Pundits and editorialists equate the rate of gun-related deaths with the availability of firearms. However, internationally, rates of violent crime and suicide appear to be independent of how extensively a country controls guns.

• Russia, Estonia, Mexico, Northern Ireland, Canada and Hungary all have high rates of homicide and/or suicide despite restrictive gun control laws, and low rates of suicide are found in relatively well-armed jurisdictions like Israel and New Zealand.

• Gun control laws are uniform throughout the United Kingdom, but murder rates are not -- in 1989 the murder rate per 100,000 people was 0.6 in England and Wales, 3.3 in Scotland and 7 in Northern Ireland.

• When Canadian provinces and adjoining U.S. states are compared, threefold-to-tenfold differences in the prevalence of handguns have not resulted in consistently different rates of criminal homicide.

Perhaps the most powerful example that gun control does not equal crime control is the United States. Prior to the enactment of federal gun controls in 1968, guns could be bought virtually anywhere by any adult, but the national murder rate then was half what it is now.

In fact, evidence suggests that guns are an effective crime deterrent in the hands of legal owners.

• A study published by the University of Chicago found that crime rates are lower when civilians are allowed to carry concealed weapons.

• Murder rates in the District of Columbia and Chicago actually went up after each jurisdiction passed restrictive gun control laws.

• Burglaries of occupied dwellings in the gun-free U.K. are much more frequent than in the United States.

It isn't even evident that gun control laws have reduced gun ownership in the United States. Despite more than 20,000 gun-control laws nationwide, firearms are present in about the same percentage of households today as in the 1960s.

Source: Daniel D. Polsby, "Firearms and Crime," Independent Policy Report, 1997, The Independent Institute, 134 Ninety-Eighth Avenue, Oakland, CA 94603, (510) 632-1366.

For full text of the University of Chicago study http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/%7Ellou/guns.html