U.S. easily outpacing Europe on gun deaths

The claim: “When you compare us here in this country to the European Union, we’re something like 23 times more likely for these incidents to occur here.” — Cliff Hayes Jr., Democratic delegate in the Virginia House.

Hayes made the statement the day after six people died in a mass shooting at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Va., saying the nation must discuss why it has so many “homicides and handgun killings.”

Politifact Rating: Mostly True. While there’s a slight error in Hayes’ language, his eye-popping gist about the preponderance of gun homicides in the United States, compared with the EU, holds up.

Discussion

Hayes was referring to a May report published by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of

Washington.

The IHME compared the 2019 murder rates from firearms — not just handguns, as Hayes said — in countries across the globe. Among the findings is that the firearms homicide rate in the U.S. was 22 times larger than in the EU as a whole. (The institute does not calculate worldwide homicides from handguns, and we were unable to find such figures).

The U.S. firearms homicide rate in 2019 was 4.11 people per 100,000, compared with 0.19 in

the 27-nation EU. Bulgaria had the EU’S highest firearms homicide rate: 0.56 per 100,000 — more than seven times lower than the U.S.

Romania had the EU’S lowest firearms homicide rate, at 0.06 per 100,000 — 65 times lower than the U.S. Romanians are restricted to owning handguns manufactured before 1945, but can only collect them, not carry them.

Here are the firearms homicide rates of several other EU nations and how they compare with the U.S., according to IHME:

• Italy: 0.35 per 100,000, 1/12th of the U.S.

• France: 0.32 per 100,000, 1/13th of the U.S.

• Sweden: 0.25 per 100,000, 1/16th of the U.S.

• Spain: 0.13 per 100,000, 1/32nd of the U.S.

While a number of statistical studies have focused on the high rate of firearms murders in the U.S. compared with other countries, less research has been devoted to the reasons why, according to William A. Pridemore, a criminal justice professor at the State University of New York at Albany.

An obvious reason, Pridemore and many other academics say, is the high availability of firearms in the U.S., where gun ownership is considered a constitutional right. “The U.S. is exceptional in per capita firearm ownership,” Pridemore said.

In 2017, there were 393.3 million firearms held by civilians in the U.S., according to a Small Arms Survey report by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. That broke down to roughly 1.2 guns per resident, the highest rate among 56 nations and territories surveyed. Yemen had the second-highest rate, at 0.53 guns per resident — less than half the rate of the U.S.

“No doubt we have other social factors that play a role in high gun homicide rates, but more guns and lax regulations are major contributors,” said Daniel Webster, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

The National Rifle Association and other pro-gun advocates contend that firearms protect innocent people from harm and that more firearms would make the U.S. safer.

We should note that Hayes’ statement also suggested that the overall homicide rate in the U.S. — from firearms and other methods — was about 23 times higher than the EU. The IMHE found that in 2019, 5.6 people per 100,000 were murdered in the U.S., compared with 0.9 in the EU. In other words, the overall homicide rate in the U.S. was 6.2 times higher than the EU.