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?
3 Answers
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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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Content: According to the UNODC Homicides By Firearms, about 67% of homicides in the US are committed with a firearm vs about 7% (the number varies a bit) in the UK. Given this very, very large disparity in gun violence and ownership, one cannot draw conclusions about the effect of a similar handgun ban in the US. US homicide rates are 5x the UK, yet they have so many more guns. The US murder rate is the highest in the Western world at about 5 per 100,000 people, whereas the UK is at about 1 per 100,000, but the US has 16 times as many guns. If their argument is correct, if handgun ownership even at the minuscule 1997 UK level of 0.1% is supposed to be the most important negative factor in homicide rates (ie. more legal handguns means less homicides), then the US with 20-25% gun ownership should have a very low homicide rate. But this clearly is not true. Share
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edited Feb 19 '18 at 17:27
answered Feb 16 '18 at 22:01
Schwern
Schwern
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This appears to be more-or-less correct. The spike in 2003 comes from a policy of recording homicides when discovered and not when committed, and a prolific long-term serial killer was apprehended then. There are other notes of spikes.