Mark Kelly: US Ranks With Mexico, Brazil For ‘Gun Violence’ Deaths

Speaking to an audience at the University of Southern California (USC) on Sunday, gun control advocate Mark Kelly said the U.S. “[ranks] with countries like… Mexico and Brazil, when you look at death rates from gun violence.”

Kelly also included Iraq and Yemen in his comparison, but those countries are so war-torn that resources like the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) don’t even list the the rate of firearm-related homicides for those two countries.

As for Mexico and Brazil, the rate of firearm-related homicides are quite easy to find.

In July 2012, The Guardian brought together numbers from the Small Arms Survey and the UNODC’s Global Study on Homicide to show that Mexico’s “homicide by firearm rate per 100,000 population” was “9.97.” Brazil’s rate was nearly double that of Mexico’s, at “18.1”

The U.S.? The Guardian reported the “homicide by firearm rate per 100,000 population” in the US at “2.97,” or just slightly below one-sixth the rate seen in Brazil.

These numbers for the U.S. square with numbers from a 2012 Congressional Research Service (CRS) study which showed that the “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide” rate in the U.S. fell from “6.6 per 100,000” Americans in 1993 to 3.2 per 100,000 in 2011. Moreover, this decline in “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide” coincided with a huge jump in gun ownership, with privately-owned firearms in the U.S. jumping from 192 million in 1994 to 310 million in 2009.

Again, The Guardian reported Mexico’s “homicide by firearm rate per 100,000 population” at “9.97,” Brazil’s at “18.1,” and the US at “2.97.” But according to USCNews, Mark Kelly said the U.S. ranks with Mexico and Brazil “when you look at death rates from gun violence.”

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.