Good spotting on those statistics. They actually make me feel better about crime overall! If anybody wanted to be intellectually rigorous about reducing gun deaths, they would start with suicide. The number of people who kill themselves with guns is an order of magnitude bigger than all other gun deaths in the USA. ... which leads us into the healthcare and mental health quagmire, and we slowly sink into the tar pits of for-profit healthcare ...
Sure, but the other question is whether suicide rates are substrate-independent. There certainly is no correlation between gun ownership and suicide rates. Nor is there any connection between suicide rates and the method of health care delivery (e.g. government vs. private, or for-profit vs. non-profit): So the question becomes whether fewer people would kill themselves if they lacked access to firearms? It seems unlikely (save for accidental self-killings), although it probably takes more effort to kill oneself by other means. Edit: Looking over the data quickly, it looks like one of the strongest predictors is how cold the country is. That doesn't appear to hold on a state-by-state basis in the US: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/figures/m6345qsf.gifIf anybody wanted to be intellectually rigorous about reducing gun deaths, they would start with suicide. The number of people who kill themselves with guns is an order of magnitude bigger than all other gun deaths in the USA.
I just want to point out India, South Korea, China and Sri Lanka being in top 10. Could it be that those hotter countries at the bottom are also economically weaker and/or have less industry?Looking over the data quickly, it looks like one of the strongest predictors is how cold the country is.
True: especially for those of us with no real education in data mining and pattern recognition.