America's gun culture differs from the rest of the world

(CNN) -

Atlanta.

Orlando.

Las Vegas.

Newtown.

Parkland.

Saint Bernardine.

The pervasive gun violence in America has left few places unscathed over the decades.

Still, many Americans consider their right to bear arms, enshrined in the US Constitution, sacrosanct.

But critics of the Second Amendment say that right threatens another: the right to life.

The United States' relationship with gun ownership is unique, and its weapons culture is an outlier in the world.

• Days after a school shooting, Rep. Thomas Massie posts a family photo with guns and asks Santa Claus for ammunition for Christmas

As the number of gun-related deaths continues to rise each day, here's a look at gun culture in America compared to the rest of the world.

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The United States has a dismal record of mass shootings.

In this gallery we will tell you which were the most deadly.

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October 1, 2017 - Las Vegas shooting - A 64-year-old man opened fire at a country concert in the area known as The Strip, leaving 58 dead and almost 700 injured (Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

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June 12, 2016 - 49 people were killed in Orlando's Pulse bar when 29-year-old Omar Saddiqui Mateen opened fire at the nightclub.

More than 50 were injured.

(Credit: WKMG / CNN).

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April 16, 2007 - Virginia Tech Massacre: 32 people were killed in the attack by a 23-year-old student who committed suicide after opening fire on the university campus.

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December 14, 2012 - Sandy Hook School Massacre: 20-year-old Adam Lanza shoots and kills dozens of children, killing at least 20 between the ages of six and seven, six adults and then taking his own life.

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On November 5, 2017, a man walks into a small Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and shoots 25 people and an unborn baby.

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October 16, 1991 - Massacre at Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas: A 35-year-old man crashed his truck through the door of the Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas.

23 people died and the attacker committed suicide.

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On August 3, 2019, twenty people were killed when a man entered a Walmart in El Paso and began shooting.

22 people died.

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On February 14, 2018, an alumnus opens fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, opens fire.

There were 17 deaths.

(Credit: Joe Raedle / Getty Images)

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November 5, 2017 - At least 26 people were killed in a shooting at a Sutherland Springs, Texas Baptist church.

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August 3, 2019 - In El Paso, Texas, 22 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart store.

Authorities say they found an anti-immigrant document defending white nationalist and racist views, which they believe was written by suspect Patrick Crusius, 21.

It is investigated as internal terrorism.

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July 18, 1984 - San Ysidro, California McDonald's Massacre: A 41-year-old man killed 21 people at a local restaurant.

Police killed the attacker an hour after the shooting began.

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February 14, 2018 - Nikolas Cruz, 19, attacked students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing at least 17 adults and children.

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August 1, 1966 - Massacre at the University of Texas at Austin: 16 people were killed and at least 30 injured when a former military man opened fire from a university tower.

The police shot him down.

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December 2, 2015 - San Bernardino Massacre: A married couple opened fire at an employee meeting at a facility in San Bernardino, killing 14 people.

There are 120 firearms for every 100 Americans, according to the Swiss Small Arms Survey (SAS).

No other nation has more civilian weapons than people.

The Falkland Islands, a British territory in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean, claimed by Argentina and the subject of a war in 1982, are home to the second largest arsenal of civilian weapons per capita in the world.

Yet with an estimated 62 guns per 100 people, its gun ownership rate is nearly half that of the United States.

Yemen, a country mired in a seven-year conflict, has the third highest gun possession rate, with 53 guns per 100 people.

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• ANALYSIS |

  Support for gun control just hit its lowest point in nearly a decade

Although the exact number of civilian-owned firearms is difficult to calculate due to various factors such as unregistered weapons, illegal trade, and global conflict, SAS researchers estimate that Americans own 393 million of the 857 million guns. available civilians, which represents about 46% of the global civil arsenal.

About 44% of American adults live in a household with a gun, and about a third own one personally, according to an October 2020 Gallup poll.

Some nations have high gun ownership due to illegal stocks from past conflicts or lax property restrictions, but the US is one of only three countries in the world where gun ownership (or possession) is a constitutional right, according to Zachary Elkins, associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the Comparative Constitutions Project. However, the possession rate in the other two countries, Guatemala and Mexico, is almost one-tenth that of the United States.

The gun debate in those countries is less politicized, Elkins said.

Unlike the United States, the constitutions of Guatemala and Mexico facilitate regulation, and lawmakers are more comfortable restricting guns, especially because of concerns about organized crime, he said.

In Mexico, there is only one gun store in the entire country, and it is controlled by the military.

In the United States, the manufacture of firearms is on the rise, as more Americans are buying guns.

In 2018, gun manufacturers produced 9 million firearms in the country, more than double the number manufactured in 2008, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). in English). More recently, January 2021 marked the largest annual increase since 2013 in federal background check requests required to purchase a gun, an increase of nearly 60% since January 2020.

And in March 2021, the FBI reported nearly 4.7 million background checks, the most of any month since the agency began keeping records more than 20 years ago. Two million of those checks were for new gun purchases, making it the second-highest month on record for firearms sales, according to the National Shooting Sports Federation, the gun industry trade group for the United States. Fire that compares the FBI background check figures with actual sales data to determine its sales figures.

Nearly a third of US adults believe there would be less crime if more people had guns, according to a Pew survey from April 2021. However, multiple studies show that where people have easy access to firearms, gun-related deaths tend to be more frequent, including from suicide, homicide, and unintentional injuries.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the United States has more deaths from gun violence than in any other developed country per capita.

The rate in the United States is eight times that of Canada, which has the seventh highest gun ownership rate in the world;

22 times greater than that of the European Union and 23 times greater than that of Australia, according to 2019 data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

The firearm-related homicide rate in Washington, the highest of any state or district in the United States, is close to levels in Brazil, which ranks sixth in the world for firearm-related homicides. according to IHME figures.

Globally, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean suffer the highest rates of homicides with firearms, with El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala, Colombia and Honduras leading the way.

The activities of drug cartels and the presence of firearms originating from old conflicts are contributing factors, according to the 2018 Global Mortality From Firearms study, 1990-2016.

But gun violence in Latin America and the Caribbean is also exacerbated by guns coming from the United States.

Some 200,000 firearms from the United States cross the Mexican border each year, according to a February 2021 report from the US government's accountability office, citing the Mexican government.

• Mexico sued US manufacturers for the thousands of guns that are smuggled across the border each year.

  You can win?

In 2019, about 68% of firearms seized by forces in Mexico and sent to the ATF for identification were traced to the United States.

And about half of the weapons the ATF reviewed after being seized in Belize, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama were officially manufactured or imported into the United States.

Although personal safety tops the list of reasons why American gun owners say they own a firearm, 63% of firearm-related deaths in the United States are self-inflicted.

More than 23,000 Americans died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds in 2019. That number represents 44% of gun suicides globally and far outstrips suicide totals in any other country in the world.

With six suicides by firearm per 100,000 people, the suicide rate in the United States is, on average, seven times higher than in other developed nations.

Globally, the US rate is only lower than Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory with a relatively high gun possession (22 guns per 100 people).

Multiple studies have reported an association between gun ownership and gun-related suicides.

• ANALYSIS |

  The Rittenhouse case is the latest symbol of a country divided by guns, crime, protests and racism

One such study, conducted by researchers at Stanford University, revealed that men who possessed firearms were nearly eight times more likely to die from self-inflicted gunshot wounds than men who did not possess a weapon.

Women who possessed guns were 35 times more likely to die by firearm suicide than those who did not, according to the 2020 study, which surveyed 26 million California residents over a period of more than 11 years.

Regular mass shootings are a uniquely American phenomenon.

The United States is the only developed country in which mass shootings have occurred every year for the past 20 years, according to Jason R. Silva, associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at William Paterson University.

To compare the different countries, Silva uses a conservative definition of mass shooting: an event that leaves four or more people dead, excluding the shooter, and that excludes for-profit criminal activities, family homicides, and state-sponsored violence. .

Using this approach, 68 people were killed and 91 injured in eight public shootings in the United States in the course of 2019 alone.

A broader definition of mass shootings reveals an even higher number.

The Gun Violence Archive, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that CNN relies on to report on mass shootings, defines a mass shooting as an incident that leaves at least four people dead or injured, excluding the shooter. , and does not differentiate the victims based on the circumstances in which they were shot.

The Gun Violence Archive recorded 417 mass shootings in 2019. And this year there have been 641 incidents.

• The deadliest mass shootings in recent U.S. history

State weapons policies also seem to play a role.

A 2019 study published in the British Medical Journal found that US states with more lax gun laws and higher gun ownership had higher rates of mass shootings.

President Joe Biden's administration has renewed calls for gun reform after mass shootings in Colorado, South Carolina and Texas this year.

In March, the House of Representatives passed a law that would require private and unlicensed sellers, as well as all licensed sellers, to conduct federal background checks before all gun sales, and to ensure buyers are vetted. thoroughly before making the sale.

The bills are now stuck in the Senate, where, despite efforts by some Democrats to win bipartisan support, there has been no indication that they have the votes necessary to overcome the 60-vote filibuster.

Political blockades have paralyzed these efforts in the United States for decades.

And that partisan division is also reflected in the population, since 80% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats believe that the gun laws in the country are more or less correct or should be less strict, according to the Pew poll. of April.

Meanwhile, mass shootings continue to drive demand for more guns, experts say, and gun control activists argue that the time for reform should be long overdue.

Researchers from the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University in Saint Louis presented this argument to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2018, saying that the "failure" of the United States government to prevent and reduce violence related to Weapons through "reasonable and effective domestic measures has limited the ability of Americans to enjoy many fundamental freedoms and guarantees protected by international human rights law," including the right to life and bodily integrity.

UN bodies have also underscored these concerns, pointing to US "stand your ground" laws, which allow gun owners in at least 25 states to use lethal force in any situation in which they believe. who face an imminent threat of harm, without first making any effort to de-escalate the situation or withdraw. A 2019 report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that the law can encourage people to respond to situations with lethal force, rather than use it as a last resort.

In a 2020 essay published by the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank, gun control advocate Rukmani Bhatia said America's gun lobby has taken hold of a rights-based narrative. " to justify, dangerously, the right to carry, carry and use firearms ".

The "Stand your ground" legislation, he said, "distorts people's understanding of their rights to safety and, in the worst case, empowers them to take away another person's right to life."

Meanwhile, countries that have introduced laws to reduce gun-related deaths have made significant changes.

• What Australia and Britain did after the shootings (and what the US did not do)

A decade of gun violence, culminating in the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, prompted the Australian government to take action.

Less than two weeks after Australia's worst mass shooting, the federal government launched a new program banning rifles and shotguns and unifying the licenses and registrations of gun owners across the country.

In the next 10 years, firearm deaths in Australia fell by more than 50%.

A 2010 study found that the government's buyback program in 1997, which was part of the overall reform, led to an average 74% drop in firearm suicide rates over the next five years.

Other countries are also showing promising results after changing their gun laws.

In South Africa, firearms-related deaths nearly halved in a 10-year period following the entry into force of new gun legislation, the Firearms Control Act of 2000, in July 2004 The new laws made it much more difficult to obtain a firearm.

In New Zealand, gun laws were rapidly changed following the Christchurch mosque shooting in 2019. Just 24 hours after the attack, which killed 51 people, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced changes to the law.

The New Zealand parliament voted almost unanimously to change the country's gun laws less than a month later, banning all military-style semi-automatic weapons.

• Christchurch massacre puts New Zealand's lax gun control laws in the public eye

The UK tightened its gun laws and banned most private possession of handguns following a mass shooting in 1996, a move that saw gun deaths drop by nearly a quarter in a decade.

In August 2021, a licensed gun owner killed five people in Plymouth, England, the worst mass shooting since 2010.

Following the incident, police said they had returned the assailant's gun license just months after it was revoked, due to assault charges.

The UK government then asked police to review its licensing practices and said it would come up with further guidance to improve background procedures, including checking social media.

Many countries around the world have been able to deal with gun violence.

Yet despite the thousands of lives lost in America, only about half of American adults favor stricter gun laws, according to the recent Pew poll, and political reform remains stalled.

The deadly cycle of violence seems destined to continue.

How CNN did this report:

To find out the gun ownership rates, CNN relied on the Small Arms Survey (SAS), a project of the University Institute for International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

The project estimates civilian arms stocks using a combination of arms sales and registration figures, public surveys, expert estimates, and cross-country comparisons.

The gun ownership rate per 100 people is not the same as the proportion of people who own guns, as some may own multiple weapons and others none.

For firearm death rates and totals, CNN used the Global Burden of Disease database compiled by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. Firearm-related deaths include physical violence (homicide), self-harm (suicide), and unintentional injuries. Although rates are preferable for cross-country comparisons, for suicides we illustrate totals to highlight the difference between the US and other countries.

When comparing US statistics with those of other developed countries, we use a UN definition found in the United Nations' World Economic Situation and Outlook report, which is intended to "reflect the basic economic conditions of the US. countries "and does not strictly conform to the UN Statistics Division classification known as M49.

To calculate numbers for mass shootings, including incidents, fatalities, and injuries in the United States, CNN often relies on data from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).

In order to make international comparisons for this story, we also use data compiled by Jason R. Silva, Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at William Paterson University.

Silva's definition is stricter than that of CNN and the GVA because it excludes incidents related to criminal activity for profit, family homicide, and state-sponsored violence.

- Henrik Pettersson contributed to this report.

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GRAPHIC TEXTS

How firearm ownership compares globally

The United States is the only nation in the world where civilian-owned weapons outnumber people.

Select a country or territory to see how its gun ownership rate compares to the US.

Note: Gun ownership rates are estimates as of 2017. Some data has been combined to calculate rates for Cyprus, UK and Somalia.

Data not available for Christmas Island, Nauru and Vatican City.

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In 2019, the number of deaths in the United States from gun violence was approximately 4 per 100,000 people.

That's 18 times the average rate in other developed countries.

Multiple studies show that access to firearms contributes to higher rates of firearm-related homicides.

Gun-related homicide rate per 100,000 people

Note: Developed countries are defined based on the UN classification, which includes 36 countries.

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The United States was home to 4% of the world's population, but accounted for 44% of global firearm suicides in 2019.

The country recorded the highest number of gun-related suicides in the world each year from 1990 to 2019.

Gun suicides

Note: American Samoa, Antigua and Barbuda, Brunei, Cook Islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Sao Tome and Principe did not report firearm suicides in 2019.

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Half of the world's developed countries had at least one mass public shooting between 1998 and 2019. * But no other nation had more than eight incidents in 22 years, while the United States had more than 100, with nearly 2,000 people killed or injured. .

Number of mass shooting victims, per year

* Mass shootings are defined as incidents of firearm violence in public places within a 24-hour period resulting in four or more deaths, excluding the perpetrator, with victims chosen at random or at symbolic value.

They exclude incidents involving for-profit criminal activity, state-sponsored violence, and familicide.

† Dataset includes victims of the only three mass shootings involving organized terrorism that occurred in the developed world in the time period (May 2014 Belgian Jewish Museum shooting, Île-de-France attacks in January 2015 and Paris attacks in November 2015).

Note: Developed countries are defined according to the UN classification and those without mass shootings are not shown.

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Reduction in firearm-related deaths following the introduction of stricter laws in these countries

Shortly after a mass shooting in Tasmania, Australia banned rapid-fire rifles and shotguns and tightened licensing rules.

Over the next decade, firearm deaths fell 51%.

Note: Additional gun legislation may have been passed that is not displayed here.

The reported deaths in mass shootings exclude the perpetrator.