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A Deeper Look Into the Spiking Gun Crime in the UK

Gun violence seems like a perpetual topic in the American news cycle, thanks to the actions of rogue mass shooters and terrorist sympathizers. The latest of these, and by far the one with the biggest death toll, happened in Las Vegas earlier this fall when a lone assailant used guns that fired like automatic weapons with the help of bump stocks.

With so much attention on gun crime in the US, there’s been less discussion on what’s going on in other parts of the world, such as the United Kingdom. The Office for National Statistics has recently produced a report that tracks all the crime through June 2017 in Wales and England that will open a lot of eyes — and shatter the narrative that America is somehow unique with respect to gun crime.

Weapons are considered more than just guns according to the Office for National Statistics, but also sharp instruments and knives. The stats uncovered that 26 percent more crimes were committed with these weapons.

In terms of firearms, the numbers were up as well. Through June 2017, 6,696 firearm crimes were committed. That’s 27 percent overall. Through June 2016, the number of crimes with firearms was only 5,269. That’s a big jump then from one year to another.

Breaking these stats down into specific firearms, crimes with unidentified guns were totaled at 933 or 47 percent (635 last year), crimes with shotguns were totaled at 652 or 53 percent (427 last year), crimes with BB guns were totaled at 1,721 or 18 percent (1,457 last year), and crimes with handguns were totaled at 2,791 or 25 percent (2,224 last year).

These numbers may sound harrowing, but they’re not the worst the UK has seen. That was back in 2007. In fact, when looking at 2017’s numbers and stacking them up with stats from a decade ago, gun violence has dropped by 31 percent.

So, what does all this mean? Obviously, the gun crime statistics in the UK have little if any relevance to the statistics in the US. That said, many who are advocating for gun control laws routinely cite the US as a hotbed for gun violence and the UK as some sort of sanctuary.

In reality, National Public Radio reports quite differently. While yes, gun crimes are still a regularly occurring phenomenon in the US, the country is not even close to the top of the list in terms of which countries have the most gun violence. NPR says the US is the 31st most violent.

To make this distinction, they reviewed gun crime data from 2016. For every 100,000 people in which a gun death occurred, the rating increased.

El Salvador was actually declared the most dangerous place in the world for deadly gun crimes with a rating of 40.29. Following El Salvador was Venezuela (34.77), Guatemala (26.81), Colombia (25.94), Honduras (20.56), Brazil, (19.34), the US Virgin Islands (18.63), Jamaica, (16.45), the Bahamas (14.11), and Trinidad and Tobago (13.03).

The US’s rating according to NPR was only 3.85. This proves that gun violence is everywhere, and there are other countries, such as the UK, with an increasing streak of violence as well.

~ Firearm Daily


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