[Dialogue] US Most Armed Country with 90 Guns per 100 People

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 by Reuters
<http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-08
-28T175724Z_01_L28348938_RTRUKOC_0_US-WORLD-FIREARMS.xml>  

US Most Armed Country with 90 Guns per 100 People

by Laura MacInnis

GENEVA - The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the
most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.

 <http://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-content/photos/0828_06.jpg> U.S.
citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms,
according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate
Institute of International <http://hei.unige.ch/>  Studies.

About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year
are purchased in the United States, it said.

"There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the
United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people," it
said.

India had the world's second-largest civilian gun arsenal, with an estimated
46 million firearms outside law enforcement and the military, though this
represented just four guns per 100 people there. China, ranked third with 40
million privately held guns, had 3 firearms per 100 people.

Germany, France, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil and Russia were next in the
ranking of country's overall civilian gun arsenals.

On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry
behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland
with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38.

France, Canada, Sweden, Austria and Germany were next, each with about 30
guns per 100 people, while many poorer countries often associated with
violence ranked much lower. Nigeria, for instance, had just one gun per 100
people.

"Firearms are very unevenly distributed around the world. The image we have
of certain regions such as Africa or Latin America being awash with weapons
- these images are certainly misleading," Small Arms Survey director Keith
Krause said.

"Weapons ownership may be correlated with rising levels of wealth, and that
means we need to think about future demand in parts of the world where
economic growth is giving people larger disposable income," he told a Geneva
news conference.

The report, which relied on government data, surveys and media reports to
estimate the size of world arsenals, estimated there were 650 million
civilian firearms worldwide, and 225 million held by law enforcement and
military forces.

Five years ago, the Small Arms Survey had estimated there were a total of
just 640 million firearms globally.

"Civilian holdings of weapons worldwide are much larger than we previously
believed," Krause said, attributing the increase largely to better research
and more data on weapon distribution networks.

Only about 12 percent of civilian weapons are thought to be registered with
authorities.

C Reuters 2007

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org 

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/28/3470/

 

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