Compared to the world's other high-income nations, the United States isn't unusually violent; we're just unusually lethal.

That's according to David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He argues there is a direct connection between the U.S. being leaps and bounds ahead of any other industrialized country in terms of overall gun death rates -- and the fact that we have the highest gun-ownership rates in the world

"We are a nation which does not have more crime or more violence," Hemenway said during a forum on gun violence held shortly after the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn in December 2012. "We are an average nation in terms of assault, robbery and (non-firearms) homicides.”

What distinguishes the U.S., he notes, is our rate of gun violence: "The United States has a very horrific gun problem ... 85 people a day dying from guns from all sorts of injury." He adds: "Compared to the other developed countries, we are just doing terribly."

Below are a handful of particularly striking gun homicide stats, based on incomplete 2010 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Scroll over the charts for additional information. It's important to note, however, that statistics on gun deaths vary fairly broadly based on the federal agency reporting them. These rates, for example, differ noticeably from those reported by the FBI. Note, also, that the terms "firearms" and "guns" are used interchangeably.

[ad fullwidth]

The U.S. gun murder rate -- which is now actually at its lowest level since the early 1980s -- is still more than double that of any other wealthy nation in the world.

Hemenway notes that a child in the U.S is about 13 times more likely to be a victim of a firearm-related homicide than children in most other industrialized nations.

Firearms were the third leading cause of injury-related deaths nationwide in 2010, following poisoning and motor vehicle accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the sake of comparison, in 2010 there were more than twice as many firearms deaths in the U.S. than terrorism-related deaths worldwide.

gun homicidesgun homicides

U.S. Gun Homicides: Visualizing the Numbers