Come the Revolution

The Americans are ready with the "second amendment remedy" come the revolution...

Here's a Reuters report showing that Americans take the burdens of citizenship seriously:

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.

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 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.

Meanwhile Canadians don't take the responsibilities of citizenship seriously. Instead, they are like those "quiche eating" Frenchmen, more in love with love than with a real man's toy: a gun...

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.

Sadly, Canadians aren't carrying their weight when it comes to using firearms to whack their fellow citizens. Here's some statistics from the RCMP:

Between 1989 and 1996, the average annual rate of firearm deaths in all of Canada is 4.5 per 100,000. The Northwest Territories (18.5 per 100,000) reported the highest rate while the Yukon (11.8 per 100,000) and New Brunswick (7.2 per 100,000) reported the second and third highest rate of firearm deaths overall, respectively.

From Wikipedia, we get the stirring statistics that show Americans are true red-blooded "real men" who know how to use their guns:

In metropolitan areas, the homicide rate in 2005 was 6.1 per 100,000 compared with 3.5 in non-metropolitan counties. In U.S. cities with populations greater than 250,000, the mean homicide rate was 12.1 per 100,000. Rates of gun-related homicides are greatest in southern and western states.

But...

The above is comparing apples to oranges. The Canadian statistics are for all firearms deaths which include hunting accidents, suicides, and crimes. The US statistics was only for crimes.

Here's a site with a better statistical comparison:

The United States leads the world's richest nations in gun deaths -- murders, suicides, and accidental deaths due to guns - according to a study published April 17, 1998 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The U.S. was first at 14.24 gun deaths per 100,000 people. Two other countries in the Americas came next. Brazil was second with 12.95, followed by Mexico with 12.69.

Japan had the lowest rate, at 0.05 gun deaths per 100,000 (1 per 2 million people). The police in Japan actively raid homes of those suspected of having weapons.

And the statistic for Canada?

Canada 4.31

Now... aren't you glad that the NRA's slogan is right? You know, the one that says "guns don't kill, people kill". I guess that just proves that in Japan, if you feel homocidal and a gun isn't at hand, you have to grab somebody, tuck them under your arm like an assault weapon, and charge at your target screaming for your "weapon" to bite the "target" to death. Maybe wielding a person as a weapon instead of a gun isn't as elegant as holding an AK-47 assault rifle. It is clumsy. So the Japanese only achieve a measly 0.05 gun deaths per 100,000.

But I'm betting that if you include Japanese wielding a person under their arm as a 'weapon' then the Japanese achieve a respectable 6.4 deaths per 100,000. Right? This has to be true because we know that "guns don't kill, people kill" and with a person tucked under your arm you are as "armed and dangerous" as they come. Ah... those clever Japanese. Such an inscrutable and ancient civilization. The Japanese know that a true weapon need not be a gun or a sword. It can be a 10 year old properly wielded in a tough situation. OK, I admit to a twisted sense of humour.