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I'll struggle to reply to all your points, but out of interest where would the US be on that chart?
Right? How the article writer excluded that baffles the hell out of me. I mean, he could have used colours for clarity. :-S
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Whilst I realise this would be totally impossible due to the vast amount of guns in circulation, do you believe if gun ownership levels (and available guns) in the US were the same as in the UK there would be substantially less innocent people killed each year?
I honestly don't know. I was under the impression that private citizens couldn't have guns there. I would wonder what the innocent killing rate is for people cleaning their guns and the dolt left it loaded and it kills someone or himself. There are hunting accidents of course, drive-by shootings where "background" people are killed, but of course that is done with what I would consider to be criminal possession. I suppose easily accidental deaths from mishandling, children or curious folks would certainly go down, but I'd suspect more killings are intentional with intentional, also criminal targets. Innocents get caught in the crossfire in some police shootings as well, but I don't know how common it is - likely not very.
I definitely see guns as a deterrent to crime in some areas. I really don't think a criminal is going to go into a neighborhood where it is known a percentage of homeowners have (or are suspected to have) a gun or guns for personal protection.
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The US is completely culturally different with regards to guns, if you removed all the guns, less people would die. Is this not a good thing?
This is often what the "gun control" (control, meaning removal) zealots would have folks believe, but the facts as cited in the article and from other sources do not bear this out. The criminal element will still have and continue to get guns, possibly even from the police who would have rounded them up en masse during "buyback programs". They don't all get destroyed due to corruption or greed. I actually don't so much mind criminals killing each other rather than innocent people. When it spills over into bystanders it is definitely a problem.
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Do you believe innocent deaths, school shootings etc are a necessary evil if you want to exercise your right to bear arms?
Necessary evil? I think that is a bit of a straw man.
Interesting timeline. Note the number that did not occur in the U.S.
This is for shootings only, I have not looked at school and other innocent deaths via other means. I find it interesting to note that in several cases the shooters were reported to have been ostracised and/or teased. Not an excuse for it at all, just a fact mentioned in several cases. Speaking of which, several students her in the U.S. have commited suicide because of FaceBook tauntings.
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even more so around people of a non-white ethnic background.
I see the media as tending toward sensationalising this because it sells. Interestingly, IIRC, most of our school shooters are almost exclusively white boys. Mass murderers tend to be white. White people be fucked up.
I looked up interesting statistics in the U.K.:
~ 4/10 youth killings involve knives.
~ 6 people a week are stabbed in Britain
~ There are 60 non fatal knife crimes daily, 22,000 in a year (2012)
~ In killings, 39.5% involved knives
This link supports my assertion that people kill via other means.
Take away guns, people kill with sharp instruments. Unfortunately, more fodder for the "people kill people" argument.
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