I’m not actually convinced this map tells us much, since the 50 states aren’t countries, and don’t have the populations of the countries they are depicted as being the most similar to, gun-ownership-wise.
But it’s still kind of fun. A friend of mine says, “California is closest to the People’s Republic of China – a Communist country. How accurate!” Of course, California has 37 million people and 33 million guns; China has 1.35 billion people and 40 million privately owned guns. So even California is, well, way badder than its “nation” counterpart in gun ownership.
Oklahoma, meanwhile, is most like Switzerland in this analysis — and gun rights folks will recognize Switzerland as the gun-friendliest nation in Europe. “A gun in every closet,” each military-age male issued a gun and taught to use it, repeated political defeats for minority attempts to make gun laws more restrictive. But Oklahoma has 3.7 million people and 3.3 million guns, whereas Switzerland has 7.9 million people. So percentage-wise, Oklahoma is substantially badder than Switzerland, while Oklahoma and California are, percentage-wise, about the same bad.
(Texas has a leg up with 25.1 million people and 22.3 million guns. This number of guns is reportedly most like Germany. New York, on the other hand, clocks in as “Pakistan,” with 19.3 million people and 17.2 million guns. Heh.)
Courtesy of IJ Review, where you can read the numbers in tabular form. Enjoy.
