How The Rest Of The World Prevents Gun Deaths

U.S. death rates by gun are vastly higher than in other countries. How do they keep down the deadly toll?

Three years ago today, Adam Lanza, stormed into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and fatally shot 20 children and six adults. There were candlelight vigils and an anguished push to change gun laws. Then, nothing. More shootings. On streets all over. In Charleston. Roseburg, Oregon. Colorado Springs. San Bernardino. More than 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence. No other developed country comes close to that level. How do they avoid it? This hour On Point, the global picture on gun violence, and the huge American exception.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Wendy Cukier, co-founder and president of the Coalition for Gun Control. Professor of information technology Management at Ryerson University. Co-author, with Victor Sidel, of "The Global Gun Epidemic."

Rebecca Peters, former director of the International Action Network on Small Arms. Former chair of Australia's National Coalition for Gun Control. Currently senior associate at the Surviving Gun Violence Project in Guatemala. (@SGVProject)

Robert Spitzer, professor and chair of the political science department at the State University of New York, College at Cortland. Author of "Guns Across America" and "The Politics of Gun Control."

Washington Post: An Australian gun expert critiques America: You’ve lost control — "Although we foreigners can offer no immediate solution to America’s gun infestation, we can see how you lost control of the plague of armed violence. Outsiders are also perplexed to see that you’ve done so little to grant your citizens a basic human right — the freedom to live without fear of death by gunshot."

Vox: America's unique problem with gun violence, in one chart -- "America's relationship with guns is unique in another crucial way: Among developed nations, the US is far and away the most violent — in large part due to the easy access many Americans have to firearms."

New York Times: In Scotland, Unlike America, Mass Shooting Led to Stricter Gun Laws -- "Still, after more mass shootings, including one last month at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs and another last week at a government building in San Bernardino, Calif., people pushing for stricter gun safety laws in the United States struggle to marshal the consensus that took hold so quickly in Scotland, and made the ban there so welcome."