An answer to why other counties seem safer while the are unarmed

Why are gun enthusiasts so unwilling to see that countries with stricter gun laws are much safer than the U.S.?

Guy Smith, Founder and lead researcher at the Gun Facts project

Answered 12h ago · Upvoted by Jon Davis, Marine Corps weapons instructor

I cannot answer for gun enthusiasts, because I’m not one. But I can say that the basic claim that “countries with stricter gun laws are much safer than the U.S.” is inaccurate.

(For people wanting to take a deeper dive, please visit Gun Facts | Gun Control and Crime in non-US Countries)

SAFETY AS A CONCEPT: “Safety” has a lot of moving parts. The basic question is “what is causing danger”. One quick example is that hot home invasions — where thugs break into an occupied home, bind (and often kill) the residents and then take their stuff — is nearly nonexistent in the U.S. and quite common elsewhere.

SAFETY FROM A SOURCE: There have been numerous nations where private guns have been banned and the government has committed mass murder on an industrial scale. Likewise, the type and location of categories of crime rise in many countries with strict gun control.

THE TYPE OF VIOLENCE: One of the sadder data point I have encountered (the table is on this page) is that women in countries with stricter gun control are, as a ratio of men to women, much more likely to be murdered. So “safety” is largely bound to the type of crime and the intended victim.

LOCALITY OF VIOLENCE: The U.S. has an outsized street gang problem (see Gangs and Guns | International Perspective | Gun Facts). Chicago’s gang penetration rate is 314 times higher than London’s. Much of U.S. violence is centered in major metropolitan areas with high gang participation rates, which is why the top 20 U.S. cities for homicides have only 7% of the population but 21% of the murders. As such, most Americans are very safe because they (a) don’t live in the dangerous areas within major cities and (b) by knowing where those areas are and avoid them. So, the notion that Americans are unsafe needs to factor out these crime hubs.

PREVENTON: What the questioner likely has not considered is the prevention aspect. There are over a dozen surveys concerning defensive gun use (DGUs) and the average of these surveys (ignoring the rather oddball outlier) is just under 2,000,000 defensive gun uses each year. One aspect of “safety” is preventing an unsafe activity, such as being robbed, raped, assaulted, etc. Please note these are 2M active DGUs — this does not even begin to take into account the deterrence effect guns have (the established fact that criminals will avoid attacking anyone they think might be armed).

So, back to the question: The questioner asks why “gun enthusiasts so unwilling to see …”

Are they “unwilling”? This data has been well known and well published for a very long time. Is it that “gun enthusiasts” are unwilling or simply better educated on the realities? Hence, I think the question is malformed via an inaccurate understanding of the situation.