How US gun culture compares with the world in five charts
Updated 12:06 PM ET, Thu February 15, 2018
(CNN)The United States. Home to liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the most mass shootings in the world.
America's
unique relationship to gun ownership -- enshrined as a right in its
constitution -- is also in the middle of an emotional and divisive
debate about the meaning of the Second Amendment of the United States
Constitution. Twenty-seven words that give its citizens the right to own
guns and also, in the views of many critics, helped usher in a culture
that sees more of its own people killed by fellow citizens armed with
guns than in any other high-income nation in the world.
Gun-related
deaths unfold in tragic circumstances across the country daily, with
more than 1,800 people killed by guns this year alone, according to Gun
Violence Archive, a not-for-profit group. But it is often mass shootings
that reignite the debate over gun control in the US and that shine the
spotlight on its position as a global outlier.
Here's a look at how America's gun culture compares to the rest of the world.
The
number of firearms available to American civilians is estimated at
around 310 million, according to a 2009 National Institute of Justice
(NIJ) report.
India is home to the second-largest civilian firearm stockpile, estimated at 46 million.
The
most updated estimates -- now more than a decade old -- place the
worldwide civilian gun cache at around 650 million. According to
Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey, the number of civilian guns has
most likely risen since 2007. Firearm production continues to
proliferate worldwide, outweighing the effects that gun destruction
might have.
According to the Small
Arms Survey, the exact number of civilian-owned firearms is impossible
to pinpoint because of a variety of factors including arms that go
unregistered, the illegal trade and global conflict.
Americans
own the most guns per person in the world, about four in 10 saying they
either own a gun or live in a home with guns, according to a 2017 Pew Center study. Forty-eight percent of Americans said they grew up in a house with guns.
According
to the survey, a majority (66%) of US gun owners own multiple firearms,
with nearly three-quarters of gun owners saying they couldn't imagine
not owning one.
Yemen, home to the world's second-largest gun-owning population per capita (and a country in the throes of a three-year-old civil conflict) trails significantly behind the US in terms of ownership.
When it comes to gun massacres, the US is an anomaly.
There are more public mass shootings in America than in any other country in the world.
On
Wednesday, Nikolas Cruz, 19, arrived at the halls of his former school
in Parkland, Florida. Armed with a rifle, he allegedly carried out a massacre that left 17 people dead.
In
October 2017, 64-year-old gunman Stephen Paddock fired into crowds
gathered at the Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas. Fifty-eight people
were killed and more than 500 people were injured. It was the deadliest
mass shooting in modern US history.
In
2016, an attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando left 49 people dead.
In 2012, Adam Lanza went on a shooting spree in Newtown, Connecticut,
killing his mother before murdering 26 students and staff at Sandy Hook
Elementary School; in 2007, 32 people were killed in the Virginia Tech
massacre.
Such
massacres have prompted debates about gun control, but they also
increase demand for guns. And regulations covering the sale of firearms
are looser now that they were a year ago.
In February 2017, US President Donald Trump signed a measure that scrapped an Obama-era regulation aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of some severely mentally ill people.
The
original rule was part of a series of moves taken by the Obama
administration to try and curb gun violence after other efforts failed
to advance in Congress.
Globally, restrictive gun laws have proven to make a difference in curbing massacres.
In Australia, for example, four mass shootings occurred between 1987 and 1996. After those incidents, public opinion turned against gun ownership and Parliament passed stricter gun laws. Australia hasn't had a mass shooting since.
The US has one of the highest rates of death by firearm in the developed world, according to World Health Organization data.
Our
calculations based on OECD data from 2010 show that Americans are 51
times more likely to be killed by gunfire than people in the United
Kingdom.
Most
American gun owners (two-thirds) say a major reason they own a gun is
for their personal protection, according to the Pew study. However, the
majority of America's firearm-related deaths are attributed to
self-harm.
Gun-related suicides are eight times higher in the US than in other high-income nations.
Globally, the US sees fewer gun-related murders than many of its southern neighbors.
According
to the Small Arms Survey, El Salvador is currently home to the most
gun-related murders in the world (excluding active war-zones) with guns
killing more than 90 people for every 100,000 of population.
From
2010-2015, Honduras saw the highest averages of gun-related homicides,
with guns killing 67 out of every 100,000 people there.
Venezuela
and El Salvador are close behind over the same five-year period, with
52 and 49 gun-related deaths, respectively, for every 100,000 of
population.
The US rate over that
period is 4.5 gun-related homicides per 100,000 people. US law
enforcement agencies are not required to report on gun killings by
police. Often, such incidents are recorded as "justifiable homicides,"
and may or may not be included in official homicide statistics,
according to the Small Arms Survey.
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