March 12, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Reader Myria does some fact
Reader Myria does some fact checking inspired by this post on the column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, who apparently didn't think to do any of his own; to wit, he used Japan as an example in support of this statement:
there's abundant evidence that having more handguns also means more gun thefts, more armed robbery, more suicide and more murder.
Myria got the data:
FWIW, out of curiosity I did some quick checking and what I had heard was wrong. The Japanese suicide rate alone exceeds the US Murder/Nonnegligent Manslaughter/Suicide rate by 1.2/100,000. United States 1998 Suicide: 11.3/100,000 1998 Murder/Nonnegligent Manslaughter: 6.3/100,000 Total: 17.6/100,000 Source - WHO FBIJapan
1997 Suicide: 18.8/100,000
1997 Murder: 1/100,000 (roughly - Pop: 126,166 thousand, Murders: 1,282)
Total: 19.8/100,000
Source -
WHO
Japan Crime
Japanese Census
Years chosen based on last available WHO suicide data.
Somehow I doubt anyone is going to make the argument that gun ownership reduces suicide rates, however. But given that the Japanese Suicide rate alone apparently exceeds the US violent death rate in total, it
would seem to me that the Japanese make a rather poor example for the anti-gun
types to point to.
Is it too much to hope that Mr. Kristof will stumble in here and find the evidence of his silliness? Undoubtedly. But a girl can hope, can't she?
Posted by Jane Galt at March 12, 2002 10:35 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links