Gun Culture: 2 Views

In the aftermath of 4 mass shootings in a week in the US, two view points on the nature of the Gun Culture appeared to offer insights and into the prevalence of gun ownership in the US relative to the rest of the world by CNN and a provocative analysis of what sustains the American gun culture in Politico.

Three graphs provide telling impressions of US Gun Culture relative to the rest of the world:

CNN describe how pervasive the gun culture is for over 40% of the US population:
“Americans own the most guns per person in the world, about four in 10 saying they either own a gun or live in a home with guns, according to a 2017 Pew Center study. Forty-eight percent of Americans said they grew up in a house with guns. Seventy-two percent of Americans said they have shot a gun.

According to the survey, a majority (66 percent) of US gun owners own multiple firearms, with nearly three-quarters of gun owners saying they couldn’t imagine not owning one. Yemen, home to the world’s second-largest gun-owning population per capita (and a country in its fourth year of a bloody civil war and in the throes of a catastrophic humanitarian disaster) trails significantly behind the US in terms of ownership.”

But more telling is the consequence of so many guns. First there is evidence that gun controls do reduce the number of gun deaths as seen in this recent report. So gun control laws can reduce gun suicides and homicides as seen in this CNN Chart:

What makes this graphic so telling is that roughly comparable use of violent video games and mental health incidence among developed countries , means that countries which  deny easy access to guns see substantially lower rates of suicides  and  homicides. This refutes the Republican red-herring arguments that mental health problems and violent video games are the cause of high murder and suicide rates  in the US. rather a Gun Culture has taken root in the US which is the subject several reports .