Taking into consideration all figures, no relationship can be established between the number of firearms and the total number of homicides and suicides: where there are more firearms, the total number of homicides and suicides is not consistently higher or lower, and vice versa. This is not surprising: 1) the numbers of homicides and suicides committed using a firearm only represent a part of the total number of homicides and suicides (20% and 9%, respectively), which renders a possible statistical effect on the total number of violent deaths difficult to detect within the larger picture; and 2) a lot of factors have an influence on the extent to which homicides and suicides take place in a country: the economic situation, mental healthcare, the law enforcement, government campaigns, gun laws, etc.
Source: 6,700 deaths by firearms in the EU each year | Flemish Peace Institute
This time is Europe. The Flemish Peace Institute published this study and from what I could gather, they checked from 2015 to 2012 where data was available. I need more time to read it with calm, but it is interesting to see that even in Europe the conclusions are the same as on this side of the pond.
It is also interesting to see who made the study:
In 2004, the Flemish Peace Institute was established as a paraparliamentary organisation within the Flemish Parliament. On the initiative of the members of the Sub-commission on Arms Trade, the decree establishing the Flemish Institute for Peace and Prevention of Violence was adopted with a large majority of votes by the plenary session of Parliament on 5 May 2004.
When I read the sentence in bold, my brain did an instant kick and the card file popped our friends at the Small Arms Survey which pretty much hates guns and specially the USA for having so many guns. Lo and behold after a quick search, I find out that they are related in their work. That makes this report even more outstanding and damaging to the Global Gun Control crusade.
One other thing I noticed is that the researchers were upset about a centralized gun registry at an European level. In 2014 there was an agreement to consolidate Gun Registry data in Brussels, but so far it has not been achieved and by the looks, it is dragging. This might be the main reason (besides countries like Finland giving them the middle digit) why the latest round of Gun Control has not advanced as the European version of the Usual Suspects wanted.
Lessons learned.
A centralized gun registry is very much in the pipeline and will probably be created with the current work on the Firerams Directive. Though one may ask what the point of a registry is when there are huge numbers of unregistered weapons.
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have so far been quite skeptical of the European Commission’s (EC) push for a large-scale gun ban.
The EC is actually quite pissed that peasants (us gun owners) dared write to their MEPs. Worse: MEPs listened and dared amend the EC’s proposal. This borders on lèse-majesté.
The EC and the GENVAL committee of the European Council (*) were pissed and came back with a vengeance. They reworded their gun ban based on appearance and gave pseudo-technical specs … which would ban shotguns, anything that can shoot more than 6 rounds without reloading and so on.
The Swedish minister was caught lying as he publicly said he wouldn’t accept additional restrictions on lawful gun owners… But the draft from the EU Council meeting credited Sweden with some of the BS.
There’s now a call to action to EU gun owners to write to MEPs, rapporteurs from various committees, and so on.
The EC (with France behind it) is also pushing hard to fast-track the changed as the EU presidency is currently held by The Netherlands. On July 1st Slovakia we’ll take the lead and they’re much less amenable to that BS.
But no matter what, we’ll lose some. It will be an “anti-gun compromise” where you give up something but don’t get anything at all in return.
(*) … err… European Council = council made of 28 ministers of the EU (minister of Justice, or Interior … depending on the subject). GENVAL = working group supposed to come up with proposals for legislation. Both unelected of course! Yeah I’m learning how the EU sausage is made too.
It’s because they examined guns vs homicides like good little researchers instead of guns vs “gun deaths” like they go over here.
[…] Study shows no relationship between gun ownership and suicide. […]
[…] Gun Free ZoneTaking into consideration all figures, no relationship can be established between the number of firearms and the total number of homicides and suicides: where there are more firearms, the total number of homicides and suicides is not consistently higher or lower, and vice versa.This should be simple common sense. People who want to commit suicide tend to find a way. Firearms are only one means of doing so. But it's nice to have evidence to counter the gun control argument.Hat Tip to Sebastian […]