because criminals still have their guns, and have less fear about using them.)

- No matter what the truth is, there is no way in the US system that we actually could ban guns. It would require changing the Constitution in a way that most Americans do not like.

[galaktor]

>"the the homicide rate among US whites is actually 0.32 per 100,000. If true then that is down with Singapore and Iceland - and is under half of most European countries."

you're forgetting that the vast majority of those other countries might also find a large part of their violence being committed by "minority groups"

[dredmorbius]

In an ethnically homogeneous country (and not all are), the minority is likely not one readily distinguishable by skin color alone. There are the Yakuza, Kkangpae, and Ah Kong (the latter mostly Chinese Singaporeans). European nations often have issues with right-wing groups (and in some cases ethnic Muslim minorities). But the distinct racial and cultural division (and history) present in the US is fairly distinctive.

[btilly]

I'm not forgetting, I'm just not bothering to dig deeper.

My point is that the vast majority of the crazy homicide rate in the USA can be attributed to the existence of large minority populations with huge problems of all sorts. I am not aware of any other Western country with similar demographic issues. Once you sort out that, the portion of the US homicide problem that is explainable by the prevalence of guns is nowhere close to what most non-Americans naively assume it to be.

If someone had access to statistics on comparative homicide rates only among the majority ethnic group in different countries, I'd gladly look at it. It frankly seems hard for me to believe that US whites score so well on that score given the size and diversity of the circumstances of the white population. But no matter what the answers are, you're going to have a hard time coming up with objective, unarguable evidence saying that guns are more than a tiny fraction of the problem in the USA.