Gun Laws, Culture, Justice & Crime In Foreign Countries (NRA-ILA) Do other countries all have more restrictive gun laws and lower violent crime rates than the U.S.? How do U.S. and other countries` crime trends compare? What societal factors affect crime rates?

Gun and Firearms Laws, Justice, Culture and Crime in Foreign Countries (Gunslot) We have been often asked if other countries have more revealing and restrictive gun laws leading to a lower violent crime rate than the United States of America? We therefore, have compiled the laws, justice, culture and crime rates in foreign countries in order to determine how the trends compare and potentially assess what societal factors affect crime rates.

Fables, Myths & Other Tall Tales about Gun Laws, Crime and Constitutional Rights (NRA-ILA)

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves." --John Dickinson & Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, 1775

According to historian Joyce Lee Malcolm, author of “Gun Control in England: The Tarnished Gold Standard, Journal on Firearms & Public Policy, 2004”: “[Between 1997 and 2003] crimes with [banned firearms]…more than doubled…Clearly, since the ban, criminals have not found it difficult to get guns and the balance has not shifted in the interest of public safety…In the four years from 1997 to 2001 the rate of violent crime more than doubled. The UK murder rate for 2002 was the highest for a century.”

In a January 2004 article, Susan Jones, the CNSNews.com Morning Editor, reported that “Chicago finished off the year with more murders than New York or Los Angeles,” noting that Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb said it was “remarkable that Chicago, New York and Los Angeles have some of the nation’s strictest gun laws, but even so, they still lead the nation when it comes to the number of homicides.” He compared the situation in Chicago to that in Detroit, where the once-high murder rate has dropped to its lowest level in years. “Two years ago,” Gottlieb noted, “Michigan reformed its concealed carry law, and today, thousands of law-abiding citizens in Michigan are legally armed.”

Gun owners in Australia were forced to surrender over 640,000 personal firearms, which were destroyed by their government, at a cost of more than $500 million dollars. After one year, Australia-wide, homicides were up 3.2 percent, assaults were up 8.6 percent, and Australia-wide, armed robberies were up 44 percent. (Note: while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not, and criminals still possess their guns!) While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed. And, there has been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly. CNSNews.com reported, “Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in “successfully ridding Australian society of guns.”