U.S. homicide rates compared to different countries

How so? The level of violence is not really determined by the lethality of the weapons used. If a society is violent, it uses whatever is on hand to use as weapons. The increased lethalness of guns over knives does not necessarily mean banning guns, but one should not ignore that reality.

 

Misleading as 4/5th or 805% of firearm deaths are suicides, and suicides or deaths from dispair have been increasing along with the increasingly awful social, political, and economic conditions of our country. Furthermore comparing straight numbers instead of the rate per is also somewhat misleading.

 

Or we can look at the the increasing third world nation status of our nation. The poorer, more dysfunctional, and corrupt a society is, the more violent it is likely to be. Noticed anything increasing in the United States of America lately?

 

And reducing the availability of guns will reduce that suicide rate

There is little evidence supporting a substitution effect with suicides

And there are plenty of stats that show a per rate but is not required when the base numerator is equal

 

"Overall, evaluations of the effects of acquisition restrictions on violent outcomes have produced inconsistent findings: some studies indicated decreases in violence associated with restrictions, and others indicated increases. One study indicated a statistically significant reduction in the rate of suicide by firearms among persons aged >55 years; however, the reduction in suicide by all methods was not statistically significant."

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm

 

Can it be explained what criteria is used for qualifying a firearm as being more lethal than a knife?

 

The problem with such an approach, however, is the sheer number of firearms currently in circulation in the united states, makes such an endeavor physically impossible. There are more firearms than people in the united states, most of them unregistered and impossible to find. "Reducing the availability of firearms" in this regard could technically amount to a reduction of the total number by one percent, but such would not make a dent in overall statistics.

Even then, a one percent reduction in the total number of firearms would be prohibitively expensive to accomplish on its own, despite the fact it will amount to nothing worthwhile.