The United States has the largest number of privately owned guns in the world, and the unchecked spread of guns has caused incessant murders, says the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2006 issued on Thursday.

A report released by the U.S. Department of Justice said in 2005, 477,040 victims of violent crimes stated that they faced an offender with a firearm.

A Washington metropolitan police department report stated in 2006 that from 2001 to 2005, 901 of 1,126 homicide victims, or about 80 percent, were fatally shot, while the percentage in New Orleans was 92 percent.

Campus shootings are also rampant in the United States. The country reported three campus shootings in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Colorado within one week from the end of September to the beginning of October in 2006.

Five girls were fatally shot and 6 others injured during the shooting incident in an Amish school in Pennsylvania on Oct. 2, 2006.

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