I believed it as well until recently. I first remember hearing it in “Bowling For Columbine” so maybe Michael Moore is the culprit. American having more guns per capita definably fits better with my my background beliefs of those two countries.
I first remember hearing it in “Bowling For Columbine”
Or did you?
I Ctrl-Fed through afewversions of the English subtitles available for Bowling for Columbine to try to find a claim that Canada has more guns per capita than the US. I turned up a blank (although subtitles don’t capture everything, of course).
The most relevant bits I found were subtitles 1580 to 1583:
In Canada, with a population of just around 30 million—there’s about 10 million families—and the best estimate is somewhere in the region of seven-million guns.
That implies about 23 guns per 100 Canadians, which is if anything an underestimate.
Not long ago, I read (but I forgot where, and now I can’t find it) that in the US many people have lots of guns, instead of just one, so that would skew the statistics. Numbers pulled out of my posterior: If every household in Switzerland has a gun, and in the US only half of the households has a gun, but half of those who do have 3 or more, then the number of guns per capita would still be higher in the US than in Switzerland.
Someone has been feeding me lies!
I believed it as well until recently. I first remember hearing it in “Bowling For Columbine” so maybe Michael Moore is the culprit. American having more guns per capita definably fits better with my my background beliefs of those two countries.
Or did you?
I Ctrl-Fed through a few versions of the English subtitles available for Bowling for Columbine to try to find a claim that Canada has more guns per capita than the US. I turned up a blank (although subtitles don’t capture everything, of course).
The most relevant bits I found were subtitles 1580 to 1583:
That implies about 23 guns per 100 Canadians, which is if anything an underestimate.
Whoops, I guess my memory was being confabulatory.
Not long ago, I read (but I forgot where, and now I can’t find it) that in the US many people have lots of guns, instead of just one, so that would skew the statistics. Numbers pulled out of my posterior: If every household in Switzerland has a gun, and in the US only half of the households has a gun, but half of those who do have 3 or more, then the number of guns per capita would still be higher in the US than in Switzerland.
Yeah, I think I got that from there too.