Putting Gun Deaths in Context
Liberal voices in politics and media react to well-publicized murders by blaming firearms and arguing that gun control could reduce rates of violence. But they never put gun deaths in context, or acknowledge that murder rates have been going down, not up—cut in half over 30 years.
Moreover, much of this improvement occurred together with rising gun ownership: Gallup says 34 percent of households owned firearms in 1999 and 42 percent in 2014. Second, liberals conceal the fact that most gun deaths in America are actually suicides, not murders or accidents. And the US has a relatively low rate of overall suicide—we rank 50th in the world, with nations like Japan, Russia, South Korea and Belgium showing much higher suicide rates despite much tougher gun laws.
In other words, there’s no reason at all to assume that increasing fire-arms regulation would do anything to reduce tragic instances of Americans taking their own lives.