Asunto: Yes We Can

benmor,
I very much knew where you were coming from....I was just putting some stats for people to consider.
While there IS a good bit of poverty, and in some regions, a great deal, overall it seems that other that France and Belgium, not Western European country is much better than the USA when it comes to poverty rate.

where is Brazil? well the debate seemed to be about how Western Europe versus USA....

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_pop_bel_pov_lin-economy-population-below-poverty-line
Poverty
Brazil: 31 %

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_countries_by_gun_ownership

Gun Ownership
Brazil 8.8 %

hope this makes your day!!!

Ah, thanks! :)

omg, just below Brazil

Colombia 7.2 2007

that statistic of gun ownership is RIDICULOUSLY off.

I don't think i know a single person who has a gun.

Possibly 90% in texas. POSSIBLY.

Likely < 20% or so in new hampshire and connecticut.

Somewhere inbetween i'd bet in the rest of the country.

first site i found said 40%.
Second said 31%

Where the heck did you find 90%?
(editado)

bottom line is LOL @ foreigners who come here thinking their excrement doesn't stink.

I have been there 2 times. (NJ and NC)

The last summer, I was in Charlotte, NC and somebody told me: "take care because most of them have guns", I was scared, I didn't see any dangerous thing around my apartment or around the campus but in the news they showed a lot of robberies and things like that.

Probably, here is worse but it's different when you are alone in a foreign place.

finally, you people have a great country.
(editado)

Now for the record, New Jersey does stink. It's called "the garden state" but its a running joke - kinda like when the Norsemen called the temperate island "Iceland", while calling the 2 million km tract of permafrost "Greenland".

:)

it's not called the garden state.

it's called the "armpit of the nation"

Almost everyone I know owns guns. Shotguns for hunting ducks and geese, rifles for hunting deer. There are 6 in my house, one of each for me, my wife, and my stepson.

However, no one I know owns a handgun or an assault rifle for committing crimes.

So any statistic that simply tells a percentage of people who own guns doesn't actually give you any worthwhile information at all.

The 90% statistic likely is taking the number of guns in the US divided by the total population.

I have a gun. Yes, it is true. I can shoot water with it. It is multi-colored and festive. And is fun in pools.

I thought I had posted my 'reference source'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_countries_by_gun_ownership

This is a list of countries by number of guns divided by number of residents.

The numbers are an estimation based on dividing the total amount of guns in a nation by the total population of that nation. As many people possess multiple weapons and many others possess none, this number is not a representation of the percentage of people who possess guns in each nation.

sorry if I misled anyone.

you are correct, number of guns/ number of people

only question- do they count the guns owned by US Army in Iraq????

http://www.allcountries.org/gun_ownership_rates.html
this is old data...but this is % of households that own guns

ountry Year Population % Households With Guns
--------------------- ------- -----------------
United States 1993 257,783,004 39 %
Norway 1993 4,324,815 32
Canada 1992 28,120,065 29.1
Switzerland 1994 7,021,000 27.2
Finland 1994 5,088,333 23.2
France 1994 57,915,450 22.6
New Zealand 1993 3,458,850 22.3
Australia 1994 17,838,401 19.4
Belgium 1990 9,967,387 16.6
Italy 1992 56,764,854 16
Sweden 1993 8,718,571 15.1
Spain 1993 39,086,079 13.1
Germany 1994 81,338,093 8.9
N. Ireland 1994 1,641,711 8.4
Scotland 1994 5,132,400 4.7
England/Wales 1992 51,429,000 4.7
Netherlands 1994 15,382,830 1.9