I'd appreciate any help with this.

Quoting statistics is a dangerous exercise - too many variables.

Plus, it's irrelevant. I see by your signature that you are a libertarian. Why not just make the (correct) libertarian argument? You know the one: "It's the freedom, stupid."

The GOA has a lot of good stats, including the ones you want

http://www.gunowners.org/fs0101.htm

This is their fact sheet, it's the only resource you need.

Here is a WorldNetDaily article that has some statistical links imbedded!

Lots of good info!

Very high crimes against property in the UK - house burglary, car thefts etc. But numbers of deaths by handguns a mere fraction of the US. Will try and check some stats for you.

Thanks all.

In an interview with John Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime," Mr. Lott says it is difficult to compare countries.

Q: What about other countries? It's often argued that Britain, for instance, has a lower violent crime rate than the USA because guns are much harder to obtain and own.

A: The data analyzed in this book is from the USA. Many countries, such as Switzerland, New Zealand, Finland, and Israel have high gun-ownership rates and low crime rates, while other countries have low gun ownership rates and either low or high crime rates. It is difficult to obtain comparable data on crime rates both over time and across countries, and to control for all the other differences across the legal systems and cultures across countries. Even the cross country polling data on gun ownership is difficult to assess, because ownership is underreported in countries where gun ownership is illegal and the same polls are never used across countries.

TO xm177e2

This is an excellent site for facts as well.

http://www.concealcarry.org/gunfacts3_0.pdf

chicagofarmer

Very high crimes against property in the UK - house burglary, car thefts etc. But numbers of deaths by handguns a mere fraction of the US.

I wonder how many deaths by handguns in the US were criminals shot in the act of committing a crime.

About 2/3rds

Statistics are totally irrelevant. I beleive it was Stalin who commented that "there are lies and then there are statistics". Liberals love statistics because they can be manipulated any way to get a point accross and impress the more ignorant.

The simple fact is this. There are as many countries that have high gun ownership and low crime rates as the obverse. If guns were a factor in high crimes and homicides Switzerland would have the highest crime rate in the world. Why doesn't it? The answer is that guns are inanimate objects they do not cause crime, criminals do. The facts are that crimes are caused by human beings not inanimate objects.

Automobiles are involved in far more fatalities than are guns, yet nobody argues that they should be banned. The reason is that in that case people aknowledge that car accidents are caused by people not by cars.

Crime is a social phenomenon and is not determined by whether there are guns available to honest citizens or not. Most of the cause of high crime statistics in the US are basically due to extremely high crime rates in the poorer neighborhood where minorities reside and in almost all cases do not involve "legaly bought or registered firearms". Therefore gun registration would have an insignificant impact on the matter. Also if you subtract the high crime rates from these areas from national statistics you will find that most of the crime rates in the US are comparable to that of European countries with tough gun laws. Therefore, the absence firearms and gun control has nothing to do with crime. Crime is a social phenomenon committed by human beings.

The there is the matter of Liberty. The reason the second amendment exists as well as the rest of the bill of rights is that the founders considered these to be inalienable rights. That is, rights endowed to us by our creator. Without the bill of rights the constitution would not have been ratified and the founders wanted to make clear that the state could not in any way limit or infringe on those rights. As it states in the declaration of independence " among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness'. You cannot have neither Life nor Liberty nor "happiness, ie property" unless you also had the right and ability to defend these things. The founders understood this and therefore the second amendment.

You don't need statistics to argue with a Liberal, simply patience and common sense. They think from an emotional perspective and all of the solutions to the world's ills arise from that. You simply have to focus on the fact that all of the world's ills are caused by human beings, not by inanimate objects.

There is an article by Paul Fallavollita on the site www.etherzone.com that could possibly tie in with it. This article is on the second page.

Very well stated.

"Quoting statistics is a dangerous exercise - too many variables."

Like the fact that most Brit areas have no nonwhites - while relatively few Americans live in areas without blacks, and the fact (Justice Dept.) that blacks commit homicide at EIGHT times the rate that European-Americans do (overwhelmingly against each other) skews the comparison radically.

Scandals of antigun politicians - from coast to coast

Thank your for the link.

Here is seven myths.]]\

http://www.frontpagemag.com/guestcolumnists/lovelace11-21-01.htm

You are going to have a problem. The UK only reports statistics based on convictions. The figures are further deflated by convenient reporting. If a burglar hits 10 houses before being caught and convicted, the report only covers the conviction. The other 9 instances of criminal activity are swept under the rug to make the statistical reports look more favorable.

The US has some similar fudging. Crimes committed by hispanics are categorized as being committed by "whites" to "even" the odds. Be very careful about using statistical "evidence" to support a position. The methods and policies used to create the numbers are usually biased to support the opinion of the collecting entity.

THIS THREAD has some interesting comparative crime data for U.S., U.K., Australia and other countries. My post #23 in that thread compares gun policy and crime rates based on the data posted at the top:

Risk of being a victim in 1999:	Overall Crime	Contact Crime
Australia - guns confiscated	40%	4.1%
England & Wales - handguns outlawed	26%	3.6%
Scotland - handguns outlawed	23%	3.4%
Canada - handguns outlawed	24%	3.4%
USA	21%	1.9%