‘The United States does not have the highest firearm homicide rates of all countries, or of all developed countries’

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Among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, Mexico has the highest firearms homicide rate, with a rate about 3 times higher than the US rate. We should note that guns are banned for all civilians in Mexico. (…)

According to the very same sources quoted above, Israel and Switzerland have very high gun possession rates, and their firearm homicide rates are extremely low. Switzerland had a firearms homicide rate of 0.77 per 100,000 people in 2012 and Israel has a rate of just 0.09 per 100,000.

Most important in answering the Guns = Death claim is that the data does not exist. There are many countries with higher gun homicide rates than the United States that simply do not make their complete firearm murder/suicide rates available. (…)

Let’s narrow the focus. Most gun deaths are urban homicides – maybe four a week in Chicago. In fact, eleven American cities – Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit, Los Angeles, Jacksonville (Fla.), Miami, Orlando, Omaha, Atlanta, Aurora, IL, and Dallas, account for over 70% of all American gun homicides – with a weekly rate of nearly 30 shootings.

Narrowing further, according to the 2013 DOJ crime statistics, 53% of all US homicides are committed by black young men (15 to 30) in urban violence with handguns. Blacks are about 14% of US population; but young black men are about 13% of the total black population. So, 13 X 14 = 1.82, less than 2% of our population commits more than half of all American gun murders. Thus, a very small percent of the US population commits most gun homicides. There are no recorded comments about this circumstance from CNN or the New York Times however.