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Somebody has never been to Toronto huh? Toronto's metro population is 5.5 million. If it was a part of the United States it would be the 8th largest metro area in the country (inbetween DC and Miami). Their murder rate in 2011? 45.
That kind of throws the "rural" argument right out of the window.
But the murder rate is VERY easy to explain to anybody who's ever lived in the GTA and the US before (for the record I've lived in both). It's the CULTURE, not the gun ownership rate. They have all of the same movies (the ratings are actually less strict), same music, same TV shows, same sports, etc. But its the overall culture that is the reason why.
People see US #1 in gun ownership and #1 in murder rate out of the developed world-so they say "AH HA! That's it!"
But what they fail to realize is that the remaining rankings aren't in order.
If gun ownership = higher murder rate, than the #2 country in gun ownership would around #2 in murder rate. But that is NOT the case. People can do that research on their own-and they'll see.
I have done the research. The United States is #1 in gun ownership. Canada is #13. But the difference is, Canada has strict licensing and background checks and registration. they also limit how many guns you can have. Which means if you have Nancy Lanza prepping for the Zombie Apocolypse, someone is going to say so.
Number of guns per capita by country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
List of countries by firearm-related death rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The number two country in private gun ownership is Serbia. Their current gun death rate is 3.9/100,000 (compared to the US which is 10.3/100,000) I guess you can make an argument about culture over there, because they had outright ethnic cleansing for a while.
#3 is Yemen. That's a country that is undergoing civil war and might break up into two countries. Al Qaeda runs rampant. No figure on the gun death rate there.