Featured How Safe Do You Feel Today?

Lets compare apples to apples

Here is a link for the worlds murder rate:

Of about 200 countries:

Ireland is # 37 on the list with a rate of 1.2
The US is #109 on the list with a rate of 4.8

Within the US - DC has a rate of 13.9 - the highest of any State/Commonwealth/District. (total of 88 murders)
however there are 6 cities with a higher number of murders and a higher murder rate. (stats from 2012)

 

That's why I gave the rate - as opposed to raw numbers
Yes, you are correct that urban areas will have a higher rate- that is shown in the stats of my link.

And yes - a grain of salt is worth considering - as liars figure and figures never lie -
Bottom line

 

It is true that the US has a very high rate of gun violence. But if you look at all crimes of violence, not just gun violence, you will note that Great Britain has a violent crime rate roughly 5 time higher than the US.

Also, according to the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, if we remove the 4 cities with the strictest gun control laws, and, coincidentally (?) the highest incidence of gun violence, we note the rates for the US drop below those of most other industrialized countries.

The CDC report gives us a hint at what is going on in the US, “Overall crime rates have declined in the past decade, and violent crimes, including homicides specifically, have declined in the past five years.” Gun sales in the same period have increased dramatically. That leads us to only one logical conclusion: Guns save lives.

Possibly the most significant statement in the report refers to the defensive use of firearms by law-abiding citizens. In regards to this, the report states “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals.”

Perhaps more importantly, this report reveals that armed civilians are more likely to survive an attack than those who do not have a firearm: “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used“ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

C4, I am sorry, but I would rather live in a country with a "gun culture" and actually BE safe, than live in a country without a "gun culture" and only have a false sense of FEELING safe.

And, in the interest of full disclosure, I am part of that "gun culture." I never leave my home without my pistol concealed on my right hip. I even carry in church. (After all, this IS Texas!)