Title: united states - Did the UK homicide rate go up after handgun ownership was banned? - Skeptics Stack Exchange
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Did the UK homicide rate go up after handgun ownership was banned?
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The numbers are cherry-picked.
Very low UK homicide numbers are susceptible to how individual events are reported.
There was a slow upward trend through 2000.
The "spike" happened years after the ban.
US and UK gun crime and ownership are very, very different.
0.1% of the population turned in handguns.
~7% of UK homicides are with a gun, ~67% in the US.
US homicide rates are 5x the UK, yet they have so many more guns.
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Did the UK homicide rate go up after handgun ownership was banned? Ask Question
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During debates about gun control, I have seen gun advocates quote a statistic that the UK homicide rate increased in 1996 following a ban on handguns. Furthermore, the claim usually goes on to suggest that what bought violent crime back down to current, historically low, levels was the introduction of 20,000 police. The inference we are supposed to draw from this is that the answer to gun crime is more police, not less guns. Here's an example of the argument in action: The UK enacted its handgun ban in 1996. From 1990 until the ban was enacted, the homicide rate fluctuated between 10.9 and 13 homicides per million. After the ban was enacted, homicides trended up until they reached a peak of 18.0 in 2003. Since 2003, which incidentally was about the time the British government flooded the country with 20,000 more cops, the homicide rate has fallen to 11.1 in 2010.