DEATH AND INJURIES BY GUNS IN THE U.S.

Below are some excerpts from Fact Check on guns in the U.S. vs the rest of the world.  There is much more in the original article.  We have the most guns per hundred thousand population in the world by far.  I suspect some people own guns never opened and  still in their original wrapper or however you buy them.  It seems like people who own handguns say they own them for protection.  Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean "they" aren't out to get you.  I'm 84 year old and never was threatened by a gun and I have lived in some of what was billed tough neighborhoods.  I did almost walk in on two stick ups, however, but through luck didn't do it.

Dan Gross, head of the Brady Campaign used the number of daily gun murders as proof that “gun violence rates are not” going down. But the rate of gun murder is at its lowest point since at least 1981: 3.6 per 100,000 people in 2010. The high point was 7 in 1993. However, non-fatal gun injuries from assaults increased last year for the third straight year, and that rate is the highest since 2008.
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The United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world — by far. And it has the highest rate of homicides among advanced countries. And yet, gun crime has been declining in the U.S. Firearm murders are down, as is overall gun violence —  even as gun ownership increases.
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One thing that is clear: Guns are effective lethal weapons. “If there were no guns, the lethality of crimes would be less,” says Wellford. “You can’t have a drive-by knifing.”
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The 2011 and 2006 FBI crime reports show that firearm murders have declined each year since 2006. There were 10,177 such murders in 2006 and 8,583 in 2011 — a drop of 1,594 or nearly 16 percent in five years, even as the nation’s population continued to rise.
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The number of reported gun injuries, however, is on the rise.

There were 55,544 non-fatal injuries in 2011 resulting from assaults involving guns — up from 53,738 in 2010 and 44,466 in 2009, the CDC’s database shows. Since 2001, the rate of gun injuries is the second highest in 11 years when adjusted for population.
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The Department of Justice, which commissions the Census Bureau’s victimization surveys, reports that there were more than 1 million firearm incidents and more than 1.2 million firearm victims in 1993 and again in 1994. But by 2009, the number of firearm incidents (326,090) and firearm victims (352,810) dropped by more than two-thirds.
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By our count, there were 62 school shootings since the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999, that resulted in more than one student, teacher or school employee being killed or injured — a description that could fit “major school shooting.” There were another 68 where one student, teacher or school employee was killed (not counting suicides) or injured.
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The numbers in the chart above are from the Small Arms Survey. The project gives high and low estimates, along with an average. We used the average numbers. They show the U.S. with 88.8 guns for every 100 people. That’s No. 1 in the gun ownership rate in the world. Switzerland, with 45.7 guns per 100 people, is No. 3 in the world, with nearly half the rate of the U.S. Switzerland also requires military service. (Yemen is No. 2, with 54.8 guns per 100 people.) [Note: All Swiss males have to serve in the military and the guns are (were?) kept in the home.]
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The firearms homicide rate, and homicide rate overall, is also higher in the U.S. than other advanced countries, such as Canada, Australia and those in Europe, according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The U.S. gun homicide rate was 3.2 per every 100,000 people in 2010, according to UNODC figures. The UNODC measures “intentional homicide,” which is “an unlawful death purposefully inflicted on a person by another person.”

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/