>They say lies, damned lies and statistics: what the NZ figure hides is that the number of handguns excluding police and military is maybe 0.0005 per 100 people.

Here is another site (Australian) that shows the number of guns to about 30/100 civilians in NZ in 2016. http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/new-zealand

>Compared to the US rate of over 10 per 10,000 population- of which suicide is 6.3.
>
>Hence the point I made elsewhere about excluding suicide to compare homicide and firearm frequencies... do that, and now the US has 2.5 times as many firearms per capita as NZ but almost 30 times the homicide rate. How can that be, if guns are the cause? Seems to me you need to be looking for other things. Handguns is an obvious candidate, as is the extent of police background checks and the legal obligation to keep firearms properly secured in a safe approved by your Arms Officer and separate from ammo.

I agree, there may be underlying reasons. But if there are, restrict access to guns (and especially the most lethal ones) until we figure them out.
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