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World Survey Shows Few Links Between Guns and Crime |
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| Amid international activists ongoing push for U.N.
gun control, the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/ released a study that dramatically
undercuts the activists' idea that guns cause violence. While media reports have focused on the study's claim that
the U.S. holds nearly half the world's civilian gun supply, they've ignored the study's figures that suggest quite
a different conclusion about guns and crime. The publication, Small Arms Survey 2007: Guns and the City, includes estimates of civilian gun ownership for many of the world's countries. But as the program's director, Keith Krause, pointed out to reporters, "There's no clear relationship between more guns and higher levels of violence. The report includes a chart that lists the 30 countries with the largest number of civilian-owned firearms. Those with the highest rates of civilian gun ownership per 100 people include some of the world's safest, most stable democracies, such as Finland, Switzerland, Sweden and Germany. Krause himself noted that low gun ownership goes along with high crime rates in Latin America. Among the countries with the lowest rates of ownership were some recently racked with rising urban violence (such as England and Brazil) and others that have been scenes of bloody drug crime and guerrilla warfare (Colombia). The study's figures also give a powerful hint about the relationship between the right to arms and other freedoms. Iran, China and Russia -all known for long and violent hostility to political dissent-easily rank in the study's bottom ten for rates of civilian gun ownership. To save the American Revolution, George Washington rallied his partially defeated army - exhausted, shoeless and freezing men with little moral left amongst them - to cross the Delaware river onward to victory. Washington told his officers, "If we do not win, we are already defeated, so we have nothing to risk." If you don't like goes on in Washington, D.C., fix it. If you don't like Anytown, USA, fix it. If you think it hard to fix, it is a lot harder being a soldier in George Washington's revolutionary army. |
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