3/24/2008

UN ranks the US as only 22 in terms of places to live primarily because of guns

I came across this article in the London Times because of a link on the Drudge Report:

"Mr Le Mière said that the US had fallen down the scale, although it still scored an average of 93 out of 100, partly because of the proliferation of small arms owned by Americans and the threat to the population posed by the flow of drugs from across the Mexican border."


I know that in the past the US has had a low rating because of claimed health care issues and I imagine that is still buried in here someplace.

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6 Comments:

Blogger Federal Farmer said...

I'm sure that immigration is swelling the populations of the 21 higher ranked countries...

3/24/2008 8:40 PM  
Blogger James said...

These studies are always based on some left-wing factors designed to label the U.S. as a miserable country. No mention in the article about whether or not Switzerland's high firearm ownership had any impact.

3/24/2008 10:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't understand how we can "fall down due to the proliferation of small arms" when we've always had guns. They're not any more proliferated than they were 20 years ago.

I think the explanation is that "small arms proliferation" is now an international issue and we're getting flack for it.

3/25/2008 6:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well it wasn't the UN that compiled this list.

And it wasn't the best places to live, either.

It was which countries were the most stable and safest , compiled by a company which specialises in performing risk assesment for security purposes.

http://www.janes.com/news/security/countryrisk/

3/25/2008 6:54 PM  
Blogger John Lott said...

Dear KB:

The UN commissioned the study and presumably had complete control over how it was done.

3/25/2008 7:59 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The UN commissioned the study and presumably had complete control over how it was done."

The UN did not commission the study and has nothing to do with it.

The only 'involvement' the UN had was the company in question ranked every country and terrority recognised by the UN.

It's a private company which sells risk assessment intelligence. This is a PR exercise to get its name in the press by boiling down its existing assesments to a single figure and then ranking them.

3/26/2008 3:19 AM  

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