Top 10 countries with no gun laws and low crime correspond to one of the golden rules such as “the less is more” (or, the more is less in our case).
So, it seems that countries with stricter gun control laws are more prone to serious crime commitments than ones with a more liberal viewpoint on gun-ownership. This further means that areas with a higher rate of civilians’ gun ownership are not necessarily related to a violent environment — on the contrary, the practice shows that stringent gun laws are almost always resulting in high murder rates. There is also a strong belief that the main factor which differs “gun-violent” country from “not-so-gun-violent” one might lay in a cultural phenomenon. This fact is supported by the statistics which claim that the United Kingdom homicide rate has always been lower than the United States’; it has not changed even after the Britain civilians won the legal right to own their personal guns. Nowadays, due to its strict gun laws, their homicide rate has raised to 1.4 per 100,000 residents for the U.K. due to its less, while, for example, Switzerland, with its highest per capita firearm ownership in the world, has a murder rate approximately 1.2 per 100,000 residents. However, there are some Asian countries that do not allow civilian gun-ownership, such as South Korea (only air guns can be owned by civilians), Japan (for sport shooters or hunter with a legal license, shotguns or air rifles are obtainable but extremely restricted) and North Korea (where the civilian gun-ownership is completely banned). However, it is recently estimated that most of the Asian countries have high homicide rate, even higher than the US. Mexico bans gun-ownership totally. The Netherlands, South Korea, and Japan are the three main countries with the strictest gun laws in the world, at least according to our list.
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According to Library of Congress, in the Great Britain “only police officers, members of the armed forces, or individuals with written permission from the Home Secretary may lawfully own a handgun.” Unlike Americans who do have a lawful right to hold and own personal firearms, Germans have to gain a ‘firearms ownership license’ (Waffenbesitzkarte), depending on a type of the particular gun. Future applicants must be at least 18 years old, free of any criminal record, non-alcoholic or no-drug consumers and mentally stable. After one of the biggest mass massacres in entire Australian national history, on April 28, 1996, when 35 people died, and 23 were wounded, restriction of gun-ownership was more than inevitable. Not long after this enormous catastrophe, the Australian government adopted new licensing requirements, banned automatic and semiautomatic firearms, and established a national firearms registry. The government also bought and destroyed more than 600,000 civilian-owned firearms.
However, it is of essential importance to note that gun regulations are “must have” in all civilized countries around the world. So, in upcoming list, countries with no gun laws practically denotes world-wide areas were regulations are not too strict but in spite of that, crime rate remains low. As for our ranking criteria, we checked out GunPolicy in order to find countries with less-restrictive gun laws. After a thorough examination, we consulted Guardian’s article which provided us with the information such as countries’ ranking by the rate of gun ownership, average firearms per 100 people and firearm-related death rate per 100,000 population. The most significant factors for our final ranking were the last two previously mentioned because the crime rate is an extremely wide term. For our research, only crimes (or murders) committed by firearms such as guns or shotguns were of valid importance. Therefore, we ranked the following countries starting with ones with more restrictive gun policy and high homicide index to the least restrictive with the lowest crime rate indexes. Bear in mind that despite official pieces of information, there are numerous unrecorded firearm-crimes on a daily basis, so the current situation related to this issue is constantly changing. Be sure to check out our articles on states with easiest, least restrictive gun laws in America and countries with the best gun laws in the world before you proceed to the list below.
Now, are you ready to check our final 10 countries with no gun laws and low crime list? So it begins.
10. Panama
You can easily buy a gun in firearm store in Panama. However, you have to bring up the brand-new gun to local authorities where your weapon will undergo ballistic identification check. In case you are a Panamanian, you have to wait at least eight months for your gun to be given back to you (foreigners even longer). If you are not from this country, you are allowed to bring in your personal gun (of course, not without undergoing specific identification processes). According to Panamanian gun policy, only legal residents can either carry or own personal guns. Foreigners need to become personal residents before they are permitted to apply and get a gun license. The country is in the 10th place in our countries with no gun laws and low crime list due to homicide by firearm rate per 100, 000 people which is 16.18.
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