Saturday, May 09, 2015

Guns and crime in New Zealand



There has been a recent release of statistics for homicide around the world.  There is a comprehensive report here.

In summary, homocides are most frequent in African and Hispanic countries.  Honduras (85.5 murders per 100,000 inhabitants), Venezuela (53.7) and the US Virgin Islands (46.9) have the highest murder rates per population in the world. The rate for the USA is 4.7.  But perhaps most interesting is New Zealand. It is very similar to the USA in many ways yet its homicide rate is 0.9 per 100,000, only a fifth of the US rate.

Why? The major reason, of course, is that NZ has few Africans, who are the major perpetrators of murder in the USA. There are however some other reasons:  A report from New Zealand itself says:

"Every year, "organised, stable" New Zealand ranks in the bottom one or two of international corruption tables, while the rule of law is respected.  And we have a lot of registered firearms - over a million in New Zealand - but we control them well, and guns are only used in about 25 per cent of murders here."

A million firearms in a population of 4 million means that New Zealand is well armed.  So it's clearly not the presence of guns that is dangerous.  It is the people and their attitude towards one-another. 

It is hard to legislate about that, however.  Promoting social harmony might help but the American Left constantly does the opposite -- constantly stirring up racial animosity with unending accusations that black disadvantage is caused by white prejudice.

SOURCE

3 comments:

Dean Weingarten said...

"Promoting social harmony might help but the American Left constantly does the opposite -- constantly stirring up racial animosity with unending accusations that black disadvantage is caused by white prejudice."

Exactly correct. The major difference in places with high homicide rates and low homicide rates is a respect for the justice system and the rule of law. Brazil and Honduras and the U.S. Virgin Islands all have low rates of firearm ownership, and very low respect for the justice system and the rule of law. Switzerland, Norway, and vast areas of the United States, have high rates of gun ownership, respect for the rule of law, and low homicide rates. Guns or the lack thereof has little to do with homicide rates, no matter what the academic quoted in the article says.

Wireless.Phil said...

11pm Saturday
Police: 5 People Killed in Shooting in Switzerland

Five people have been found dead after a shooting in a town in northern Switzerland, including the suspected gunman, police said Sunday.

Residents heard shots in the town of Wuerenlingen shortly after 11 p.m. Saturday, police said. Officers then found dead people lying outside and in a house in a residential area.

All the dead were adults. The dead include the suspected gunman, who is believed to have killed himself, Aargau canton (state) police chief Michael Leupold said at a news conference.

He said that the information investigators have suggests a domestic dispute was behind the shooting.

Wuerenlingen is a town of some 4,500 people northwest of Zurich, near the German border
abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/police-people-killed-shooting-switzerland-30935397

Anonymous said...

I correspond with a man from Australia, He told me that after the gun bans went into effect the crime rate went up 14%. he claims everybody is demanding their guns back.