The state by state breakdown may be using a different methodology than the international one.
Seemingly, five U.S. states have lower gun ownership rates than England and Wales, which I am skeptical of, although the relative rates of gun ownership should be solid. Utah, an ultra conservative red state in the "cowboy west", remarkably, has the third lowest gun ownership rate.
(Source)
Civilian gun ownership rates are surprisingly low in Switzerland, which is used when looking at gun control measures internationally as a country with widespread gun ownership, yet low crime.
Canada has gun ownership rates less than 30% of those of the U.S.
Russia has gun ownership rates just barely more than 10% of those of the U.S.
(Source)
In Europe, civilian gun ownership rates are highest in Scandinavia, especially rural Scandinavia, although it is below U.S. rates everywhere.
(Found on Facebook without a citation for its source, probably E.U. statistics prior to Brexit)
6 comments:
Re: Utah, I think if it's your social policy to make women scarce (polygamy), then you'd be wise to limit the general public's access to firearms.
Of course, the share of Mormons that are polygamous has been tiny for more than a century. So, that can't explain it. And, there are a lot of Mormon military veterans. But, Utah is quite urban. It isn't well suited for middle class families to hunt in. And tying men down with spouses and kids from a young age, and keeping them away from alcohol and coffee, keeping them from being isolated, keeping them employed, and putting them in communities full of people they trust probably reduces a perceived need for guns.
So I don't know about that data. I read the source page that shows the per-capita data as "self-reported". There's another table on that page that lists guns/state, with Utah at 118k. Utah population at 3.5m would make its ownership rate about 40, well into the top 50%
Surprised to see Cretan rates so low. Official, registered firearm numbers maybe? They're notorious for both gun ownership and gun crime. When I was there, every roadsign had been peppered, and gunshots were frequently audible.
@Joel I don't know how reliable the data source is or what their sample sizes or methodologies are. Self-reporting would be expected to be a lot more accurate with respect to firearms ownership rates than it would be with respect to defensive use of firearms (where it is far less accurate and a tiny floor of false answers can seriously screw up in estimating a low frequency event over a long period of time where memory can also be an issue). @Anonymous I suspect that registered gun ownership rates are the source there, so unregistered guns could be a factor. It could also be a matter of how often registered guns are used.
@Anonymous It could also be that while some places are displaying sub-national statistics, that Crete is being diluted into overall statistics for Greece.
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