美国枪支暴力有多严重 数据告诉你

The mass shooting in Orlando on Sunday was appalling in scale: 49 killed in a single attack. But it’s not unusual for dozens of Americans to be killed by guns in a single day.

周日的奥兰多枪击事件之惨痛是骇人听闻的：一场袭击便夺走了49人的生命。但数十名美国人在一天内被枪杀则并不罕见。

Gun homicides are a common cause of death in the United States, killing about as many people as car crashes (not counting van, truck, motorcycle or bus accidents). Some cases command our attention more than others, of course. Counting mass shootings that make headlines and the thousands of Americans murdered one or a few at a time, gunshot homicides totaled 8,124 in 2014, according to the F.B.I.

枪杀在美国是一个常见死因，致死人数与小汽车事故相当（不包括货车、卡车、摩托车和公交车事故）。当然了，其中一些案件格外受到关注。联邦调查局(FBI)的数据显示，算上登上头条的大规模枪击事件，以及遇害者为一名或几名美国人的数千起袭击，2014年共有8124人被枪杀。

This level of violence makes the United States an extreme outlier when measured against the experience of other advanced countries.

相较于其他发达国家的情况，这种暴力程度让美国成了一个极不寻常的国度。

Around the world, those countries have substantially lower rates of deaths from gun homicide. In Germany, being murdered with a gun is as uncommon as being killed by a falling object in the United States. About two people out of every million are killed in a gun homicide. Gun homicides are just as rare in several other European countries, including the Netherlands and Austria. In the United States, two per million is roughly the death rate for hypothermia or plane crashes.

其他发达国家的涉枪命案数远远低于美国。在德国，涉枪谋杀致死的罕见程度，与美国的高空坠物致死不相上下。每100万人里，约有两人会成为涉枪杀人案的遇害者。在包括荷兰、奥地利在内的其他几个欧洲国家中，涉枪杀人案同样罕见。在美国，百万分之二差不多是低体温症或者飞机失事的致死率。

In Poland and England, only about one out of every million people die in gun homicides each year — about as often as an American dies in an agricultural accident or falling from a ladder. In Japan, where gun homicides are even rarer, the likelihood of dying this way is about the same as an American’s chance of being killed by lightning — roughly one in 10 million.

在波兰和英国，每100万人中，每年约有一人死于涉枪杀人案——跟美国的务农事故或者摔下梯子的致死率差不多。在涉枪杀人案更为罕见的日本，被人枪杀的概率跟在美国遭雷击死亡是一样的——约为千万分之一。

In the United States, the death rate from gun homicides is about 31 per million people — the equivalent of 27 people shot dead every day of the year. The homicides include losses from mass shootings, like Sunday’s Orlando attack, or the San Bernardino, Calif., shooting last December. And of course, they also include the country’s vastly more common single-victim killings.

在美国，涉枪杀人死亡率约为百万分之三十一——相当于每年的每一天都有27人被枪杀。这些杀人案包括了造成多人死亡的大规模枪击事件，比如周日的奥兰多枪击案，以及去年12月的加州圣贝纳迪诺枪击案。当然也包括常见得多的一人死亡杀人案。

To give you a sense of how unusual America’s gun violence problem is, consider the daily death toll compared with other Western democracies. The chart below imagines that the populations of those countries were the same as the population of the United States.

对比美国与其他西方民主国家的每日死亡人数，可以体会到美国枪支暴力问题的异常性。下面的图表假设各国的人口与美国相当。

International comparisons help highlight how exceptional the United States: In a nation where the right to bear arms is cherished by much of the population, gun homicides are a significant public health concern. For men 15 to 29, they are the third-leading cause of death, after accidents and suicides. In other high-income countries, gun homicides are unusual events. Last year’s Paris attacks killed 130 people, which is nearly as many as die from gun homicides in all of France in a typical year. But even if France had a mass shooting as deadly as the Paris attacks every month, its annual rate of gun homicide death would be lower than that in the United States.

国际层面的比较有助于突显美国的情况是多么不寻常：在一个很多人都极为珍视持枪权的国度里，涉枪杀人成了重大的公共健康问题。在15岁至29岁的男性中，涉枪杀人是第三大死因。在其他高收入国家中，涉枪杀人案难得一见。去年，巴黎恐袭导致130人丧生，这几乎相当于普通年份里全法国的涉枪杀人死亡人数。但即便法国每个月都发生一起致命程度与巴黎恐袭相当的大规模枪击案，其每年的涉枪杀人死亡率还是会低于美国。

The accompanying table shows the mortality rates for gun homicides in a variety of countries, along with a correspondingly likely cause of death in the United States.

所附表格列明了不同国家的涉枪杀人死亡率，及其相当于在美国由哪种原因造成的死亡率。

Our gun homicide numbers come from the Small Arms Survey, a Swiss nonprofit affiliated with the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, and represent the average gun homicide death rates in those countries between 2007 and 2012. The United States death rates come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over those same years. There are more recent statistics on American gun deaths, like the F.B.I. number at the top of this article, but we chose these years to provide fair comparisons. We focused on the rates of gun homicides; the overall rate of gun deaths is substantially higher, because suicides make up a majority of gun deaths in the United States and are also higher than in other developed countries.

我们的涉枪杀人数据来自日内瓦高级国际关系及发展学院(Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies)所属的瑞士非盈利机构“小武器问题调查”(Small Arms Survey)，其中列明了2007至2009年间这些国家的涉枪他杀死亡率均值。美国同期的死亡率数据来自美国疾病控制与预防中心(Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention)。关于美国的涉枪死亡人数，有更多近期的统计数据，例如本文开头来自FBI的数字，但为了做出更为公正的比较，我们选择了上述时间段。我们所关注的是涉枪他杀死亡率；总体涉枪死亡率比这高得多——因为在美国涉枪死亡大部分是自杀——而且也高于其他发达国家。

The table is not meant to make light of rare causes of death. Instead, we show them as a way to help think meaningfully about the differences among gun death rates.

这个表格并非轻视罕见的死亡原因。我们把它们列举出来，是为了帮助读者认真思考不同国家涉枪死亡率之间的差异。

The rate of gun violence in the United States is not the highest in the world. In parts of Central America, Africa and the Middle East, the gun death rates are even higher — close to those from heart attacks and lung cancer in the United States. In neighboring Mexico, where a drug war rages, 122 people per million die in a gun homicide, a rate slightly higher than Americans’ death rate from pancreatic cancer. But the countries with those levels of gun violence are not like the United States in many other ways, including G.D.P., life expectancy and education. Among developed democracies, the United States is an outlier.

美国的枪支暴力发生率并不是全世界最高的。在中美洲、非洲和中东的部分地区，涉枪死亡率还要更高一些——接近美国的心脏病和肺癌死亡率。在毒品战争肆虐的邻国墨西哥，每100万人里有122人死于涉枪杀人案——略高于美国的胰腺癌死亡率。但枪支暴力问题极为严重的这些国家，在GDP、人均寿命、教育等其他方面与美国大相径庭。在发达民主国家中，美国是一个异类。