This cause of death is part of the ‘external’ causes of death category (see Map 5) and comes under the sub-category of ‘Homicide and injury purposely inflicted by other persons’, along with a range of other means of murder/assault, such as cutting or poisoning. See also ‘Deaths from suicide/undetermined by firearms’ (Map 35).

More than two thirds of these deaths are of males. Deaths are concentrated in inner city areas, particularly Glasgow and London, but are not exclusive to those areas. Many areas have very low rates.

Perhaps the most striking thing about this cause of death is its rarity, given that gun crimes receive much attention in the media. In fact this is the least frequent cause of death considered in this book – over this time period you were more likely to be killed in an air accident (900 deaths) than by firearms (unless you killed yourself with a gun, for which there were 4,619 cases: see Map 35 which shows low rates in London and Glasgow).

The rate of deaths from guns, whether homicide, suicide, or unintentional injury, is related to laws regarding gun ownership, the extent of gun ownership and gun carrying, and the prevalence of guns within the home.

The UK has some of the strictest gun control legislation in the world. Following the Hungerford massacre in 1987 (when 16 people were killed) and again after the Dunblane massacre in 1996 (when 16 primary school children and their teacher were killed), both of which were atrocities committed with legally owned firearms, access to firearms has been substantially tightened; private ownership of handguns is now almost completely banned. The law is so tight that even Britain’s Olympic shooters have to train abroad and the London 2012 Olympics have been granted special dispensation.

Contrast this with the US where in 2004, on average, 81 people died every day due to gunfire and another 176 were injured (Marsh, 2007). Between 1979 and 1997 almost 30,000 Americans died as a result of unintentional firearm injuries, half of whom were under 25 and 4,600 of whom were less than 15 years of age (Miller et al, 2001). The Second Amendment of the US Constitution stipulates ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms’.