Crime > Murders with firearms: Countries Compared

Brazil and Russia should both be on the list, both Brazil and Russia have thousands of gun murders each year and Brazil is number one in gun murders, Brazil has the most reported gun murders and the most reported total gun deaths in the world each year, There are on average a total of 34,000 gun deaths and 30,000 gun murders a year in Brazil, thats down from a total of 38,000 gun deaths and 36,000 gun murders a year. Russia has on average 5,000 gun murders a year, thats down from 20,000 gun murders on average each year.

These statistics are not at all accurate and are false and misleading.

If you look at the murders per capita, the only meaningful way to look at this, the US is not even among the first 37 countries. See at this same site: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita.

John and Others: You should delve a little deeper into US murder rates. Parse them by race and you will find that about 53% of US murders are committed by blacks. If the black murder rate of a little more than 20 per 100,000 were the same as the murder rate for the rest of Americans the US murder rate would be a little more than 2 per 100,000, which is comparable to many countries with strict gun control laws. The NRA or so-called assault rifles have nothing to do with the murder rates--it's culture. Also, with more than 80 million students in more than 150 thousand American schools the odds of being shot in a school are 1 in 10.7 million. The odds of being killed in a traffic accident in the US are 1 in 6800. The odds of being hit by lightening in the US are 1 in 80,000 and the odds of being attacked by a shark in the US are 1 in 60,000. Sandy Hook (27 dead) was a tragedy, so was Virginia Tech in 2006 (32 dead)and Columbine (12 dead) in 1999 but for a country as large as the US those types of events caused by mentally disturbed people, not guns, are extremely rare.

Please, before you comment on how America ranked 4th and how 3rd world countries ranked lower, please read the definition section below the graph. Your point about how they just shoot whoever they want in those countries just negates your point about America being uncivilized.

Also, please read previous posts by others that have called out the creator of the graph on how the statistics are completely incorrect and biased.

Thank you.

Yea, but the difference between sharks and cars, and the use of guns is that they are not deliberately used by people to kill. In other countries, you have disturbed people as well, but they do not have such ready access to high fire power. Incidents recently in Canada and China involved disturbed people attacking innocents - but with a knife and all the victims lived.
No right to guns ever trumps the death of those children. If you must have guns, use the type intended by the original drafters of that amendment - muskets and blackpoweder

Look here for per capita stats. The US is very high looking at these figures too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

@Bill Peterson: Your math is off. The US rate is between 30 and 31 per 1M pop. That's the #13 spot on that European list. (The US has 9100-9500 gun homicides and ~310M pop.)

@Roger: You're correct that we should look at the data per capita, but you're comparing apples (murder with firearms) to oranges (total murder) with that link. The real comparison is here: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_gun_vio_hom_fir_hom_rat_per_100_pop-rate-per-100-000-pop The US is #8 on that list, after South Africa, Columbia, Thailand, Guatemala, Paraguay, Zimbabwe, and Mexico.

Ummm...Juarez had 5K murders in one year. That's one city that has almost half as much homicide via gun than all of US without adjusted per capita.

To Roger's point, I agree the rate per capita is the best way to look at it. Although the US is not on the chart Roger refers to (top 37 Murders per Capita), the reason is not because our per capita rate is below those other countries. The US rate is actually 90/1 million which would put it #6 on the website Roger refers to if the US had been included. Our rate is more than 100 times that of #37 Spain.

@ Roger; the list you refer to is from a European source, and does not include the US or even African countries. For that list, see here...which shows the US number 1 for modern western countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

In my opinion, the Philippine government is ineffective because gun permit applicants can openly pay bribe money, through legitimate gun dealers, to grease the smooth release of permits without passing though proper compliance of regulatory controls of qualifying requirements. Over 1 Million firearms on the loose and unaccounted according to the Philippine National Police; and these loose firearms are used in 99% of crimes. There is also no FIREARM OWNERSHIP TITLING AND REGISTRATION SYSTEM in the Philippines -- the country only have licensure system for possession and carry. My collection of over 60 Gun Control Advocacy Blogs can be found at http://petalcorinpolitics.blogspot.com/search/label/On%20Firearm%20Control

Slovakia's number of 2,356 is a complete non-sense. There were e.g. 94 homicides in Slovakia in total in 2008.
http://www.minv.sk/?statistika-kriminality-kopia

Any statistics on gun crime in Ireland, Republic, North and whole? Particularly that not involving the I.R.A.?

Wow. America ranked fourth in murders due to firearms! That does not seem very civilized to me, and just above us are like 3rd world countries with no order. They just kill whom they please. We need to get serious about these gun laws.

There have been no (zero) machine gun deaths in the US since those guns were outlawed in 1934.

Something's strange about these figures. Slovakia 2356, Czech Republic 181. The former is 13 times the latter. Yet these two nations used to be one only a few years ago with the same influences steering and directing them.
As stated by others, the Slovakian figure is off. So disregarding this figure, the US figure is nearly 35 times the highest European figure of Germany (269). This puts into clear perspective the state of affairs in the USA and the challenge confronting legislators there. If Newtown, Aurora and Tucson scenarios are to be averted in the future, it is incumbent upon them to place bans upon firearms and to act swiftly.

"The FBI reported that there were 15,980 murders and non-negligent homicides in the United States that year, so about 10,000 people were murdered with guns... In cases where the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim was known, only 24 percent of the murders were committed by a stranger. The most commonly cited circumstance leading to murder is an argument, which was reported in 28 percent of homicides."

So that's what all these law-abiding citizens were doing with their guns. And here I thought they were using then to stop crime.