We Canadians always brag about our low murder rate by guns compared to our neighbors to the south. There is nothing wrong with that; it is worth bragging about. Yet England makes even our death by gun rate seem high. England has always been more civilized than us when it comes to gun violence. Most of their policemen still don’t carry guns. Americans could learn a lot from The Brits. Come to think of it, Canadians could learn a lot from the Brits.

In England the gun homicide rate is about 1 for every million people. England has a population of about 56 million so that adds up to about 50 to 60 gun homicides per year. Compare that to the U.S. where with a population of about 320,000,000 there are about 8,124 murders by gunshot. That amounts to about 25 gun homicides per million. That is 25 times higher than Britain.

Or look at it another way–in the United States where there are 160 times as many gun homicides than Britain in a country that is only 6 times larger in population than Britain.

According to Statistics Canada, in our country in 2015, the rate of handgun related homicides was 0.28 per 100,000 population. That amounts to about 2.8 per million. Almost 3 times higher than Britain but still a heck of a lot lower than the U.S. The American rate is about 8 times higher than Canada’s rate.

After a mass shooting at a school in Britain in 1996 their government pursued a legislative ban on assault rifles and handguns and tightened background checks. From then to 2013, a total of 200,000 guns were taken off the streets. Military style guns were banned completely. Given that the US has a population about 6 times as large, they would have to take 1,200,000 guns off the street to create a proportionate response. Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Britain has 6.5 guns per 100 people. The U.S. has 101 guns per 100 people. Who is getting it right?

No matter what Donald Trump or the NRA says, it does not appear that more guns mean more safety.