Hillary Clinton made one imporant point about gun control during the Democratic debate

While Hillary Clinton's claims that since the last Democratic debate (just 32 days ago) nearly 3,000 people have died from gun violence in the United States are refuted, she still made an important point about gun control on Saturday.

Clinton's figures appear inflated with the Gun Violence Archive recording 11,485 gun deaths in the US so far this year (an average of just under 1,000 per month), but the numbers are still shocking.

"This is an emergency," Clinton said.

The government has to 'go after the gun lobby' and make background checks universally mandatory.

I will do everything I can as president to get that accomplished.

"We have a lot of work to do, and we're the only nation on the planet that buries as many of our people from gun violence as we do," said former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley.

In my own state, after the children in that Connecticut classroom were gunned down, we passed comprehensive gun safety legislation with background checks, ban on assault weapons, and, senator, I think we do need to repeal that immunity that you granted to the gun industry.

A 2013 study by two New York based cardiologists which examined rates of firearm deaths in 27 developed countries using World Health Organisation data from 2010 found the US had the highest rate of gun deaths.

And this from the other side of the political fence:

UPDATE: An earlier version of this article inferred Clinton's statistics to be accurate, although some now dispute those figures.

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