INTERNATIONAL INTENTIONAL HOMICIDE TABLE

 

Table is based on figures from two different sources (as further specified below): insofar as they are given therein, all figures are from the 1983-6 averages in Killias' Tables 1 & 2;{152} insofar as Killias does not give figures they are from the latest year listed for the country in U.N. DEMOGRAPHIC YEARBOOK-1985 (published, 1987). Figures from Killias are in bold face; all other figures are in ordinary type.

Country             Suicide          Homicide          TOTAL

RUMANIA               66.2            n.a.            66.2 (1984)

HUNGARY               45.9            n.a.            45.9 (1983)

DENMARK               28.7              .7            29.4 (1984)

AUSTRIA               26.9             1.5            28.4 (1984)

FINLAND               24.4 (1983)      2.86           27.2

FRANCE                21.8 (1983)      4.36           26.16

SWITZERLAND           24.45            1.13           25.58

BELGIUM               23.15            1.85           25.

W. GERMANY            20.37            1.48           21.85

JAPAN                 20.3              .9            21.2

U.S.                  12.2 (1982)      7.59           19.79

CANADA                13.94            2.6             16.54

NORWAY                14.5 (1984)      1.16            15.66

N. IRELAND             9.0             6.0             15.0
(Homicide rate may not include "political" homicides)

AUSTRALIA             11.58            1.95            13.53

NEW ZEALAND            9.7             1.6             24.5

ENGLAND/WALES          8.61             .67             9.28
(Homicide rate does not include "political" homicides)

ISRAEL                 6.              2.               8.

The evidence from international comparisons is confirmed by the various neutral attempts to determine whether gun ownership causes violence footnoted earlier and by the most extensive and methodologically sophisticated study, Kleck's application of modern, computer-assisted statistical techniques to post-World War II American crime rate data. The interactive cause and effect result he found contradicts that posited by anti-gun crusaders. Kleck concludes that from the 1960s on fear engendered by violent crime sparked enormously increased gun ownership among the general populace. This increased gun ownership did not itself increase crime of any kind (if anything, it dampened it); but an increase in gun ownership, or at least in gun use, by criminals helped cause the post-1960 increases violent crime, including murder.{153}
It may be of interest that Kleck simultaneously investigated the possible effect of the cessation of capital punishment of the 1960s and '70s in causing the crime wave. He concludes that the increased violence was also not attributable to the cessation of capital punishment caused. Note also that this criminological evidence does not support the gun lobby's myopic opposition to gun controls. On the contrary, Kleck endorses sweeping, strongly enforced laws against possession of any kind of firearm by persons convicted of any kind of felony.{154}
Guns are more lethal than some other means of death, though less lethal than others such as hanging, certain poisons and falls from great heights. Because of their lethality guns may facilitate murder or suicide among those inclined to them anyway. On the other hand, they are also incomparably the most effective means by which a victim may resist violent attack.