Article content continued

Now of course we could all wish it was zero. Indeed, it’s startling that people deliberately murder one another everywhere in such numbers (and this is only homicide; war is excluded) that the American rate is unremarkable, just above Latvia, not exactly renowned as a slaughterhouse.

Some journalists and politicians may depict those gun-totin’ Americans as exceptionally prone to murdering one another. But they’re not.

Russia, for instance, sits at 66th internationally, between Gabon and Seychelles, with 9.2 murders per year per 100,000 people, nearly twice the U.S. rate, despite decades of very strict gun control. At the top are seven South and Central American countries, led by Honduras at 90.4, very nearly 20 times the U.S. rate.

These statistics underline pervasive cultural patterns. And by the same token they underline that the presence of guns, legal or illegal, doesn’t correlate with murder rates among countries or regionally within them.

If guns kill people, why was Idaho’s murder rate lower than Nova Scotia’s in 2011, North Dakota’s lower than in neighbouring Manitoba and Saskatchewan and Minnesota’s lower than Canada’s?

Famously, murder rates in our prairie provinces are considerably higher than the bordering American states where gun ownership is far higher. OK, it’s not famous. It takes a bit more research. But it’s worth looking into given its relevance. If guns kill people, why was Idaho’s murder rate lower than Nova Scotia’s in 2011, North Dakota’s lower than in neighbouring Manitoba and Saskatchewan and Minnesota’s lower than Canada’s?

Now it is true that a larger share of American murders are committed with guns than in most countries. Wikipedia’s less complete list of total firearm-related homicides per 100,000 people in 75 “Countries and Dependencies” ranks the U.S. much higher: 15th. And curiously, all but two above it are in the Western Hemisphere (the exceptions are South Africa, 9th, and Swaziland, 5th). But unless there’s some important advantage to being killed with, say, a meat hammer, it’s no argument for cracking down on firearms. After all, nearly eight times as many people per capita are killed without guns in Honduras as are killed at all in the U.S.