Tuscon incident and gun control discussion

[K. A. Pital]

I think we can all come up with plenty of hypothetical situation in which a knife might beat a gun and vice versa, but the fact of the matter is that gun wounds cause 60% of the victims to be hospitalized, knife wounds only do in 20% of the cases. So by and large, a knife is far less dangerous than a gun.

Question: if this data comes from hospitals and involves hospitalizations, how do the numbers change if you factor in the people who didn't live long enough to make it to the hospital in the first place? Is there a lethality factor that is being overlooked, or am I re-stating someone else's point?

My question included a simple query, so to say - how many knife assaults end up with dead people, as opposed to how many gun assaults. Hospitalization is also pretty good as far as statistics go, but finding the percentage of gun murders relative to gun assaults would be excellent for a start.

[Broomstick]

That's an interesting question. As I mentioned previously, I'd look to the CDC for that sort of statistic, I just don't have the time this morning to go digging for it.

[Thanas]

According to the cdc, when it comes to homicides:

All homicides

* Number of deaths: 18,361
* Deaths per 100,000 population: 6.1
* Cause of death rank: 15

Firearm homicides

* Number of deaths: 12,632
* Deaths per 100,000 population: 4.2

So again, firearms are used in two-thirds of homicides. Given that we already know the number of assault with knifes vs. gun ration, I think it can easily be stated that guns are also much more dangerous when it comes to homicides than knifes.

[K. A. Pital]

Oh, okay. Let me then do the math.

Firearm homicides = 12632. Assaults using firearms = 146773. Rate of death: ~8% for each given assault with a firearm.

Knife homicides < 5 729. Assaults using knives or cutting weapons - 138,720 (same source). Rate of death: <4%.

So the gun is at least twice as deadly as a knife. However, I just assumed all homicides other than with a gun were with a knife, which is obviously not so. The real rate is probably around 8% for gun assaults vs. gun murder, and around 1-2% for knife assaults versus knife homicide. Like I said, statistics give proof that the gun is more deadly. No matter what situations you can conjure, on the average it is an undeniable fact.

[aerius]

My question included a simple query, so to say - how many knife assaults end up with dead people, as opposed to how many gun assaults. Hospitalization is also pretty good as far as statistics go, but finding the percentage of gun murders relative to gun assaults would be excellent for a start.

The interesting part is this also depends on the country, guns are far more effective killing weapons in the US but this isn't always true. For example if we look at UK crime stats we find that knives can kill almost as effectively as guns, see table 3.08 and 3.10 in Chapter 3 of the British Crime Survey.

In 2007-2008 there were 3241 firearms related injuries, of which 53 were fatal. For knives it's 252 fatalities out of 18 940 injuries in 2008-2009. Yes, I know I'm not comparing the same years, but for whatever reason they don't have total knife injuries for 2007-08 and gun crimes somehow took a major drop in 2008-09.

[K. A. Pital]

I presume it is related to the small inventory of firearms available in the UK. When it is rather hard to acquire them, it is also hard to get proper skills in wielding firearms, which makes criminals less experienced with them. Because what is seen is a low, ~1,3% fatality rate for both guns and knives. Not an equally high, ~8% fatality rate for both.

Hence one can make the logical assumption that whereas low, 1-2% fatality rate for knives is natural, the rather low fatality rate of 1-2% for firearms is not natural for nations with unrestricted access. Unless one can prove otherwise, by showing a nation with unrestricted firearm access and still a reasonably close mortality rate from both knives and guns.

[aerius]

Unfortunately the only 3 countries where I know where to find all the stats are Canada, the US, and UK. In Canada we have more restrictions on firearms than the US but not nearly as much as the UK, our kill rate for guns & knives is 8.1% and 1.6% (table 3.5 from here), so guns kill about 5 times better up here. We have about 1/3 as many guns per capita as the US and about 5 times that of the UK.