Talk:Estimated number of civilian guns per capita by country/Archive 1

Archive 1

Presentation of averages from Small Arms Survey source?

The 2007 survey used as the main source [[1]] looks reasonable but provides 'high estimate' and 'low estimate' numbers, not a single number per country. These were averaged when brought here -- but I've found at least 1 averaging error, for Finland. I have not checked all the numbers. If that source is to be primary, table should get the same 'high' and 'low' numbers as the source, and displaying an average may not be appropriate at all. Gojomo (talk) 21:13, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Chart is inaccurate

Please use this section for comments towards the data used in the article and NOT the "Map removed" section. Bsrboy (talk) 16:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

See http://timlambert.org/1993/09/international-00001/

The info at the above link is dated, but it shows that the current chart is wrong. Link to the current version of the chart: [2]

Quote from the TimLambert.org page:

Look in “Experiences of Crime across the World” van Dijk, Mayhew and Killias (1991). This reports the result of an international victimisation survey in the US, Canada, Australia and 11 European countries. Handguns were present in 29% of US households. Switzerland was second with 14% (about half of these were identified as army guns). The US also had the highest percentage of households with any sort of gun.

I think the current chart is dividing the population of the USA by the number of guns in the USA. This is NOT the same as the percentage of US households with a gun present. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:51, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh my god. Could this be more innacurate?? Yeah right, .." Finland: 55 guns per 100 residents", .."Philippines: 4.7 guns per 100 residents".. Have any of you realized what's wrong with this table? Places like Nigeria and Philippines have considerably lower number of weapons and European countries like France, Austria and Finland are high up in the list.. If any of you have been to Nigeria or the Philippines, you will soon realize that this table is a load of bollocks. Only 4.7 firearms for the Philippines!? Please one of you, go check for yourself by visiting my home country -the Philippines- and you'll see that up to a dozen private guards armed with M16s and Shotguns on duty outside a bank is a common sight over there. The country is awashed with guns...And Nigeria with 1 gun per 100? I seriously doubt that figure.. Si lapu lapu (talk) 00:27, 18 May 2008 (UTC)Si LapuLapu

Misnamed Article

Since this is a table of the number of guns owned divided by population, and does not take ownership into consideration, it is inaccurate to call it a "List of countries by gun ownership". Mal7798 (talk) 03:53, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Good point. What should the article be renamed to? List of countries by gun density? I don't know. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:05, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

List of countries by gun per capita. bsrboy (talk) 17:34, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I have to object to this article name as well. "Per capita" is generally understood to mean 'per person', when in fact the statistics provided here are 'per 100 persons'. Playing around with the definition of 'per capita' can be misleading. --TinMoth Dec 29, 2014

Yes, I agree. Though grammatically it should be "List of countries by guns per capita". --Timeshifter (talk) 09:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Norway

This list fails to mention Norway which seems a major omission given that the Gun Politics article asserts that Norway has a high gun-ownership rate. The cited source shows Norway's gun-ownership on several graphs and yet I couldn't find a number. --Eugenwpg (talk) 19:24, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Refactored table

Changed the table to allow qualifying comments that highlight subtle mistakes/overlooked items in data. ► RATEL ◄ 14:44, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

New Discussion

A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries. Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 12:18, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Templates for deletion nomination of Template:Lists of countries

Template:Lists of countries has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Cybercobra (talk) 07:09, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Comparability of numbers

Most of the numbers in the list are indeed from the Small Arms Survey. I'm not sure whether it is an impartial and reliable source, but it's safe to say it's an estimate - or two per country, actually.

I think it's problematic that the number for Finland is a "corrected" one: it's based on the Finnish ministry of interiors own estimate, that there are only "tens of thousands" of non-registered firearms among civilians in Finland, in addition to the 1,62 million registered ones. Now this may be true or false, but I think it's safe to say that this is an low estimate, as it's lower than the Small Arms Surveys low estimate, and it really couldn't get much lower.

Now when you give an "average" number for some countries, but a "low" (even lower than the low estimate of the survey) for others, the numbers are not comparable. This is important, because many readers will look at this list to see how high or low on the list an individual country is and how it performs against other countries.

I suggest that either we use only numbers from this particular survey, or we have several columns like "Survey Low", "Survey High" and "official data" or something like this. -- Piisamson (talk) 22:45, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Reliability of information

I've looked through this article as well as the supporting information. The information is a reprint of only five sources: #1 is no longer a viable link, #4 is an excerpt from #3 and as such their use as references (and content derived from them) should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.140.139.254 (talk) 16:27, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Violent Crime

It would be interesting to have statistics for violent crime (or just murder) and or death due to guns in the same table. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.251.226.41 (talk) 05:45, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

It is impossible to get reliable statistics on that on a worldwide scale. Perhaps the table should be restricted to the western world (say, OECD states) where statistics of comparable quality exist. For these countries, a comparison of gun ownership, gun-assisted suicide rates and criminal gun use would be rather interesting. --dab (𒁳) 10:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

"gun ownership rate"

The term "gun ownership rate" cannot mean "guns per capita" as it is used here. I would naively assume it meant "the proportion of people who own at least one gun". In fact, after searching on the term, I see it commonly means "the proportion of households that own at least one gun". E.g. http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvintl.html http://www.allcountries.org/gun_ownership_rates.html

The Small Arms Survey that the numbers come from doesn't seem to give a short term for their gun population ratios. At least I didn't find it. But in any case, the term "gun ownership rate" is wrong and misleading for this data. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.118.94.151 (talk) 19:59, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

true. But it is difficult enough to find data comparing countries. Even the Small Arms Survey data is probably completely unreliable and heterogenous between countries. I would love to have better data on this, but so far we are stuck with such references as we have. --dab (𒁳) 09:40, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Map removed

See: Image:World map of countries by number of guns per residents.png

This map is NOT representative of the percentage of people in each nation that possess guns. Please see also the image talk page:

• commons:Image talk:World map of countries by number of guns per residents.png

The map numbers seem to be based on dividing the total amount of guns in a nation by the total population of that nation. Since many people possess more than one gun, and many others do not possess a single gun, then this map is not a representation of the percentage of people who possess guns in each nation.

Also, there is no legend for the map colors. The darkest color is used for the United States, Yemen, and Finland. Yet these 3 nations have widely differing numbers in the chart. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:26, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

There are only 11 shades of red on Inkscape and since many wikipedians prefer SVGs I used Inkscape. I am not going to get involved in a dispute about the statistics used in this article. I put the map onto the article to represent the data on the article, if you can think of preferred ways in which I should represent the data in the map then please let me know. Hopefully we can come to a decision which we all agree on and put back a map. Bsrboy (talk) 16:18, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

"I put the map onto the article to represent the data on the article" - the article is primarily a table. The data in that table is not at all reflected in the colorization of this map. They're unrelated to the point of being downright misleading, the article would be more reflective of the data contained without the map included at all IMO. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ae35unit (talk • contribs) 00:02, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Disputed

This talk page contains a number of comments where serious concerns about the accuracy of the article have been raised and not addressed. Because of this, I have tagged the article as being disputed. If you wish the tag to be removed, please address the concerns, either by editing the article with better sources or by discussion the concerns on the talk page. --76.245.60.204 (talk) 13:32, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

This article is wrongly named

It's been pointed out before but nothing seems to have been done about it. It is ridiculous to imply (for example) that the fact that there are 89% as many guns as people in the USA means that 89% of people own a gun. That is what the phrase "rate of ownership" means. In reality lots of people have several guns and the rate of gun ownership is probably less than 40%. This page needs to be given an accurate title that is not misleading, like Number of guns per capita by country. --Lo2u ^{(T • C)} 12:39, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

That's not the implication at all. It doesn't say anywhere in the article that 89% of people own a gun. It simply gives the number of guns per capita by nation. The article is indeed accurately named. You take the total number of guns in the US and you divide that by the total population. That's it. Nothing complicated. If we did it by % households that have guns or % of people who own a gun, that would be a different figure with a different title. That would be a different page, which you are welcome to initiate. This is a simple calculation. Just because you don't like the results doesn't mean it's wrong.Jasonnewyork (talk) 17:10, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Jasonnewyork, what makes you think I have a problem with the results? Please look at the history of articles before commenting on old discussions about article names. My comments refer to a time BEFORE I renamed it. The current name is "Number of guns per capita by country", which as you say is accurate. On 5 February the name was "List of countries by gun ownership", which was certainly not. --Lo2u ^{(T • C)} 08:54, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Check data before editing...

The table in the article clearly shows that this is data for 2007. There are multiple edits that were made with references to surveys completed on other years (see Finland and Serbia). Please check your data and ensure that you are completing edits on the correct year. The data in this article will be entirely invalid if different years are used for different countries. See http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/A-Yearbook/2007/en/Small-Arms-Survey-2007-Chapter-02-annexe-4-EN.pdf for a complete survey done in 2007. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Das1055 (talk • contribs) 00:54, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Map colours

Just a note for transparency: please note that the previous version of the map File:World map of civilian gun ownership.svg showing gun ownership in red has been replaced following a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Conservatism#Gun owner map per the argument that red would be POV while blue is supposedly NPOV. I personally think that red is a far better colour as is more suggestive for representing firearms (as explained in more detail here), but will leave to others to decide. --ELEKHH^T 00:56, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Greenland

When reading about suicide and crime in Greenland, it is often mentioned that just about everyone there owns a gun. Would anyone happen to have the exact statistics on this so that it can be added to the list?--76.106.245.93 (talk) 00:26, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Afghanistan <5 in chart?

Afghanistan <5 in chart? are you kidding me? :D 39.50.214.72 (talk) 12:34, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

If the position is wrong, add appropriate references and correct it yourself. If you are making a comment on why Afghanistan is or isn't in the wrong place, then that is beyond the scope of this talk page. — Safety Cap (talk) 16:56, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

No Finland?

Why is there no word about Finland? Why is it not in the table? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.115.19.66 (talk) 15:25, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Ireland

The Irish figure given by the Small Arms Survey 2007 of 8.6 is wildly inaccurate for three reasons: 1) It uses the total number of firarms legally held in Ireland in 2005 2) It uses the population of Ireland in 2005 3) It includes an estimate of 150,000 illegally held firearms before calculating its number of firearms held by civilians per capita.

(1) and (2) are clearly a decade out of date and the numbers involved have both changed and are known accurately today; (3) is just wildly invalid because nobody has any idea what the actual number of illegally held firearms is and they never have. To quote the Minister for Justice some years ago in the Dail: "The very fact that [illegally held] firearms are held illegally precludes statistics being available of the number of such firearms”, and that view has been echoed in the last fortnight by the current Minister for Justice.

Chief Superintendent Fergus Healy of the Garda Firearms Policy Unit stated to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice in December 2014 that the latest information is that there are 200,436 licenced firearms in Ireland; and the Central Statistics Office’s most recent population estimate from April 2014 is 4,609,600. This puts our firearms ownership rate at 4.34 firearms per 100 people, just over half the figure the Small Arms Survey lists.

For that reason I've changed the figure to 4.3 and corrected Ireland's subsequent location in the table.

MarkDennehy (talk) 14:44, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Canada pistols is incorrect

The comment that pistols may only be used at target ranges is incorrect. The RCMP makes special cases out of trappers, hunters, or people who work for a living in Nature.

http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/fs-fd/wild-sauvage-eng.htm

"To be authorized to carry a handgun or restricted long gun for a lawful occupational purpose, such as trapping or working in a wilderness area, an individual must be a Canadian resident, have a firearms licence with restricted privileges and obtain an Authorization to Carry (ATC) permit from the CFP. "

The idea is that if you are a trapper, or an oil worker and an animal jumps on you, then have a rifle will be a bit tedious and heavy to carry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.2.106.238 (talk) 08:20, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Only private small arms?

Does this article only refer to small arms possessed by private citizens (i.e. not by police, military, etc.)? If so, it might be better to explicitly state it in the article, and maybe even move it to the title "List of countries by private gun ownership". Otherwise the numbers would be skewed for countries with large militaries but little or no private gun ownership. Also, for countries like Switzerland where citizens are issued military weapons for storage at home, how should those weapons be classified? They aren't privately owned, but they are possessed by private citizens.--Witan (talk) 22:45, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Based on the "Small Arms Survey", it seems like this indeed does only refer to civilian firearms.--Witan (talk) 22:55, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Switzerland is VERY MISLEADING. These are not private citizens, these are militias, part of the armed service. These weapons were paid for by the government, issued by the government, trained in use by the government, and ready to be mustered on call by the government. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.51.206.40 (talk) 19:32, 08 May 2013 (UTC)

They are private citizens, they take home their weapons and can convert them into semis. They can buy their own ammunition. So the weapons are in the hands of private citizens. It is misleading to suggest that the private citizen does not have access to these weapons, stored in their own home, or cannot get ammunition, legally, for these weapons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.44.149.144 (talk) 06:09, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

The previous poster expresses his fundamental inability to understand the issue here. His wrong claims, and especially mixing up several different issues at the same time, have been proved wrong now for several times. See Talk:Number of guns per capita by country#Switzerland -- ZH8000 (talk) 14:11, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Switzerland Part II

Hello everyone.

This document needs to be revised. The source provided for Switzerland doesn't mention any army guns as being part of the civilian gun ownership of Switzerland, the definition alone means that only civilian owned guns would be part of the statistic and not military weapons which still belong to the army.

According to Small Arms Survey from 2007, the 45.7 rate of guns in Switzerland is purely about civilian guns.

Could anyone remove the entry about the civilian gun ownership of Switzerland including army guns when this is not said in the source?

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zorthianator (talk • contribs) 07:23, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Switzerland Part III

The Switzerland section is contradictory not only with itself but with the very article the note references. Although the commenter above is correct that a weapon owned by the government is not a "Privately Owned" weapon, I am rather sure that the point of this article is better served and is intended to show the amount of weapons privately "Held" in each country. This is not an article about the financial control of said arms but the possession. Furthermore, there is another discrepancy between the data in this article and the data in the article referenced in the swiss note. This article states that they have no ammunition any more and the article it references states that they are no longer allowed to have any ammunition. The reference article for that very statement refutes that by clearly stating that they are allowed to have ammunition they purchase themselves. I don't have source material to support either point but they should not be contradictory. It also, makes no sense that the militia would be issued a weapon and not ammunition. Unless this whole thing only remains as a boondoggle for SigArms, the provider of said rifles. --Surgicus (talk) 16:25, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

New map?

There are lots of criticisms here of the maps that are/have been on this page. I made a map of the table, which while it shares all the issues of the table's data, is at least somewhat better. It's made with CartoDB, and thus may not meet Wikipedia standards, but it's at least a start towards a more accurate map. Do with it what you will. Alistaire47 (talk) 22:32, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Lithuania

Statistics from smallarmssurvey.org assumes that population of Lithuania is 19mln, when in fact it's more like 3mln. Worazas (talk) 09:12, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Switzerland

Please see also Talk:Gun_politics_in_Switzerland#.22Freely.22_available_ammunition and Talk:Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation#Ammunition_aquisition_of_Swiss_militia_guns.

Again:

• Firstly, the referenced Swiss figure include military guns. This is opposite to what the text in this article says: The figures do also not directly represent the number of guns available, since in some countries, such as Israel, a significant number of civilians have government-owned military guns in their possession, which would not be included in the figures below.
• Secondly, as the obove mentioned talks already discussed, you cannot buy private ammunition for your military gun as long as you are still in military service (normally age 20-34).
• Thirdly, most people do not convert their military gun into a private one after service, actually only a very tiny minority. Then you need to apply for it, i.e. you need a licence for it. This was different until, let's say, ~50 years ago.
• Forth, if one aquires his previous militia gun and if one is allowed to do so (licensed), it is not a military gun anymore, and therefore not counted as such!!
• Fifth, the referenced value of 25 is very well documented and stated by the probably most informed person about this issue.

Therefore there is no ground at all to delete this information again. Thx. -- ZH8000 (talk) 12:48, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Not true. The military rifle currently issued is chambered for 5.56mmx45/.223 Remington. Ammunition for it is sold in every single gun shop in Switzerland, and is readily available online. There is no prohibition on members of the army reserve possessing privately-purchased ammunition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.28.248.84 (talk) 19:35, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

{{Undue}} tag

@ZH8000: You added two cleanup tags to this article last month, but the reason for this is unclear. Is "undue weight" given to any specific issue in this article? Jarble (talk) 14:18, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Guns per 100 residents table

I'm not sure how to edit this table (near the top of the article), but Colombia is spelled wrong (Columbia). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.163.128.1 (talk) 13:51, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Israel

Comments about government-own weapons in the hands of citizens (appears both in the introduction to the article, and in the table) appears misleading to me.

I'm not aware of any formal statements regarding the number of IDF active personnel, and in particular gun-carrying military men and women (which are allowed to carry their guns outside of their bases), but by any reasonable estimation I can come up with, that number wouldn't amount to more than an additional 0.7 guns per 100 citizens (which translates to a very slight change in Israel's position on the global scale). Even if every enlisted persons were to carry guns (which is far from accurate), it would still translate to only 2 additional guns per 100 citizens.

What's significant is a fair question, but by including that language and no figures, the article paints a picture which is inaccurate at the very least.

What steps should be taken to properly address this issue? 141.226.242.22 (talk) 08:21, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Finland

Finnish government claims this survey is "nonsense". There should be a mention.

http://newsroom.finland.fi/stt/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=17243&group=Politics —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.77.8.10 (talk) 00:59, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The amount of guns told by the government is licenced, legally owned guns only. Small Arms Survey takes the illegally owned guns (an approximation of their number) into account, which the authorities do not. I suggest displaying both numbers, as to many Finns' experience (me including, the amount of people I know to possess illegal guns is around the same as the amount I know to own them legally), there's a lot of illegal, unregistered firearms, mostly dating back to WWII and before. --XoravaX (talk) 11:15, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I have added a disputed-section tag in regards to Finland. Contradictory information is listed in the comment section without explanation. Please clarify before removing the tag. Sawta (talk) 19:51, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Rename

I've renamed the article from "Number of guns per capita by country" to "Estimated number of guns per capita by country", to accurately reflect the content of the article. Anastrophe (talk) 23:23, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Good call; I've removed the remaining tags. -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 00:11, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Discussion of problems in article per tags

The article is tagged for three separate problems. These problems need to be addressed collaboratively, here on talk, before the tags are removed from the article. An editor removed the tags with this edit summary: "gunpolicy.org is hosted by the Sydney School of Public Health, the University of Sydney". That's all well and good, but it provides no rationale for removal of the tags, it merely states that the site is hosted by an organization. The reliability of that source for these data is not confirmed by that statement. As well, it does not address the other tags that were removed. Anastrophe (talk) 19:40, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

See my edit summary here [3] -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 19:54, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

The biggest problem from my perspective is that the article represents - in the chart - numbers that in most cases are estimates, some of them almost worthlessly vague. The US estimates immediately come to mind, where there simply are zero reliable figures for total gun ownership. The totals are routinely stated as being 250 million guns, 300 million guns, 325 million guns, 350 million guns. But those figures go back almost thirty years - based on NICS data, one could expect the values to be well more than a hundred million higher than the highest estimate. Some countries do have accurate values - but as a whole, the chart simply represents them as accurate data without a reliable basis.

Furthermore, gunpolicy.org may be a reliable source, but it is also an advocacy source - that's not my judgement, it's how they present themselves on their own website. For this article to be balanced, we need other reliable sources to either corroborate or call into question these estimates.

For now, I have no problem with removal of the one tag, however, WP policy generally requires that the matters tendered in a tag on the article must be discussed amongst editors before their removal - not after. Thank you. Anastrophe (talk) 20:13, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

I understand your concern but what is your solution? Tags are meant to be temporary, not permanent. Do you think the entire article should be deleted? -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 20:19, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't have a specific solution, such as it is. I think it would be appropriate if both the article and the section title instead were "Estimated number of guns per capita by country", rather than the current title and section name which suggest the figures have reliability. There are numerous organizations that have attempt estimates of gun ownership both in the US and around the world - but the figures vary so widely that I believe the article title is misleading at best. I've come across several instances online of people going by the numbers on this page and reciting them as if they are probative. Anastrophe (talk) 20:35, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Frankly, given the inaccuracy of the primary source, that would be a more acceptable outcome than ignoring the problems with the primary source; but that's not me advocating for that course of action yet, I'm just pointing out that the accuracy of the primary source is *that* concerning. It's out of date by almost a decade, the estimates in 2007 for Ireland at least were not merely wrong, but laughably so (the survey assigned a number of 150,000 to the number of illegally held firearms here, a number very nearly equal to the total number of legally held firearms, and yet it never cited a single justification or source for that number. It just appears out of thin air). With an error that egregious in an area where I know what the number should be, I am concerned as to the veracity of the other data points in that source, even before getting to the matter of the number-of-guns-per-capita having changed purely because in ten years population statistics have changed sufficiently for the per capita numbers to no longer be accurate even if the number of legally held firearms had not altered. MarkDennehy (talk) 21:51, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi MarkDennehy, I agree that the source material is dated. You stated: "given the inaccuracy of the primary source"; in order to call something inaccurate means that you've compared it to something accurate. Please provide the source you are comparing it to. -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 23:00, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

See above section on the Irish figures on this page. MarkDennehy (talk) 23:14, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

I took a look but it wasn't helpful because no sources were provided. You need to provide sources to back up your argument. -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 00:10, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

The CSO are the Central Statistics Office - they carry out the census in Ireland, amongst other duties. They *are* the single authoritative source on the number of people in Ireland. The Chief Superintendent cited is the Garda in charge of the Firearms Policy Unit in Ireland and his data is used by the Commissioner and the Minister and as such he *is* the authoritative source for the number of licenced firearms in Ireland. The division of one number into the other is mathematics. Those *are* sources. If you mean there's a formatting problem, say so, but there's no issue over the veracity of the data and all sources were in the public domain (see http://cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpr/censusofpopulation2016-preliminaryresults and http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/Debates%20Authoring/DebatesWebPack.nsf/committeetakes/JUJ2014121700002?opendocument#G00100 respectively) MarkDennehy (talk) 10:15, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Poland

The numbers for Poland is obviously wrong. Especially considering the comment "Only small pistols are allowed.", since I am quite sure they don't hunt with pistols. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.55.110.220 (talk) 06:07, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

I've deleted the statement about the "small pistols". The numbers are semi-accurate however - only firearms owned on permit are included in the police statistics. Obviously, illegal weapons will be excluded, as well as firearms not requiring a permit (e.g. historical black powder guns). 94.75.117.7 (talk) 14:34, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Bad graphic

Now this is a bad graphic. It smooths out the data to hide the skew to the US. (even if a country has 1 gun per 1000000 people they still get in the < 5 category) The USA has 100 guns per 100 people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markireland (talk • contribs) 05:41, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I took the liberty of moving your comment to a new section, rather than having at the top of the page, in front of a comment from 2007. You claim that the US has 100 guns per 100 people - please provide a source. There are only extremely coarse estimates of gun ownership in the US - it is impossible to garner anything besides gross estimates, due to the nature of gun ownership in the US. Anastrophe (talk) 16:46, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Scotland

Why is Scotland on this list? Despite the aspirations of the Scottish National Party, it's still part of the UK for the time being. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.252.9.112 (talk) 14:07, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

This is not a "problem" exclusive of Scotland. If you pay attention to the list, you'll see UK isn't there. Instead, UK is divided into three: England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. So, you can't complain of Scotland not being together with UK, 'cause there's no "UK" in the list. But now that you brought that up, I wonder why are England and Wales together. Do you have any idea? -- Sim(ã)o(n) * ^{Wanna talk?} _{See my} efforts? 21:35, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I can't tell you why, though I suspect someone is (still yet even more again) making a bit of a political statement with Wiki. It's probably useful to have subheadings for regions within countries (states in the US, provinces in Canada, etc.), but the country should remain the country. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.252.9.112 (talk) 10:58, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

That's true. But note the numbers: England and Wales - 6.2; Scotland - 5.5. These are pretty close and could be together, right? There is no great difference, and there's no need to highlight any of these three. But when it comes to Northern Ireland, we have 21.9. This is nearly 3.5 times as much as the average of England, Wales and Scotland. The creator must have felt that there was a need to highlight Northern Ireland, and it would be sort of "unfair" to include it also with all UK, which would make an average of, maybe, 10. This number would "disguise" Northern Ireland; so they thought it'd be better to divide those stats (yes, stats, not states!) between "The Big Island" and "The Small Island". But, in that case, why didn't they either include the "big 3" together and the "small 1" apart, or separate all of them? It actually makes no sense to include England and Wales together, and Scotland apart... About why not making those divisions in other countries, I don't know, but maybe that 1) the list would become way longer, and 2) there's not such a great difference on other countries and there is no need to divide those regions. But, ultimately, I must say I agree with you about joining Scotland to the UK in this list, but disagree if you intend to join also Northern Ireland to it. -- Sim(ã)o(n) * ^{Wanna talk?} _{See my} efforts? 15:10, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

The UK Home office provides officical statistics on crime; all the Home Office data I've seen are for England & Wales. England and Wales have been a single country administratively for what? 12 centuries. Union with Scotland is more recent. One might guess that info on Scotland and Northern Ireland are issued by other entities. 173.49.160.182 (talk) 20:15, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah! Maybe that's it! See, I don't know almost anything about UK history. You may know it better, so, maybe that's it. -- Sim(ã)o(n) * ^{Wanna talk?} _{See my} efforts? 16:51, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

The reason for the split is that there are different statistics agencies for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. There are no combined statistics published for the whole of the UK and each of the agencies are completely separate and independent (though sometimes cooperate for things like the Census). In particular, as each of the 3 regions has its own legal system, different categories and methods are used in creating the statistics for lots of things, making it difficult to directly compare and combine statistics in many cases. Also, doing so would be OR :) Oh, and England and Wales are together because unlike Ireland and Scotland, Wales was annexed directly into England and became part of it, instead of being a partner. England and Wales is the constitutional successor to the Kingdom of England --iamajpeg (talk) 05:59, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

This is silly. It's a list by country. Sure, it's "difficult to compare statistics" compiled by different agencies, but that is exactly what this entire article does. No doubt there are biases in the data due to "different categories and methods" both within countries and between countries. Point is, this is a list by country based on the best available data. With gun ownership rates of 6.2, 5.5, and 21.9, and populations of 57M, 5.3M, and 1.8M, respectively, the overall gun ownership rate for England/Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland is 6.6. Rracecarr (talk) 19:11, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Scotland is a country. Wales is a country. England is a country. Northern Ireland is maybe a country or maybe a province depending on how you define it. The United Kingdom is a sovereign state or sovereign country depending on how you want to define it. Yes, it's confusing, but saying "we can't list Scotland separately because this is a list of countries" doesn't work as an argument. LiamKav (talk) 10:51, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Northern Ireland is a country. The province is Ulster, and it's a larger geographical region than Northern Ireland and includes parts of Ireland (ie. the province encompasses areas in both countries because of historical reasons). That's the official definition; you might have a different one, but if so I think it's fair to call it contested ;) MarkDennehy (talk) 12:47, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

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Comment

I am not sure whether the list presentation is appropriate, as it combines data from different years (a 11 years period) but still list the countries by percentage of gun ownership per household. I very much doubt that the current figures for the N. of Ireland and Spain would be that high at present. --Asterion^talk 14:59, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

The number for Canada in the list is wrong as well, it says 70 per 100 people. Even the source for those numbers says it's closer to 25. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.180.52.122 (talk) 09:08, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Can I put list in alphabetical order so that it can be easily updated?

If this list was put in alphabetical order, and a year column added, it could be updated continuously with the latest available numbers. It is currently way out of date for many countries.

For more recent rates look up the individual countries here:

• Gun Law and Policy: Firearms and armed violence, country by country.

Some countries there have numbers for years more recent than the 2007 survey currently used for many nations in the Wikipedia list.

See also:

• How France cut its per capita gun ownership in half. By David Andelman. Feb. 26, 2018. CNN.

--Timeshifter (talk) 03:34, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Small Arms Survey - not a reliable source of data.

Hello wikipedians. I am not an expert for this matter, but Small Arms Survey were many times said to be not accurate and when compared with data from eurostat it is also very different. Plus it seems to me that Small Arms Survey is taking into consideration also guns "on stock" in some warehouses and not hold by individuals. Can some expert on the topic have a look? Thanks for notice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Verthelone (talk • contribs) 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Australia numbers are wrong.

The chart claims that Australia has 24.1 guns per 100 people. Gunpolicy.org which is the source that most entries in the table use, says that there are only 13.1 guns per 100 people. What's the discrepancy here? NationalInterest16 (talk) 19:26, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Chart needs to be updated. Feel free to do so. Or as they say "Just Fix It".

Rankings need to be removed, and the chart put in alphabetical order. Because the rankings will be screwed up after almost any change in the data. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:42, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Added a row number column that is static. Easier to update table

See Help:Sorting and its section concerning row-number columns.

Notes have to be below the table, or the table rows will not line up with the row numbers at narrower screen resolutions. Can see this if you narrow your browser width enough. Especially at the bottom of the table where it is most noticeable.

Table is easier to update since the row numbers are totally separate. Can add, remove, or move around countries. Row numbers are not effected. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:15, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Suggestions re table notes

Following on the setalk page section above, I'd like to suggest what I see as improvements in the way table notes are handled, for consideration by regular editors of this article. One of several alternatives (the one closest to the current presentation) would look like the following:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Country Guns per 100 residents Notes World 10.2 United States 101 Serbia 58.21 Yemen 54.8 Cyprus 36.4 Saudi Arabia 35 Iraq 34.2 Uruguay 31.8 Norway 31.3 France 31.2 Canada 30.8 Austria 30.4 Iceland 30.3 Germany 30.3 Finland 27.3 Table notes:

This presentation would provide easier navigation for readers between an annotated table entry and its associated notes and eliminates a possible source of confusion in editing by not separating the notes from their associated table entries in the wikitext.

Alternatives to this presentation would include

• eliminating the Notes column and placing the {{efn}}s with the notes directly after the country names instead of in a separate column on the same row
• placing the notes in a nonsortable row at the bottom of the table instead of outside of the table.

An apparent problem both with the example above and with the table in the article is that the World row sorts with the rows for individual countries. It would probably be better to present the information in this row outside of the table (e.g. in article prose following the table). Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 02:26, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Great ideas! I looked around and decided to try using Template:Notetag. See this revision of the article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country&oldid=843049081

I also moved the world number out of the table per your suggestion. I could not figure out a way to return it to the top after sorting. And alternatively, I could not figure out a way to prevent it from sorting, and thus keep it at the top.

--Timeshifter (talk) 14:13, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

References

United Kingdom

I do not see United Kingdom in the reference annex table. So I am assuming its number in our table here is calculated from the numbers for Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales.

Am I correct, Borysk5? Can you reproduce the calculation here in this talk section? Population numbers used. Total guns in each part of the UK. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:28, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Well i used http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-kingdom Borysk5 (talk) 12:11, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Oh, ok. I added it as a note. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:04, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Merger discussion

See: Talk:Gun ownership — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timeshifter (talk • contribs) 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Table updated to Small Arms Survey 2017

Borysk5 updated the table to the numbers used in Small Arms Survey 2017. I updated some of the references, and removed some unused references.

I request that alternative numbers not be added to the main column. That would cause the main column to not be in descending order.

Please add alternative numbers along with their references to the notes column. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:17, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Please see the dispute regarding those figures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_244#2018,_Small_Arms_Survey

They are not appropriate to be presented as the baseline reference. The official figures from the countries involved is the only one with any reasonable claim on primacy and even then it's not going to be universal. It would be more appropriate to have multiple columns for multiple sources of estimates and one for the official number given by that state and not give primacy to any of them.

For a specific example, the Irish figure, which we've just edit warred over, is not accurate in the SAS2017 any more than it is in the SAS2007 and the SAS provides no source or evidence for its invention of 150,000 illegally held firearms here - a situation which would simply be ludicrous in practical terms. Every other estimate is enormously lower, as is the official figure (Ireland requires every firearm to be licenced so its official figure is going to be more accurate than in countries where some categories of firearm don't require licencing or registration). There is extensive discussion of this in the link provided. MarkDennehy (talk) 13:32, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

I am 100% for WP:NPOV, and presenting all significant viewpoints. Feel free to create a note. Or create a whole section on Ireland, Northern Ireland, etc.. Just be sure to use references for everything you write. Otherwise it is original research according to Wikipedia. See WP:OR. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:02, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Cuba

It is a matter of Cuban law that every citizen keep a gun and take instruction on how to use it. Are these classed as 'government' guns? Can't understand how else Cuba ends us with less than five guns per hundred people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.45.31.91 (talk) 17:55, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

You're misinformed, at best. Get a clue. https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/cuba 76.70.118.211 (talk) 05:02, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Notes section below the table is for additional data and info. And alternative rates.

The notes section below the table is for additional info. Additional data and alternative rates should be placed there.

The table itself should only use numbers from the Small Arms Survey 2017. That way the rate column stays in descending order.

Plus the authors of Small Arms Survey 2017 take into account both licit and illicit civilian firearms. They are responsible for weighing the various sources, gathering population numbers to make the rate calculations, etc..

Some of what we do in calculating alternative rate numbers might be considered original research since we can't check as many sources as they do. And because it would be difficult for us to weigh the sources against each other, or to try to update rates for hundreds of countries.

For these reasons and more, we only use one main source for many table lists on Wikipedia. For example; see list of countries by incarceration rate. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:51, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Again, you are citing a study which has some serious issues with its data and which has been criticised in other studies, as the authoritative baseline here, and that's not appropriate. We've already gone through dispute resolution without much in the way of a resolution to that process on this point. The data in that survey is just not reliable enough to be citing it as a baseline because it includes its authors' estimates of unknown variables as actual data, in some cases with no supporting basis (the Ireland example we've gone over in some depth before, is entirely based on taking the offical Garda figures of licenced firearms and multiplying it by a static number and the sole basis for that number appears to have been some UK tabloid press articles and one tabloid Irish press article).

If you include a source like this, which is explicitly an estimate of an unknown, then you cannot call the official figures from the government sources who issue licences in most of the world "alternative rates". Doing so is a tad too close to "alternative facts" to be honest. MarkDennehy (talk) 11:25, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

If you have some links for Ireland data, info, etc. please provide them. Then we can add a note for Ireland. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:03, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_244#2018,_Small_Arms_Survey and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country#Ireland but again, the issue is that this is effectively Wikipedia granting an authoritative status to the SAS report over official national totals maintained by their governments and over all other studies. This is not appropriate. SAS is explicitly providing estimates here, and those estimates are not accepted in all cases (see the last year of discussions on this point and their citations of other studies that contradict SAS). Citing the numbers as SAS's estimate is appropriate; putting all other data in as "alternative rates" is not. We at least need one additional column for the government-provided official figures for each country, treated as a first-class citizen on this page. MarkDennehy (talk) 17:47, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't see any method described specifically for Ireland in the 2017 PDFs:

http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/T-Briefing-Papers/SAS-BP-Civilian-Firearms-Numbers.pdf

http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/Weapons_and_Markets/Tools/Firearms_holdings/SAS-BP-Civilian-held-firearms-annexe.pdf

--Timeshifter (talk) 05:18, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

No, which is arguably worse; at least in the 2007 SAS we could see what their claimed basis was (though it transpired to be utterly invalid). By reading the 2007 annexes (specifically http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/A-Yearbook/2007/en/Small-Arms-Survey-2007-Chapter-02-annexe-3-EN.pdf ) and comparing the data available to the authors and the resultant estimate in the SAS numbers through to 2017 you can make out that in the case of Ireland they simply take the official Garda numbers for licenced firearms and then apply a straight multiplier (approximately 0.7) to estimate the number of illegally held firearms in Ireland. The problem with this approach, as we've discussed on the talk pages for this area of wikipedia over the last year extensively and as has been raised by others on the SAS page itself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Arms_Survey#Criticism), is that if you take a single approach to a highly heterogenous set of estimation problems you do not get good results in every case. What would be valid in Somalia might well be equally valid in Bosnia but not valid in Ireland or Finland. No account, for example, is taken of the thirty years of domestic terrorism and the resultant rigid policing and restrictive licencing of firearms we see in Ireland. The end result is that the SAS estimate for Ireland is patently ridiculous to anyone living here. If there were 150,000 illegally held firearms here, it would not be possible to not see signs of it. That's more firearms than our army and police have, combined. It's enough to arm six times more criminals than we have police and soldiers combined. Their figures match neither GunPolicy's figures nor Firearms United's figures (in other words, both sides of the political divide on the private ownership of firearms). If SAS was right and there were that many illegal firearms out there, then the now 14-year-long garda operation to crack down on illegal firearms (Operation Anvil) would have turned up more than the three thousand firearms they have, and our levels of violent crime would be monsterously higher than they are at present; British security services estimate that during the Troubles the IRA had approximately 1200 firearms (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4284048.stm) but SAS is saying we now have *two orders of magnitude more* than that and yet the entire country isn't up in flames despite there being enough illegal firearms to arm every active soldier in the British Army? That's so ridiculous I can't believe we're still arguing about this over a year since the problem was first raised. Citing SAS as an estimate is one thing, but saying it's the authoritative figure with everyone else - including the people who issue the licences - being relegated to "alternative rates", while the SAS figures have issues this large in them? That's just not appropriate. MarkDennehy (talk) 12:41, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

GunPolicy.org is now using the Small Arms Survey 2017 number:

https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/ireland

You may be right, but you have to find a reliable source that agrees with you. So we can reference it. See WP:RS. And we also need to reference viewpoints that disagree with you. And then put it all in the notes. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:24, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

First of all, the figures given for Ireland originally (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country#Ireland and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gun_ownership#Ireland_numbers) were cited. And unless you're calling the Irish Government, the Irish Central Statistics Office and An Garda Siochana *unreliable*, which frankly is a bizarre political position and not one wikipedia should be taking, those sources *are* reliable.

However, that's beside the central point here which is that no, this should not go in the notes as an alternative rate, this should be a first class citizen on this page in a column of its own and listed as the official figures because *unlike* the SAS estimate, there is an actual basis in fact for the Garda numbers and the CSO numbers - specifically, they counted the things being measured (the Gardai through a count of firearms licences and the CSO through the census). MarkDennehy (talk) 19:15, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

What are the latest estimates for unregistered firearms in Ireland from your sources? Small Arms Survey 2017 says 142,000. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:33, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Unregistered is not a concept in Irish firearms legislation; we only have the category of licenced firearms (the EU categories of firearms which only require registration in most EU members states require full licencing in Ireland). There are no government estimates of unlicenced firearms in Ireland. To quote the Minister for Justice (the citation is in the above discussions) :

The very fact that firearms are held illegally precludes statistics being available of the number of such firearms. The only relevant statistics which are available relates to the number of firearms seized by the gardaí. Details of such seizures are contained in the Garda Commissioner's Annual Report on Crime

. The 2017 edition of that Garda report (https://www.garda.ie/en/about-us/our-departments/office-of-corporate-communications/news-media/garda-annual-report-2017.pdf page 75) lists 517 such firearms seized (though that table illustrates another issue, which is that many of those 517 items seized are only recognised as firearms in Ireland; items like crossbows, pepper spray, imitation firearms, tasers and so forth are not recognised as being firearms in most - if not all - other jurisdictions. Which is yet another reason why the SAS approach doesn't work for here; it takes no account of the differing legal definitions for firearms but it does use the official number of licenced firearms without alteration). MarkDennehy (talk) 12:27, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

(unindent). Is there any source that disputes the Small Arms Survey 2017 number for unregistered or unlicensed firearms in Ireland? --Timeshifter (talk) 00:06, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Not yet as the SAS figures are so recent; the 2007 figure, as was pointed out in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_244#2018,_Small_Arms_Survey has been disputed both by https://firearms-united.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Firearms_ReportII-Gun_Ownership_in_Europe.pdf and by http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/ireland and both of those were using the ICVS and the eurobarometer 2013 study (http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Survey/getSurveyDetail/search/firearms/surveyKy/1125) as data sources instead of using the Garda figures and a simple numeric multiplier. Those figures may be from 2013 and earlier, but they are from actual data gathered from the country, with actual fieldwork, rather than being an estimate whose source and methodology are not listed for 2017 as the SAS estimates are. It's also not feasible for those criticisms to be valid against the 2007 SAS estimates, but not against the 2017 SAS estimate when those two numbers are so close to each other, while all other estimates are over 100,000 lower - that would require 100,000 firearms to have entered Ireland just before 2007, departed the country before 2013, and returned again before 2017. MarkDennehy (talk) 00:26, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

See page 7 of this pdf:

https://firearms-united.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Firearms_ReportII-Gun_Ownership_in_Europe.pdf

It has Ireland at 6 guns per 100 people in 2013 according to Eurobarometer.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/376906/total-population-of-ireland - 4.63 million population in 2013.

That comes to around 278,000 guns in 2013.

SAS 2017 has Ireland at 7.2 guns per 100 in 2017.

That comes to 333,000 guns in 2013 using the 2013 population.

And we can assume the rate of guns per capita increased, not decreased, from 2013 to 2017.

So the 2017 SAS rate is high for 2013.

278,000 guns total versus 333,000 is not that great a difference.

--Timeshifter (talk)

What page 7 is actually saying in context is that the Eurobarometer survey said respondants thought there were 6 guns per 100 people including illegally held firearms, while the ICVS number was 4.5 (208,350 firearms). And that both estimates were far lower than the SAS rate. Which is correct. It also points out - in fact that report goes to great pains to do so - that these are *estimates*, and highlights the flaws in each of the reports it examines and why the figures it cites may be inaccurate due to systemic bias. And it quotes the official number beside them (by the way, the official number in Ireland varies on a three-year cycle because we switched from an annual licence to a three-year licence in 2009 - it converges around the 210,000 mark when you take that into account and it's been declining over the last decade or so rather than increasing, for a variety of reasons from economic recession (which hit Ireland harder than most places) to an ageing demographic in the sport (your firearms are not usually passed on to your family when you die, the licence is for you alone)).

The number itself aside, that table is an absolutely perfect example to look at because it is precisely what I'm saying that this wikipedia page should look like, namely: One column per source, yes including SAS, but also Eurobarometer, ICVS, and the official number. All treated as first-class citizens in the data. I'm failing to see how that is an unreasonable position. MarkDennehy (talk) 14:37, 8 November 2018 (UTC)