The US: a) appears to have a greater propensity to kill (7.3 : 1.4) b) greater freedom to acquire  and own legally. (see volumes above) c) uses guns as the preferred means of murder    (68% : 8%) Thus there would appear to be, prima facie, a connection between the propensity to kill, the availability of guns and the use of gun as a preferred murder tool. Your have far from proved a prima facie case, all you have done is to present a simple pair wise comparison of the UK.  Your use of latin does not add weight to your as I shall soon demonstrate in a reductio ad absurdum. [ The figures for homicide you quote are correct for the two sources quoted. However, differences in the two statistics mean that are not directly comparable. The US figure from the FBI UCR is little more than an estimate.  The FBI is responsible for compiling the UCR and decides what is and is not homicide.  No matter what the decision of the legal process the figures are not adjusted and as a result accidents and suicides are often included in the UCR. The figure for England and Wales represent only those cases where a conviction was obtained for murder, manslaughter and infanticide.  Britain also has a number of offences, for example causing death by reckless or dangerous driving, that would be classified as involuntary manslaughter and included in the US figure. I note that you quote the figures for England and Wales.  Due to it's separate judicial system Scotland compiles its own statistics.  As a result a cursory examination would appear to show that the Scottish rate of homicide is approximately twice that of the UK.  The Scots are no more violent than the English or Welsh the difference is simply due to the different ways in which the statistics are compiled. Similarly comparison of Swiss and French homicide statistics would be misleading since both countries lump murder and attempted murder into the same statistic of homicide . At best one can concluded the US figure represents a gross estimate of the American homicide rate and the British figure a conservative one. Recognising the fact that comparison of international homicide statistics is fraught with difficulties Shikita Minoru et al attempted to provide a coherent set of statistics by combining sets of statistics to approximate the Japanese standard.  This resulted in homicide rates per capita of: France     4.1 Germany    4.3 UK         5.5 US         8.3 The above figures were produced in 1988 and over the last few years US homicide rates have declined dramatically.  Referring to the FBI UCR we find over the last two decades the rate per capita is: 1980 10.2       1981  9.8       1982  9.1       1983  8.3       1984  7.9       1985  7.9       1986  8.6       1987  8.3       1988  8.4       1989  8.7       1990  9.4       1991  9.8       1992  9.3       1993  9.5       1994  9.0       1995  8.2       1996  7.4       1997  6.8       Whereas the rate per capita for England and Wales has remained essentially constant: 1980 1.2         1981 1.1         1982 1.2         1983 1.1         1984 1.3         1985 1.3         1986 1.3         1987 1.4         1988 1.3         1989 1.2         1990 1.3         1991 1.4         1992 1.3         1993 1.3         1994 1.4         1995 1.5         1996 1.3         1997 1.4         Given that the US homicide rate has dropped to nearly 3/4 it's former value and the British rate is approximately the same we can estimate the US homicide rate (according to the Japanese standard) at 6.4 and the British rate as 5.5. The difference is not as marked as you imply. You have also limited yourself to a comparison of homicide statistics.  What would happen if we were to compare other offences.  The US rate of burgulary of occupied premises is 1/3 that of the UK.  Due to the continued decline in crime rates in the US street crime is now lower in the UK; you are more likely not less to be mugged in the UK. And returning to homicide it is interesting to look at the distribution of homicide in the US.  Clayton Cramer examined the incidence of homicide in California and found that violent crime is contained to a few relatively small areas of certain major cities such as LA.  Excluding those areas the rest of California had a homicide rate comparable to that of rural England.  The crime rate in the inner city areas was so massive, however, that it dominated the statistics of the state as a whole.  The real tragedy of violent crime in the US is that whilst it is confined to inner city ghettoes and it predominantly affects the poor and deprived sections of society (who do not tend to vote) there is little incentive to do something about it.  Gun control is window dressing and gesture politics that does not tackle fundamental and underlying problems. You have also restricted yourself to a simple comparison between the UK and the US.  Why just the UK and the US?  To prove the hypothesis you present one might expect that if we were to examine other countries we would find the same thing.  Well Switzerland has a rate of firearms ownership that surpasses even that of the US.  Similarly New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Finland combine high rates of firearm ownership and an enviable low crime rate. One might also expect that where the incidence of firearms ownership has fallen crime would reduce and vice versa.  Since 1968 firearms act gun ownership in the UK has halved in real terms yet violent crime has increased dramatically. Similarly in the US although gun ownership has doubled their crime rate has fallen The argument you present is simplistic, naive and demonstrably false.  No matter how it is examined the difference in UK and US gun laws has little impact on the criminal use of firearms. Focussing simply on firearms is dangerous since it can distract attemtion from the main causes of crime.  The US homicide rate rose during the '80s because of the crack epidemic; it was a drugs problem that fuelled the homicide rate and not gun ownership.  We in Britain are beginning to witness the growth of a similar problem; the number of drug murders in London resulting from the crack trade has increased alarmingly. Smug complacency about our gun laws is not going to solve these problems. David Brundle Quemadmoeum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est. ( A sword is never a killer, it's a tool in the killer's hands. ) - Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (ca. 4 BC-65 AD).

The statistics did *not* attempt to address gun control .  By your subjectively inserting the gun control aspect you are providing a good example of my absence of truth argument above . I'm sorry, I though gun control was what led to the differences in availablity of guns between our nations. Are you refuting that at this time?

about conducting and/or bias. Do we know what that error is? No. Heaven forbid that you are doubting statistics , Scout.  Surely they indicate truth to you, or do only the ones opposing gun control has that attribute? Nope, I don't doubt the statistics, I doubt the manner in which they were collected reflects reality. I doubt this because _base_d on my research results such as these are normally the result of biased sampling and/or erronious methodology.