NEW YORK - The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released in Geneva recently said. US citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said.
There
is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the
United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10
people," it said. India had the world’s second-largest
civilian gun arsenal, with an estimated 46 million firearms outside
law enforcement and the military, though this represented just four
guns per 100 people there. China, ranked third with 40 million
privately held guns, had 3 firearms per 100 people. Germany, France,
Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil and Russia were next in the ranking of
country’s overall civilian gun arsenals.
On
a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry
behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by
Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with
38.
France,
Canada, Sweden, Austria and Germany were next, each with about 30
guns per 100 people, while many poorer countries often associated
with violence ranked much lower. Nigeria, for instance, had just one
gun per 100 people.
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