May 17, 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






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