
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 27, 1990                   TAG: 9006270158
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Medium

YOUNG MEN'S HOMICIDES MOST COMMON IN U.S.

Young men in the United States are more than four times as likely to be homicide victims than those in 21 other industrialized countries, according to a study released Tuesday.

In 1987, there were 4,223 male homicide victims aged 15 to 24 in the United States, or 21.9 for every 100,000 men in that age group, researchers said in an article in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.

The country with the next highest rate was Scotland with 22 victims, or 5.0 for every 100,000 men in the same category. Austria's 0.3 was the lowest rate.

"If the U.S. homicide rate could be reduced to the next highest rate, more than 3,000 lives would be saved" each year, wrote Lois Fingerhut and Joel Kleinman of the federal National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md.

While there is no clear reason for the wide differences, "we have to look at the availability of firearms," said Fingerhut in a telephone interview from Hyattsville.

The researchers found that 75 percent of the U.S. deaths were caused by guns. France was second with 54 percent.

The researchers used the latest available figures for each of the 21 countries; most were for 1987 but some were for 1986 or 1985.

A spokesman for the National Rifle Association in Washington, Tom Wyld, said the NRA wouldn't comment without studying the article.

But James Wright, a Tulane University sociologist who specializes in criminology, noted that the Swiss own guns and have almost no history of violence.

"But they do emphasize responsible firearm ownership much more than we do," he said.

According to the NCHS study, only one of 14 homicides in Switzerland was by firearm.

"And, if you subtract all the firearm homicides, we're still killing loads more people than any other country," Wright said from his office in New Orleans.

Homicides in the United States in 1987 not involving firearms outnumbered annual murder totals in all 21 other countries combined by more than 3-to-1 (1,036 to 308), according to the study.

"The argument has been made that comparisons of homicide in the United States and other countries are not valid because the United States has such a heterogeneous population," the researchers said.

But they point to Ohio, whose black and metropolitan percentages mirror the entire United States, but whose homicide rates for both blacks and whites are less than half the national average.

Fingerhut said the research focused on the 15-to-24 age group because 20 percent of all U.S. homicides occurred in this age group, and because Public Health Service objectives include a sharp reduction in homicides, especially among black males.

by CNB