However, a small club of 19 nations do not routinely arm their police forces, including most of the UK, Ireland, Iceland and Norway. Three-fourths of the southern Pacific islands do not give guns to their officers either. Countries without armed police officers on average exhibit gun-homicide rates markedly lower than countries with armed police forces.
In the US, 41 police officers were killed in the line of duty in 2015, according to FBI data. Civilians killed by police, classified as “justifiable homicide,” by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, are also reported each year.
Although America’s unique relationship to guns sits at the forefront of the national psyche, gun culture in the US is often seen as an outlier globally.
Here’s a comparative look at how individual gun ownership — and gun violence — in the US compares to the rest of the world.
The number of firearms available to American civilians is estimated at around 310 million, according to a 2009 National Institute of Justice (NIJ) report.
India is home to the second largest civilian firearm stockpile, estimated at 46 million.
The most updated estimates — now nearly a decade old — place the worldwide civilian gun cache at around 650 million. According to Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey, the number of civilian guns has most likely risen since 2007. Firearm production continues to proliferate worldwide, outweighing the effects that gun destruction might have.
According to the Small Arms Survey, the exact number of civilian-owned firearms is impossible to pinpoint because of a variety of factors including arms that go unregistered, the illegal trade and global conflict.
According to the survey, a majority (66%) of US gun owners own multiple firearms, with nearly three-quarters of gun owners saying they couldn’t imagine not owning one.
The US has one of the highest rates of death by firearm in the developed world, according to World Health Organization data.
Our calculations based on OECD data from 2010 show that Americans are 51 times more likely to be killed by gunfire than people in the United Kingdom.
Most American gun owners (two-thirds) say a major reason they own a gun is for their personal protection, according to the Pew study. However, the majority of America’s firearm-related deaths are attributed to self-harm.
Gun-related suicides are eight times higher in the US than in other high-income nations.
Globally, the US sees fewer gun-related murders than many of its southern neighbors.
According to the Small Arms Survey, El Salvador is currently home to the most gun-related murders in the world (excluding active war-zones) with guns killing more than 90 people for every 100,000 of population.
From 2010-2015, Honduras saw the highest averages of gun-related homicides, with guns killing 67 out of every 100,000 people there.
Venezuela and El Salvador also top the charts over the same five-year period, with 52 and 49 gun-related deaths, respectively, for every 100,000 of population.
But when it comes to gun massacres, the US is an anomaly.
There are more public mass shootings in America than in any other country in the world.
Such massacres can spur debates about gun control, but they also increase demand for guns. And regulations covering the sale of firearms are looser now that they were just a few months ago.
The original rule was part of a series of moves taken by the Obama administration to try and curb gun violence after other efforts failed to advance in Congress.
Globally, restrictive gun laws have proven to make a difference in curbing massacres.
