Homicide in the US, England, and Wales.

There's two graphs I'm sure everyone has seen before in one form or another. They show the per 100K rate difference between the total and firearm-related murder rate in England/Wales and the United States. The anti-gun shills like to parade these out and shriek that guns are pretty much the only reason we have a higher murder rate.

But like most things in the anti-gunners bag of tricks, it doesn't quite tell the whole story. So, yea, let's dig down further and look at a few pieces of the puzzle which don't get much attention. I rarely ever see anyone on either side of the debate break down (let alone acknowledge) different weapon categories to compare them, so let's start there. Please note, the rest of the graphs will use per-million rates to make it easier to see the shifts.

Hmmm.. Looks like there's a precipitous drop after 1992 in the US murder rate. This graph must be for "assault weapons" or some such!!1! Oh, wait. That graph is for knives and cutting instruments.

For years now, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership have claimed that their eponymous background check law and the AWB is what caused the plummeting murder rate in the '90s. But as you can see in the graphs, the fatal stabbings fell more than the rate of fatal shootings. Last I checked, however, the background checks doesn't apply to knives..

But, yea, either way, the US beats the UK in the stabby category.

Naturally, one could argue that could be because of their silly "knife control" laws or something. So next up, let's look at the blunt objects graph to the right. This category includes things like baseball bats, hammers, heavy rocks, and what have you. Yet despite the much ballyhooed availability of guns in the US, our murderers still use the caveman method twice as often as their counterparts in the UK.

It would also appear that the number fell by roughly the same percent as those committed with guns and knives. As with knives above, it's highly unlikely that the Brady law or AWB caused the drop in fatal bludgeoning incidents.

So, err, maybe the UK has "club control" laws too?

Oops. That doesn't work either. Unless the UK banned hands and feet while I wasn't looking? Seeing as they're planning to ban fire extinguishers though, that really wouldn't surprise me.

Granted, the difference isn't quite as large here. But it still seems to indicate that our criminals are more likely to commit murder even in the total absence of tools.

And, again, there's another part of the drop in the US rate which the Brady Bunch would have you believe was somehow caused entirely by gun laws.

Instead of going through and graphing every other instrument, I've taken the liberty of compiling the total of all homicides which did not involve firearms. As you can see, the current total difference drops from just over four times higher in the first graph, to about twice as high here. This is still a significant difference, to be sure. But it still wouldn't be all unicorns, kittens, and people singing koombaya in the US if there were no firearms.

Likewise, when you remove the firearm stats, the US would still only slip down a few spots on the international rankings. We would still beat the UK, Canada, Australia, and pretty much all of Europe even if you don't remove any other countries' firearm stats.

Furthermore, the last two paragraphs are working under the absurd assumption that either A: none of the killers would have just used another weapon if they didn't have a gun, or B: that someone intent on breaking the law against murder would have obeyed a law requiring that all guns be turned in.

So, yea, can anyone explain the high murder rate in the US without pointing at some inanimate object or another? Do any of the anti-gun groups even care why this is? Or do they just want to take the guns?

To make matters more complex, the US has a lower violent crime rate in general. According to the British Home Office, there were 2,420,000 violent crimes in England and Wales in 2006, or 4,539.59 per 100,000 people. In the same time frame, the FBI estimated there were 1,417,745 violent crimes in the US, or 473.5 violent crimes per 100,000 people. And those stats are just for England and Wales. According to a 2005 UN report, Scotland is the most violent country in the developed world.

So on one hand, you're far more likely to be a victim of a violent crime in the UK. But on the other, British criminals just don't seem to be as interested in killing their victim, regardless of the weapon used.

To further illustrate this point, the graph at the left compares all gun related homicides in England/Wales to non-fatal injuries carried out via handgun.

Despite a total ban on handguns in 1997, the rate of injuries inflicted with them has skyrocketed. Meanwhile, the rate of homicides involving firearms hasn't kept up. In some years, the murder rate even went down while the injury rate went up.

On that note, this graph also seems to indicate that the gun ban has utterly failed to keep handguns away from criminals. Yet even with an apparently increasing, illegal supply, British criminals still don't seem inclined to kill with them.

Why is this?

Perhaps the criminals there are just as squeamish about lethal force as their hoplophobic victims? Whatever the reason, it's not just as simple as gun bans or the lack thereof..

(Data tables and sources for the graphs can be found here.)