One of the theses of the movie seems to be: "The US has lots of guns and lots of crimes. Canada has lots of guns and few crimes. What's the difference? Maybe its because of America's fearful culture."

Suppose that high levels of fear and high levels of gun violence seem to be correlated. I agree that some of the cause might be that fear causes violence. But isn't it a much more reasonable, direct link to suppose that the violence causes the fear? That people are scared because there is violence, as opposed to violent because they are scared? Maybe people in Canada are less scared because they have less crime, as opposed to vice versa. If someone told me that in Foobistan there was a lot of crime, and a lot of fear of crime, and that in Bararia there was not much crime, and not much fear of crime, my first theory would be that fear levels were responses to crime levels. Moore doesn't seem to even consider that theory, or provide any evidence of why we should look to the counterintuitive direction.

My friend suggested that any countries I might expatriate to probably have crime rates far lower than America's, based on Bowling for Columbine's statistics. I replied that BfC compared the US only to a few first-world european countries, and it exaggerated the effect by not compensating for population size. That says little about whether the US has more or less violence than countries in, say, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, etc.

Looks like homicide rates in Mexico and Ecuador are 1 1/2 - 2 times more than in the USA. Homicide rates in Colombia are 9 times higher (tho I believe much of that is the US's fault - but it still means its a dangerous country). Venezuela and Brazil are 2-4 times higher. Argentina is half. Chile is 1/3. From another source, Costa Rica's homicide rate seems to be about half of the US's. Panama and Peru's rates are similar to the US. Paraguay and Ecuador are higher.

Looking at the "how are you more likely to die" question, the above link has a nice chart on proportion of external causes of death in various countries. We have:

country        cars   homicides  ratio

US	30%	14%	2.14
Venezuela	29%	20%	1.45
Nicaragua	24%	15%	1.6
Mexico	27%	23%	1.17
El Salvador33%	45%	.73
Ecuador	26%	23%	1.13
Colombia	14%	55%	.25
Brazil	26%	36%	.72

Looks to me like if I went elsewhere in the Americas I should start worrying more about homicide and less about cars.

If you want to get gun-specific on these statistics (rather than general homicides), here are some "firearm homicide per 100,000 people" statistics (this is not for all countries)

International Homicide Rate Table (Death rates are per 100,000)

Country	Year	Population	Total Homicide	Firearm Homicide	Non-Gun Homicide	% Households With Guns
South Africa	1995	41,465,000	75.30	26.60	48.70	n/a
Colombia	1996	37,500,000	64.60	50.60	14.00	n/a
Estonia	1994	1,499,257	28.21	8.07	20.14	n/a
Brazil	1993	160,737,000	19.04	10.58	8.46	n/a
Mexico	1994	90,011,259	17.58	9.88	7.70	n/a
Philippines	1996	72,000,000	16.20	3.50	12.70	n/a
Taiwan1	1996	21,979,444	8.12	0.97	7.15	n/a
N. Ireland	1994	1,641,711	6.09	5.24	0.85	8.4
United States2	1999	272,691,000	5.70	3.72	1.98	39.0
Argentina	1994	34,179,000	4.51	2.11	2.40	n/a
Hungary	1994	10,245,677	3.53	0.23	3.30	n/a
Finland3	1994	5,088,333	3.24	0.86	2.38	23.2
Portugal	1994	5,138,600	2.98	1.28	1.70	n/a
Mauritius	1993	1,062,810	2.35	0	2.35	n/a
Israel	1993	5,261,700	2.32	0.72	1.60	n/a
Italy	1992	56,764,854	2.25	1.66	0.59	16.0
Scotland	1994	5,132,400	2.24	0.19	2.05	4.7
Canada	1992	28,120,065	2.16	0.76	1.40	29.1
Slovenia	1994	1,989,477	2.01	0.35	1.66	n/a
Australia	1994	17,838,401	1.86	0.44	1.42	19.4
Singapore	1994	2,930,200	1.71	0.07	1.64	n/a
South Korea	1994	44,453,179	1.62	0.04	1.58	n/a
New Zealand	1993	3,458,850	1.47	0.17	1.30	22.3
Belgium	1990	9,967,387	1.41	0.60	0.81	16.6
England/Wales4	1997	51,429,000	1.41	0.11	1.30	4.7
Switzerland5	1994	7,021,000	1.32	0.58	0.74	27.2
Sweden	1993	8,718,571	1.30	0.18	1.12	15.1
Denmark	1993	5,189,378	1.21	0.23	0.98	n/a
Austria	1994	8,029,717	1.17	0.42	0.75	n/a
Germany6	1994	81,338,093	1.17	0.22	0.95	8.9
Greece	1994	10,426,289	1.14	0.59	0.55	n/a
France	1994	57,915,450	1.12	0.44	0.68	22.6
Netherlands	1994	15,382,830	1.11	0.36	0.75	1.9
Kuwait	1995	1,684,529	1.01	0.36	0.65	n/a
Norway	1993	4,324,815	0.97	0.30	0.67	32.0
Spain	1993	39,086,079	0.95	0.21	0.74	13.1
Japan	1994	124,069,000	0.62	0.02	0.60	n/a
Ireland	1991	3,525,719	0.62	0.03	0.59	n/a
Country	Year	Population	Total Homicide	Firearm Homicide	Non-Gun Homicide	% Households With Guns

Notice that the US, at 3.72, is much worse than most countries, but still less than South Africa, Columbia, Estonia, Brazil, Mexico, and N. Ireland, in this incomplete set of countries. I found a more complete source: "We must admit that the U.S. has a higher homicide rate than any Western European nation. Still, 23 nations admit to higher rates: Armenia, Bahamas, Belarus, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Moldova, Paraguay, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Russia, Sao Tome, Tajikistan, Trinidad, Ukraine, and Venezuela." From "America: The Most Violent Nation?" [ http://www.haciendapub.com/stolinsky.html ] which makes for interesting reading.

Also, as for the gun part of this debate versus the "US is fucked up" part, note that the US has a higher *non-gun* homicide rate than many European countries *total* homicide rates. There is clearly more going on than guns (not saying that you or BfC said otherwise, but I think its worth noting). And to put the US in perspective, Mexico (and 5 other countries) have *non-gun* homicide rates higher than our *total* homicide rate.

There are factors more strongly associated with violence than gun ownership and availability. There are some answers out there, for those (unlike Moore) who want to take the time to look for them. I'd suggest looking at drug prohibition. Spending on that "war" and homicide rate are quite nicely correlated. My dad has done an economic analysis exploring potential reasons for this connection, and here's an academic paper which reaches that conclusion by analyzing international data.

BTW, with regards to whether US fear is irrational, note that while the US homicide rate has been dropping for the last decade or so, we've only gotten down to 1967 levels. 1941-1966 still had lower homicide rates than we do now - half of what the homicide rate was in 1971-1982 and at most 2/3 of what it was during the period 1971-1995 [http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/hmrt.htm].

So yes, we should have been feeling safer for the past 10 years. But it was also rational to be much more scared in 1971-1995 than 1941-1966. There was a lot more to be afraid of.