Europe is critical of US gun rights and gun violence, but criminals abroad use other weapons to kill

Debate over gun control often assumes that removing firearms removes violence. But Europe’s experience suggests something more complicated: policy may change the weapon, but it does not eliminate the impulse toward violence.

Only about 20% of the homicides in the European Union are tied to gun violence most years, according to Eurostat data, compared to around 75% in the U.S. Though figures vary from year to year, in 2023 (the latest year that has comprehensive data), about half of the nearly 4,000 homicides in the 27 European Union member states took place from sharp objects like knives or broken bottles and around 20% from blunt force, as with clubs, fists, rocks, or improvised objects. The remainder are tied to vehicles, fires, drowning and other less frequent categories.

Even if firearms are removed from a situation, determined offenders “would choose the next most suitable weapon and carry on with their intentions,” said Marvin Wolfgang, a prominent American criminologist and author of what became to be known as the “weapon substitution hypothesis.”

Overall numbers are still slanted heavily toward the U.S., where there were nearly 25,000 homicides in 2023. But Europe’s experience complicates the central point in American gun control debates: Restricting access to firearms reduces shootings and can lower the overall homicide rate, but it clearly does not abolish violent behavior.

Studies show that violence reorganizes around the tools that are legal and easy to find. Knives, blunt objects, vehicles, and fire are not loopholes in the law. They are reminders that public safety policy operates within the constraints of human nature.

British criminologist David Garland has argued that modern societies cannot eradicate violence but instead seek to “regulate it, redistribute it, and seek to contain it within acceptable limits.” The distinction is critical to understanding Europe’s approach to violence.

In some European countries, homicides by attackers without firearms are on the rise, compared to previous levels.

Earlier this year, a series of knife attacks in Austria kicked off a national debate, and in May, 18 people were injured when a mentally unstable woman with two knives went on a stabbing spree in the German city of Hamburg. 

In July, French police charged an 18-year-old man with planned knife attacks on women, and a month later, an American tourist was knifed on a German tram after standing up for a woman who was being harassed.

Earlier this month, German police arrested five men on charges they planned to barrel into a Christmas market in a car, a plan authorities said had the aim of “killing or injuring as many as possible.” A study cited by DW Media in Germany said that reported car attacks had doubled in Europe in the last decade.

Meanwhile, Polish border guards were severely beaten on that country’s border with Belarus and a man in Slovenia was pummeled to death by local gangs in October.

Most of these tragic events have turned the debate toward other topics, such as immigration – the knife attacks in Austria, the American tourist stabbed in Germany, the Christmas market plan, and the Slovenian murder were all tied to migrants in those countries – as well as mental health and unemployment.