This is actually guns per capita, not guns ownership, which is what I promised you, but close enough for now. I have a better graph at home that I'll get for you in a couple hours - I grabbed it as soon as this story hit, because I knew this would come up again.
The executive summary of what I've got at home is that there's a very slight downward curve (not nearly as sharp as what's above) when comparing ownership rates vs. homicides across developed countries. The correlation coefficient was something like -0.011, which implies that there's probably no correlation and the slope of the line is likely to be mere coincidence, but if you insist on drawing conclusions from it, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that raising ownership rates lowers crime rates. The line for just US states has the same slope and a better correlation coefficient, but I still believe that raising gun ownership rates does not decrease homicide rates. It's still useful for showing that the reverse assertion is false, though.
From what I can see, it's a lot less consistent in Europe than it is in the US. The data I had showed rises in the UK (as a whole, England and Wales fell, but the rest rose) and France and a few others in 2011 (extra side note: 2011 is the first time everyone starts separating England and Wales from the rest of the UK in statistics, making it harder to aggregate and compare across years.), even though other European countries were falling. If I can find 2012 data ever, we might be able to rule it as a hiccup rather than a trend.Crime rates are falling across the whole developed world as far as I know.
(edit: IIRC, 2011 was the first year that a bunch of European countries suddenly trend upwards, so it's quite fair to say it was just a hiccup for now
This is all getting away from the point, though. You can't consistently say that other factors are responsible for the drop off in homicides, but gun ownership rates and/or GTA V are still the only possible explanation for homicides).
Okay, so we're excluding all European countries that aren't economically well developed, and the ones that share a border with them. Since a large amount of our violence occurs in states bordering Mexico that seems a bit unfair, but okay, let's roll with it. I was going to do a bit of fancy math here, but in confirming my figures this turned out to be easier:Its still valid with most recent figures as far as I know. Its no more a contrived version of Europe than by saying America we don't mean Mexico. Besides is the USA a recently failed state? Is that really who you want to compare yourself with?
This is 2011, during which the US had 47 Source.The Home Office figures published today show that England and Wales are in the middle of the European murder league at 13.5 deaths per million population. Finland tops the table at 23.4, followed by Scotland at 21.4, and Ireland on 20 per million. Northern Ireland now has a murder rate well below Scotland at 15.2. Austria has the lowest murder rate in Europe at 6.1 per million.
23.4 * 4 = 93.6, which is about double. So "double" would be much more accurate than "4 times".
But then, it probably makes me a hypocrite for calling you out on hyperbole and it's not strongly relevant anyways, so I'll let this matter drop.