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Harvard health policy expert Dr. David Hemenway routinely uses statistics like "250 people were shot each day in the US" and "Children aged 5–14 ... are more than 13x more likely than children in other high-income populous countries to be murdered with a gun" to support a myth. That myth is that America is one of the most violent nations on the planet because its citizens possess firearms. Domestically, this myth survives by focusing on U.S. homicide rates where guns are used 74% (FBI 2019) of the time, and it thrives internationally because the U.S. outranks most all other nations for the same reason. But is the rationale rational?

Domestically speaking, citing firearm homicides to prove that America is a violent nation fails for two primary reasons: 1) homicides are 1% of U.S. violent crime (FBI 2019) invalidating it as a metric for national violence; and 2) 78% (FBI 2019) of total violent crime is committed without a gun. This bears repeating: nearly 8 in 10 violent crimes in America don't involve a gun.

> Harvard health policy expert Dr. David Hemenway routinely uses statistics like "250 people were shot each day in the US" and "Children aged 5–14 ... are more than 13x more likely than children in other high-income populous countries to be murdered with a gun" to support a myth. That myth is that America is one of the most violent nations on the planet because its citizens possess firearms. Domestically, this myth survives by focusing on U.S. homicide rates where guns are used 74% (FBI 2019) of the time, and it thrives internationally because the U.S. outranks most all other nations for the same reason. But is the rationale rational? > Domestically speaking, citing firearm homicides to prove that America is a violent nation fails for two primary reasons: 1) homicides are 1% of U.S. violent crime (FBI 2019) invalidating it as a metric for national violence; and 2) 78% (FBI 2019) of total violent crime is committed without a gun. This bears repeating: nearly 8 in 10 violent crimes in America don't involve a gun.

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3

...and it thrives internationally because the U.S. outranks most all other nations for the same reason.

False. There was a twitter thread posted on this very thing a few months ago. Showing how countries like France and Sweden had higher gun homicide than the US, by full multiples.