FINALLY, PROOF THAT US GUN DEATHS DWARF ALL OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS

…A sample of confiscated assault weapons.

Confirmation that the NRA’s “Only answer to a bad man with a gun, is a good man with a gun,” is totally wrong.

For years I have been writing about the negative aspects of the high rates of US gun ownership.  More and more, the average American is seeing what happens when guns are readily available to people with mental disorders or when the anger in a family argument goes beyond just words and when it become physically violent.

Well, now there is an organization that is taking all that gun ownership data and putting some accurate information together that confirms that my previous writings were correct.

In Washington DC, there is now an organization known as the Violence Policy Center (VPC).  This organization has now taken the latest year of complete data (2011) on the rates of the 50 states of gun ownership and compares them to the overall national death rates.

In a nutshell, the results of the data were that the ,“States with weak gun violence prevention laws and higher rates of gun ownership have the highest overall gun death rates in the nation.”  We have all suspected this, but now we have some proof that supports these suspicions.

In addition, “States with the lowest overall gun death rates have lower rates of gun ownership and some of the strongest gun violence prevention laws in the nation.”

However, even though this is the fact, even in these states with the lowest gun death rates, the human toll of gun violence remains unacceptably high and far exceeds the gun death rate in most industrialized nations.

The data for these results came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

The states with the highest per capita 2011 gun deaths (in order) were:

·       Louisiana

·       Mississippi

·       Alaska

·       Wyoming

·       Montana

Each of these states has extremely lax gun violence prevention laws as well as a higher rate of per capita gun ownership.

The states with the lowest 2011 per capita gun deaths (in order) were:

·       Rhode Island

·       Hawaii

·       Massachusetts

·       New York

·       New Jersey

Each of these states has strong gun violence prevention laws and has a lower rate of per capita gun ownership.

Per the VPC Executive Director Josh Sugarmann:  “Gun violence is preventable, and states can pass effective laws that will dramatically reduce gun death and injury,” states.  Our analysis also shows that states with weak gun violence prevention laws and easy access to guns pay a severe price with gun death rates far above the national average.”

Sue Hornik, the executive director of States United to Prevent Gun Violence states: “Lawmakers in every state should roll up their sleeves and pass stronger legislation to prevent needless deaths from gun violence. The safety of our families and communities is at stake.”  This group is a national umbrella group for state gun violence prevention organizations.

So, just what are these rates we are talking about?

The nationwide US gun death rate was 10.38 deaths per 100,000. The total number of Americans killed by gunfire rose to 32,351 in 2011 from 31,672 in 2010.

America’s gun death rates (both nationwide and in the states) dwarf those of other Western industrialized nations.

The gun death rate in the United Kingdom in 2011 was 0.23 per 100,000 while in Australia it was 0.86 per 100,000.

Of those five states with the highest death rates, here are their numbers:

(Gun Death Rate Per 100,000)

·       1 Louisiana 45.6 = 18.91%

·       2 Mississippi 54.3 = 17.80

·       3 Alaska 60.6 = 17.41%

·       4 Wyoming 62.8 = 16.92%

·       5 Montana 61.4 = 16.74%

Of those five states with the lowest death rates, here are their numbers:

(Gun Death Rate Per 100,000)

·       50 Rhode Island 13.3 = 3.14%

·       49 Hawaii 9.7 = 3.56%

·       48 Massachusetts 12.8 = 3.84%

·       47 New York 18.1 = 5.11%

·       46 New Jersey 11.3 = 5.46%

The VPC has defined states with “weak” gun violence prevention laws as those that add little or nothing to federal law and have highly permissive laws governing the open or concealed carrying of firearms in public.

Those states with “strong” gun violence prevention laws were defined as those that added significant state regulations that are absent from federal law, such as restricting access to particularly hazardous and deadly types of firearms (i.e.: assault weapons).  They also set minimum safety standards for firearms and required a permit to purchase a firearm.  They seriously restricted “open and concealed carrying” of firearms in public.

If you are interested in following this organization, The Violence Policy Center(www.vpc.org) is a national educational organization. You can follow the VPC on Facebook and follow @VPCinfo on Twitter.

I have a feeling that we will be hearing more from the VPC in the coming years.  They will also most likely be regularly attacked by the National Rifle Association (NRA) if and when they start receiving more attention than the NRA would prefer.

Copyright G.Ater  2015