This post is from 2007. There’s a 2012 update with more recent statistics.
In the UK (population c. 60.5m) there were 765 reported incidents of murder for 2005-6 (Home Office, undated) – a rate of about 1.1 per 100,000.
In the US (population c. 298.5m) there were an estimated 16,137 homicides in 2004 (FBI, 2006a) – a rate of about 5.4 per 100,000. Of these, 10,654 were carried out with guns (FBI, 2006b).
_________________________
Federal Bureau of Investigation (2006a). Bureau of Justice Statistics. Homicide trends in the U.S.. Long-term trends. Available from: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/totalstab.htm.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (2006). Bureau of Justice Statistics. Homicide trends in the U.S.. Weapons used. Available from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/weaponstab.htm
Home Office (undated). ‘Homicide’ – long-term national recorded crime trends. Available from: http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/page40.asp.
Flesh is Grass 
GO USA!
If you SUBTRACT the Gun Crimes (16,137 – 10,654) you get 5,483 murders in the US (non-gun related).
This is a rate of 1.8 per 100,000.
THIS IS STILL HIGHER THAN BRITAN’S 1.1 per 100,000…
And doesn’t that make you wonder…why doesn’t the UK Statistic show the number of murders involving a firearm?
SO what is the use of comparing the data if it isn’t an even comparrison?
What would the people use to commit murder if guns didn’t exist, and how high would be the over-all crime rate if you convert a percentage of the murders over from firearm to “something else”???
Stupid statistics like this don’t help us understand the VIOLENT problem we have in the US…it only helps to promote a political agenda.
actually I was 2000 figure which said that 68% of murder in us were carryed out in us used in gun 7% in the uk meaning you had 60 times more likely to shot in the us!
yet you have a 25% of the population getting killed by a knife in the UK… actually this rate is higher than the stats in the US for gun (including suicides, the UK stat does not) and knife crimes combined per ca pita. Looks to me like gun control does not control the murderers, and in fact probably creates a few more murderers due to the fact that they have no fear of the victim having a gun.
“25% of the population getting killed by a knife in the UK”
If that were true I think we’d have noticed by now, Eric.
I did mis speak.. I meant 1 in 4 youths that were murdered in the UK was by knife.. Also apparently it was outdated info.. it is now 40% http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/21/knives-youth-killings-weapon
Just goes to show, again, the tool in which to use is still irrelevant.
There were less than 20 un murders in the U.K. in 2010. They do break out number invloving firearms, they are just very very few and far between.
Curious….would you rather be shot, or stabbed? Obviously neither, but it would appear that if someone wants to kill, they simply switch methods of one method is not available. So, tell us again….what would gun control accomplish? Certainly not saving lives. I guess the next thing we would need to do is outlaw knives?
Obviously neither. I do however have a much greater chance of surving a stabbing than a shooting. The numbers prove that the methods DO NOT simply change. When compared to other first world countries, we have a much much higher murder rate, we also, not by coincidence, have a much higher gun ownership rate with far fewer controls on ownership than any other first world country. That’s not a coincidence. The easier you make it for someone to kill someone else, the more likely it is going to be that it happens. Gun control would achieve what it has in EVERY other first world country, very low murder rates, because it makes murder a lot more difficult and then far less likely if you have strict gun controls. Not only is the gun murder rate much lower in other first world countries, so is the overaqll murder rate.
No Fs given so far.
Except for Eric and Ken
You lose Ken
I’m not comparing them. I listed them.
Go find your own data (and please let me have it).
If they UK has one murder by gun I’d say they’re already worse off than the US statistically. I’d love to see how many homicides the UK had by firearm considering that they are “banned” there. The amount of guns owned in the US is astronomical compared to the number used in murders. I’m willing to bet it’s the opposite over there.
In japan they doctor the murder stats by deeming many murders to be suicides. A man goes crazy and kills his family, 4 suicides, while in the US that would be 3 murders and a suicide. I wonder what they do in the UK to lie about their murder rate. A good rule is if a country has a gun ban and a vested interest in publishing a low murder stat, multiply it by 5 and you are closer to the truth.
They don’t do anything to lie about their murder rate you retard. We have a very high murder rate, they don’t simple as that.
You want everyone else to be lying about their’s because you don’t want to admit the truth.
Yes they do, they decide what exactly goes into the murder statistic. In the US our “murder rate” is the gross manslaughter rate, not the murder conviction rate.
No they don’t. You were talking about how the murder rate is manipulated in Japan and speculating about how they manipulate it in the U.K. Now you have changed it to talking about the USA.
I’d assume that was not doctoring, but cultural differneces. I’d imagine the family is more important over there, perhaps more so than the individual, so killing your own family is like killing yourself. Also, is suicide even legal in Japan?
I would trust the authorities in my own country, that is Britain, the one you are accusing, not to ‘doctor’ our murder rates for the sake of PR. There are many things which might affect murder rates in different countries.
Both nations’ murder rates are small compared to Columbia, apparently the worst. (A lot of organised crime, guerilla movements, and so on…?)
Though it would appear the overall violent crime rate is higher in the UK (just fewer guns = less leading to death?) and some of what may be construed as misreporting does take place:
http://wheelgun.blogspot.com/2007/01/crime-in-uk-versus-crime-in-us.html
Colombia has a gun ban. Nigeria has a gun ban. Pretty much all the nations with a high murder rate have gun bans. None of the nations with high gun ownership rates have high murder rates. If you want to counter argue, I’ll give you the tools. http://www.gunpolicy.org. and you can search the WHO murder rates among nations. You challenge is to find a nation with a high rate of civilian gun possession that also has a high rate of murder. Good luck!
Really? You’re going to ompare the USA to 3rd World countries now? Compare us to other 1st World countries. Don’t be so ridiculous.
Amongst other wealthy first world nations, we have the highest murder rate and the highest gun ownership rate
I think, Charles and Chaz, his point is that if you ban guns people will still commit murders with whatever weapon is available. This isn’t about politics and economics, so yes, comparing us to countries with gun bans would be correct.
Do you honestly believe if you were to ban all guns that our murder rates would lower? I guess it is possible, but you would have to ignore the reason the murder was committed. If someone wants to commit a murder they will do it with a gun, a baseball bat, knife, or any other weapon that is available.
Yeah OK. But in the end it’s not about which country is worse off. Isn’t the question to ask here about establishing or ruling out relationships between homicides and weapons, rather than comparing countries? Sure, you do compare countries – not to establish a hierarchy of virtue, but to explore causes and factors.
Considering that the murder rate in the USA is so much higher, by a staggering amount than in the UK and most of those murders are committed with guns, mostly pistols at that, I think there may be some correlatoin between high gun ownership rates and high murder rates.
The murder rates in the USA vary wildly from state to state. Louisiana, with fairly average gun laws, has a murder rate ten times that of the UK, while Vermont, which has almost no gun control laws at all, has a murder rate on a par with the UK. And Vermont doesn’t have the death penalty. Blaming guns is too simple.
No one is blaming just guns, at least I am not. There are also socioeconomic reasons for high murder rates, however that said if people (as a whole) have more guns what would have ended as a bar fight in the UK ends as someone being shot here. why, because they can, because they have a gun.
Take a tpical situation in England (I used to live there I know what it’s like) Someone wants to start a fight in a pub or a club, you gte into a fight with that person. You beat him and make him look an ass, he gets kicked out, in England that’s it it’s over. Here you run the risk of that asshole either waiting outside for you and shooting you or more likely coming back in after a few minutes of brewing and shooting you and anyone else who gets in the way. Both of those scenarios happen over and over again in the UK and the USA.
In the UK it usually ends with someome getting a “good kicking” as the Brits put it and over here it often ends with someone dead in a pool of blood, because the person who lost comes back with a gun to get revenge. And that’s just one example. Fights over women, in the UK it is likely to end with some getting a “good kicking” while here it is quite likely to end with someone being shot and quite likely dying from his wounds. Owning a gun just makes it so much easier to kill people in the heat of the moment. All that said of course socioeconomic status (class) does make a difference. People of lower socioeconomic status (lower class)
tend to be more likely to use violence as a perceived solution to a problem. No one is going to deny that the poverty rate in Louisiana is far higher than in the UK and far higher than in Vermont, therefore the perpensity to use violence as a solution is far higher. So no it’s not just the guns, but it does make a huge difference. It is far easier to shoot someone to death than it is to beat them to death.
None of that made since since the human thing is to run away from a fight and really run once someone is proven to be tougher than you. Most people do not come back with a gun or wait outside with one. That is complete hogwash. The rare incident heard on the news is precisely that, rare.
The problem we face and have to change in this society is perception of what is right and/or acceptable. In a society that is quickly moving away from playing outside and human interaction we must make efforts to reinforce the rules. TV, movies, and comics now many times more than not glorify violence without context and plays down any aspects of honor and humility. It shows the cool guy resorting to violence quickly and without regard for others when the easiest thing would have been to walk away call the cops and nothing lost.
We have to stop allowing everything to be acceptable just because some idiot says it’s his right to be an idiot. We must (and I don’t like saying this) step backwards to a time when society as whole looked at somethig as wrong and deemed it wrong, and prevented society from being disrupted by it, either by local law or by simply ostricizing the offender until he or she complied and assimilated.
Murder rate goes down from there. Yes that sounds harsh, and simplistic and it is. I am not writing a thesis here, just making social comentary.
It’s not hogwash at all. People come back for revenge all the time. How tough someone is has nothing whatsoever to do with it when you have a gun. THat’s the whole point.
I actually find this explanation to be closest to the truth as I see it! Thank you!
Yes the correlation based on world data is that the least violent half of nations have 3 times higher firearms possession rates among civilians than the most violent half of nations.
If you take out 2nd. World Countries (former countries of the Wasaw Pact) and 3rd. World Countries (now called devoping world) The high gun ownership countries have the highest murder rates. I am not willing to compare the USA to 2nd. World countries who are still struggling with the idea of democracy or 3rd. World countries that have extraordinarly high poverty rates.
How about Austraila Chazz, would you compair the US to them. They are currently 18th out of 37 countries in murder rates according to the WHO. The US didn`t even make the list and they have very strict gun laws. They have 17.007 murders per 1 million citizens, they also have more violent crime and Great Britian is considered to be the most violent country in the EU. You see, when you take away a citizens ability to defend themselves, the criminals become bolder.
The Tories said Labour had presided over a decade of spiralling violence.
In the decade following the party’s election in 1997, the number of recorded violent attacks soared by 77 per cent to 1.158million – or more than two every minute.
The figures, compiled from reports released by the European Commission and United Nations, also show:
The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.
It has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The UK has the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU.
It has the fourth highest burglary rate and the highest absolute number of burglaries in the EU, with double the number of offences than recorded in Germany and France.
But it is the naming of Britain as the most violent country in the EU that is most shocking. The analysis is based on the number of crimes per 100,000 residents.
In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-placed Austria with a rate of 1,677.
Crime in England and Wales, Year Ending June 2012 (this has replaced the BCS):
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-…june-2012.html
Quote:
Violence
Violent crime covers a wide range of offences, from minor assaults such as pushing and shoving that result in no physical harm through to serious incidents of wounding and murder. Robbery, an offence in which violence or the threat of violence is used during a theft (or attempted theft) is not included in the police recorded violence against the person offence group as it is reported separately in the robbery section, but it is included within CSEW violence. Estimates of violence, from the CSEW, against 10 to 15 year olds can be found in the ‘Crime experienced by children aged 10 to 15’ section of this publication.
FBI Violent Crime:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr…/violent-crime
Quote:
Definition
In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses which involve force or threat of force.
Data collection
The data presented in Crime in the United States reflect the Hierarchy Rule, which requires that only the most serious offense in a multiple-offense criminal incident be counted. The descending order of UCR violent crimes are murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, followed by the property crimes of burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Although arson is also a property crime, the Hierarchy Rule does not apply to the offense of arson. In cases in which an arson occurs in conjunction with another violent or property crime, both crimes are reported, the arson and the additional crime.
Anoymous. Australia? Firtstly, That is from The European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations (HEUNI) is the European link in the network of institutes operating within the framework of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme. It has nothing to do with the WHO.
Secondly that is a misreading of the report. The murder rate according to that report (which you pulled from nationmaster) for the USA is 3.73 per hundred thousand of population, the murder rate for Ausatralia for the same report is 1.3 per hundred thousand.
Comparing violent crime in the UK to violent crime in the USA is a false comparison. Comparing murder to murder is not. Violent crime in England and Wales (which would be the numbers you are looking at) include pushing and shoving without injury. That would not be counted as a violent crime in the USA. A big factor in the increase in recoreded violent crime is the FACT that pushing and shoving is now counted as violent crime, it never used to be. Over 52% of “violent crime” in the UK falls under the pushing and shoving without injury.
The UK has no where near the highest murder rate in the EU and it’s not even close to the USA’s Politicians will say anything to get elected, whether they are Tories or Labour. (Neither is Australia’s see the link to the report below)
http://www.heuni.fi/Satellite?blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobcol=urldata&SSURIapptype=BlobServer&SSURIcontainer=Default&SSURIsession=false&blobkey=id&blobheadervalue1=inline;%20filename=Hakapaino_final_07042010.pdf&SSURIsscontext=Satellite%20Server&blobwhere=1266335656647&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&ssbinary=true&blobheader=application/pdf
See the report below for the real numbers, not those that have been misrea or misreported. The UNODC made a study in 2012 that includes most countries of the world. The following lists show only the most recent data. Rates are calculated per 100,000 inhabitants. Intentional homicide in this case is defined as unlawful death purposefully inflicted on a person by another person
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
UNODC murder rates most recent year
Country Rate Count Region Subregion
Honduras 91.6 7,104 Americas Central America
El Salvador 69.2 4,308 Americas Central America
Côte d’Ivoire 56.9 10,801 Africa Western Africa
Jamaica 52.2 1,430 Americas Caribbean
Venezuela 45.1 13,080 Americas South America
Belize 41.4 129 Americas Central America
U.S. Virgin Islands 39.2 43 Americas Caribbean
Guatemala 38.5 5,681 Americas Central America
Saint Kitts and Nevis 38.2 20 Americas Caribbean
Zambia 38.0 4,710 Africa Eastern Africa
Uganda 36.3 11,373 Africa Eastern Africa
Malawi 36.0 5,039 Africa Eastern Africa
Lesotho 35.2 764 Africa Southern Africa
Trin&Tobago 35.2 472 Americas Caribbean
South Africa 31.8 15,940 Africa Southern Africa
Colombia 31.4 14,746+ Americas South America
Congo 30.8 1,180 Africa Middle Africa
CAR 29.3 1,240 Africa Middle Africa
Bahamas 27.4 94 Americas Caribbean
Puerto Rico 26.2 983 Americas Caribbean
Saint Lucia 25.2 44 Americas Caribbean
Dom Repc 25.0 2,513 Americas Caribbean
Tanzania 24.5 10,357 Africa Eastern Africa
Sudan 24.2 10,028++ Africa Northern Africa
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 22.9 25 Americas Caribbean
Mexico 22.7 25,757+ Americas Northern America
Ethiopia 22.5 20,239 Africa Eastern Africa
Guinea 22.5 2,152 Africa Western Africa
Dominica 22.1 15 Americas Caribbean
Burundi 21.7 1,726 Africa Eastern Africa
Democratic Republic of the Congo 21.7 13,558 Africa Middle Africa
Panama 21.6 759 Americas Central America
Brazil 21.0 40,974 Americas South America
Equatorial Guinea 20.7 137 Africa Middle Africa
Guinea-Bissau 20.2 294 Africa Western Africa
Kenya 20.1 7,733 Africa Eastern Africa
Kyrgyzstan 20.1 1,072 Asia Central Asia
Cameroon 19.7 3,700 Africa Middle Africa
Montserrat 19.7 1 Americas Caribbean
Greenland 19.2 11 Europe Northern Europe
Angola 19.0 3,426 Africa Middle Africa
Guyana 18.6 140 Americas South America
Ecuador 18.2 2,638 Americas South America
Burkina Faso 18.0 2,876 Africa Western Africa
Eritrea 17.8 879 Africa Eastern Africa
Namibia 17.2 352 Africa Southern Africa
Rwanda 17.1 1,708 Africa Eastern Africa
Chad 15.8 1,686 Africa Middle Africa
Ghana 15.7 3,646 Africa Western Africa
North Korea 15.2 3,658 Asia Eastern Asia
Benin 15.1 1,262 Africa Western Africa
Sierra Leone 14.9 837 Africa Western Africa
Mauritania 14.7 485 Africa Western Africa
Botswana 14.5 287 Africa Southern Africa
Zimbabwe 14.3 1,775 Africa Eastern Africa
Gabon 13.8 200 Africa Middle Africa
Nicaragua 13.6 785 Americas Central America
French Guiana 13.3 30 Americas South America
Papua New Guinea 13.0 854 Oceania Melanesia
Swaziland 12.9 141 Africa Southern Africa
Bermuda 12.3 8 Americas Northern America
Comoros 12.2 85 Africa Eastern Africa
Nigeria 12.2 18,422 Africa Western Africa
Cape Verde 11.6 56 Africa Western Africa
Grenada 11.5 12 Americas Caribbean
Paraguay 11.5 741 Americas South America
Barbados 11.3 31 Americas Caribbean
Togo 10.9 627 Africa Western Africa
Gambia 10.8 106 Africa Western Africa
Peru 10.3 2,969 Americas South America
Myanmar 10.2 4,800 Asia South-Eastern Asia
Russia 10.2 14,574 Europe Eastern Europe
Liberia 10.1 371 Africa Western Africa
Costa Rica 10.0 474 Americas Central America
Nauru 9.8 1 Oceania Micronesia
Bolivia 8.9 884 Americas South America
Kazakhstan 8.8 1,418 Asia Central Asia
Mozambique 8.8 1,925 Africa Eastern Africa
Mongolia 8.7 239 Asia Eastern Asia
Senegal 8.7 1,027 Africa Western Africa
Turks and Caicos Islands 8.7 3 Americas Caribbean
British Virgin Islands 8.6 2 Americas Caribbean
Cayman Islands 8.4 5 Americas Caribbean
Seychelles 8.3 7 Africa Eastern Africa
Indonesia 8.1 18,963 Asia South-Eastern Asia
Madagascar 8.1 1,588 Africa Eastern Africa
Mali 8.0 1,157 Africa Western Africa
Pakistan 7.8 13,860+ Asia Southern Asia
Moldova 7.5 267 Europe Eastern Europe
Kiribati 7.3 7 Oceania Micronesia
Guadeloupe 7.0 32 Americas Caribbean
Haiti 6.9 689 Americas Caribbean
Timor-Leste 6.9 75 Asia South-Eastern Asia
Anguilla 6.8 1 Americas Caribbean
Antigua and Barbuda 6.8 6 Americas Caribbean
Lithuania 6.6 219 Europe Northern Europe
Uruguay 5.9 199 Americas South America
Argentina 5.8 2305 Americas South America
Philippines 5.4 4,947 Asia South-Eastern Asia
Estonia 5.2 70 Europe Northern Europe
Ukraine 5.2 2,356 Europe Eastern Europe
Cuba 5.0 563 Americas Caribbean
Belarus 4.9 473 Europe Eastern Europe
Thailand 4.8 3,307 Asia South-Eastern Asia
United States 4.8 14,748 Americas Northern America
Laos 4.6 279 Asia South-Eastern Asia
Suriname 4.6 24 Americas South America
Georgia 4.3 187 Europe Eastern Europe
Martinique 4.2 17 Americas Caribbean
Turkmenistan 4.2 203 Asia Central Asia
Yemen 4.2 990+ Asia Western Asia
Palestine 4.1 145+ Asia Western Asia
Albania 4.0 127 Europe Southern Europe
Niger 3.8 552 Africa Western Africa
Solomon Islands 3.7 19 Oceania Melanesia
Sri Lanka 3.6 745 Asia Southern Asia
India 3.5 42,923+ Asia Southern Asia
Montenegro 3.5 22 Europe Southern Europe
Cambodia 3.4 448 Asia South-Eastern Asia
Djibouti 3.4 29 Africa Eastern Africa
Turkey 3.3 2,320 Asia Western Asia
Chile 3.2 541 Americas South America
Taiwan 3.2 743 Asia Eastern Asia
Latvia 3.1 70 Europe Northern Europe
Uzbekistan 3.1 831 Asia Central Asia
Iran 3.0 2,215 Asia Southern Asia
Libya 2.9 176+ Africa Northern Africa
Fiji 2.8 23 Oceania Melanesia
Liechtenstein 2.8 1 Europe Western Europe
Nepal 2.8 818 Asia Southern Asia
Bangladesh 2.7 3,988 Asia Southern Asia
South Korea 2.6 1,251 Asia Eastern Asia
Luxembourg 2.5 12 Europe Western Europe
Mauritius 2.5 33 Africa Eastern Africa
Afghanistan 2.4 712+ Asia Southern Asia
Malaysia 2.3 604 Asia South-Eastern Asia
Syria 2.3 463+ Asia Western Asia
Azerbaijan 2.2 206 Asia Western Asia
Finland 2.2 118 Europe Northern Europe
Kuwait 2.2 59 Asia Western Asia
Lebanon 2.2 95 Asia Western Asia
Israel 2.1 159+ Asia Western Asia
Tajikistan 2.1 143 Asia Central Asia
Bulgaria 2.0 147 Europe Eastern Europe
Iraq 2.0 608+ Asia Western Asia
Romania 2.0 421 Europe Eastern Europe
Macedonia 1.9 40 Europe Southern Europe
São Tomé and Príncipe 1.9 3 Africa Middle Africa
Jordan 1.8 100 Asia Western Asia
Belgium 1.7 180 Europe Western Europe
Cyprus 1.7 19 Asia Western Asia
Czech Republic 1.7 181 Europe Eastern Europe
Canada 1.6 554 Americas Northern America
Maldives 1.6 5 Asia Southern Asia
Vietnam 1.6 1,346 Asia South-Eastern Asia
Algeria 1.5 516 Africa Northern Africa
Bosnia and Herzegovina 1.5 56 Europe Southern Europe
Greece 1.5 176 Europe Southern Europe
Slovakia 1.5 84 Europe Eastern Europe
Somalia 1.5 138+ Africa Eastern Africa
Armenia 1.4 44 Asia Western Asia
Croatia 1.4 62 Europe Southern Europe
Morocco 1.4 447 Africa Northern Africa
Andorra 1.3 1 Europe Southern Europe
Hungary 1.3 133 Europe Eastern Europe
Egypt 1.2 992 Africa Northern Africa
Ireland 1.2 54 Europe Northern Europe
Portugal 1.2 124 Europe Southern Europe
Serbia 1.2 123 Europe Southern Europe
United Kingdom 1.2 722 Europe Northern Europe
France 1.1 682 Europe Western Europe
Netherlands 1.1 179 Europe Western Europe
Poland 1.1 436 Europe Eastern Europe
Samoa 1.1 2 Oceania Polynesia
Tunisia 1.1 117 Africa Northern Africa
Australia 1.0 229 Oceania Australasia
Bhutan 1.0 7 Asia Southern Asia
China 1.0 13,410 Asia Eastern Asia
Malta 1.0 4 Europe Southern Europe
Saudi Arabia 1.0 265+ Asia Western Asia
Sweden 1.0 91 Europe Northern Europe
Tonga 1.0 1 Oceania Polynesia
Denmark 0.9 47 Europe Northern Europe
Federated States of Micronesia 0.9 1 Oceania Micronesia
Italy 0.9 529 Europe Southern Europe
New Zealand 0.9 39 Oceania Australasia
Qatar 0.9 13 Asia Western Asia
Vanuatu 0.9 2 Oceania Melanesia
Germany 0.8 690 Europe Western Europe
Spain 0.8 390 Europe Southern Europe
United Arab Emirates 0.8 39 Asia Western Asia
Macau 0.7 4 Asia Eastern Asia
Oman 0.7 18 Asia Western Asia
Slovenia 0.7 15 Europe Southern Europe
Switzerland 0.7 52 Europe Western Europe
Austria 0.6 56 Europe Western Europe
Bahrain 0.6 6 Asia Western Asia
Guam 0.6 1 Oceania Micronesia
Norway 0.6 29 Europe Northern Europe
Brunei 0.5 2 Asia South-Eastern Asia
French Polynesia 0.4 1 Oceania Polynesia
Japan 0.4 506 Asia Eastern Asia
Iceland 0.3 1 Europe Northern Europe
Singapore 0.3 16 Asia South-Eastern Asia
Hong Kong 0.2 17 Asia Eastern Asia
Monaco 0.0 0 Europe Western Europe
Palau 0.0 0 Oceania Micronesia
Chazz…why would you take out the least developed countries? You realize you are saying 2nd and Third World countries have lower murder rates than the so called developed countries?
Mike, don’t talk such nonsense please. I am saying the only countries that have HIGHER murder rates than the USA are 2nd. and 3rd. World countries, not the other way around. All of the rest of the first wrold (developed world) have much much lower murder rates.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6960431.stm
“According to Home Office figures, there were 59 firearms-related homicides in 2006-07 compared with 49 in the previous year.”
I would prefer the UK to be “worse off than the US statistically” (HyperU2) than to have the same homicide rate. But hats off to those hundreds of millions of Americans who have yet to use their legally-held firearms to kill someone. I’m just not confident that my fellow countrymen would show the same restraint.
I am pretty sure that Brits wouldn’t show the same restraint, which is a good reason not to have them.
It looks like firearms were involved in 2 thirds of the murders in the US. Is it perhaps that firearms make mass murder too easy to carry out? A single person with an ordinary handgun can kill half a dozen people in a few seconds with little effort. Someone with an assault rifle can kill a lot more. Hence we have incidents such as Columbine in the US. It is very hard to carry out a mass killing with a club, knife or sword etc. This is why mass killings, other than a single instance of terrorism, are rare in the UK. It seems like there is a major incident every other month or so in the US involving a mass killing by a madman with a gun. Let’s face it, an assult rifle can turn even a 98 pound weakling, or a chld, into a deadly force. More than happy to keep guns out of the hands of the public in the UK.
However, it is woth noting that gun ownership in Canada is almost as high as the US and yet the murder rate in Canada is very much lower. Canada has just over ten percent of the population of the US but only has just over 4% of the US murder rate.
Perhaps murder is a particulaly US problem?
What they don’t tell you about Columbine is that those kids were breaking laws by possessing the guns they used and the people that supplied them those guns also broke laws to do so.
Lesson to be learned. People will kill others by any means simply because they want to. Not unlike our country’s prohibition of drugs. If people want it they will do what it takes to get it regardless of what someone puts to paper and calls it law.
If one of the teachers at Columbine were allowed to carry a firearm he or she could have put an end to it. We cannot rely on the police to protect us. How long did it take for the police to arrive? How many had already been brutally killed?
Gun laws do nothing more then keep guns out of the law abiding making them defenseless.
They may have been breaking laws. But if guns weren’t such an integral part of our society, who knows what would have happened.
it would be virtually impossible for kids to get hold of guns in the UK. Columbine couldn’t have happened.
Abe,
You didnt take your thoughts to the full conclusion. My good friend a135 lb weakling kept herself from being raped at knife point by a two time rapist by using the pistol she keeps in her night stand to shoot the guy in her bedroom(not fatally). Had she not had the pistol, the 6’3″ man would have overpowered her using his strength and kitchen knife. So.. Yes, a firearm can level the playing field. There are three types of people in the world. Sheep, Wolves and Sheep Dogs. I prefer to be a Sheep Dog. So does she. If she didnt have the pistol she would be another demoralized victim. Look at the Japanese they have almost double our suicide rate of the US and they dont have firearms. So, I think it is a problem with American Society rather than firearms. After all a firearm is an inanimate object that functions only if manipulated by a human. People kill people and they have been doing for many millinea without the help of modern firearms. If I had to hazard a guess as to the root of the problem I would guess that America has a large gap between middle class and poor/poverty. Most of the deaths occurr in the underpriveledged class. I have spent a good amount of time in the UK and you dont seem to have a much of a gap nor do you have the cultural clashes like the US.
Honestly if there are this many people finding problems with what you’ve posted then i can probably assume that you weren’t very educated on this topic when you wrote it so next time do some research and get the right facts before you post anything.
Anonymous, nothing I said was wrong when I wrote it. This is a blog, not a service. Go and do some serious research.
are economy is falling fast in the U.S., the crime is high the cops havent been reporting alot of the crimes. especially were i live houston texas we were ranked about 5th highest crime rate in U.S. but investigators found that alot havent been reported and found that we actually have the 2nd highest crime rate.
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So a 500% increase in the murder rate is acceptable then is it?
concealed carry and licensed guns have been proven to reduce violent crime, so the guns are the problem (as proven by the canada example posted above). It is most likely a cultural issue, that and a drug one. In terms of gang violence and drug related homicides, I’d say that those cause most. The UK doesn’t have as much of a gang or drug problem as the US does.
Only 7% of all gun crimes (that isn’t just homicide, that includes things like carrying a gun into a hospital or shooting in an area where it is unlawful) are committed by licensed gun owners. The problem lies within the criminals, not gun owners.
Besides, black market guns are easy to buy here while extremely hard to buy in the UK.
Apart from the obvious reasons why the US has a higher homicide rate, one might be able to send their blame to certain democrats.
if we were unable to get guns so easily in america murders would at least half. i think the uk does have a lot of gang culture but guns are not easily accessible. it says on the net that the assault rate is higher in the uk than the us (considering the differences in population), swap the fists with guns and it wouldnt be assault it would be murder. our country is stupid and the government is fucked up. hopefully obama will make a big change in our society.
The numbers are skewed, they inlcude gang members shooting each other and drug dealers, all of which are much higher in the US than in the UK. If you take the gang problem and drug dealing issue out of the equation and all the police shootings involved, because police shooting in the UK are virtually non existent because most don’t carry guns, then you will have a much more fair comparison. That being said, I will take my chances, I lawfully carry my loaded gun all of the time, I am trained to used safely and I won’t be a victim against an armed thug that want’s to take my life over 20 bucks.
If we dismiss the US, for the moment, as an outlier, there exists a correlation among western nations between gun ownership and homicide rates. It is not across the board but the trend is there. The US simply has a grossly inflated rate even compared to their gun ownership rate (though the US does have a higher percentage of hand guns even than other countries with higher general gun ownership. Hand guns, of course, are most associated with murders). Accessibility to firearms does seem to increase the likelihood of murder. Those living in households in the US with guns are substantially more likely to be shot than those living in households with guns. One reason there is strong resistance to allowing British police to carry firearms routinely is that they do not want to encourage criminals to do the same. They may allow for more effective policing in the short run (discounting the inevitable unecessary police killings that will occur, as they do here) but in the long run it will lead to an increase in armed violence.
I’m not sure that the correlation you describe is true. Switzerland has many guns in peoples homes yet the murder rate is low (2.42 per 100K); in Canada, many people own guns yet the muder rate is 1.67 . In Scotland it is 1.95 while in England and Wales 1.52.
Face it, there are other factors than gun availability which explain the murder rate.
The murder rate in the U.K. is nowhere near 1.95 per 100k of population. Even in London, which is the biggest city in Europe and one of the bigger than every American city only has a murder rate of 1.1 per 100k of poulation.
I realize this is tangential but I thought you might be interested:
Seattle JCC Trial and the Legacy of Bernhard Goetz
what is this guys name i need it for a citation
The police in England don’t even carry small arms as I believe such weapons are illegal in that civilized country. With our macho attitude we are the only people of “first world” nations who discuss, as common place, the assassination of our leaders as something that is expected. That puts un in a “third world” class! We are now even exporting our misfortune to Mexico so their drug lords can kill even more North Americans! We are so lucky to be able to help Mexico with our misunderstood 2nd amendment! All personal weapons should be outlawed as well as the manufacture thereof…with ammunition,too!
Hello again…I know that if I owned a gun of any sort it had better be a chocolate gun, because if a criminal caught me with it, I would be forced to eat the thing. Listening to people here in Texas, who own guns, scare me with their talk of protecting their family, when I know that they are not smart enough to resist gangs of invaders overwhelming them in the middle of the night! The laws have to change in favor of the civil people who protect their families with laws. The Americans of today are not back-woodsmen or mountain-men, as much as some would like to be, rather we are humans who want peace “world wide”, as well as in their own backyard.
It is sort of ignorant to post statistics like these if you are not comparing them. Why even post it? All it does it create a false idea that more Americans are killing each other with guns whether implied or not. The truth is as far as general rate of crime, the US crime rate is much lower than European countries. The problems lie with inner city racial conflicts, and race divisions in prison (people get murdered in prison to). These numbers skew our rate of gun murder largely.
If you have a gun you are more likely to end up killing someone simple.
It is to easy and clean you pull the trigger and someone dies you don’t even have to be close to do it. It makes killing very easy anyone saying otherwise must be in possession of boundless stupidity.
Martin how stupid is your statement basically you say if take away all the gangs that kill and the fact that the UK police don’t kill people with guns so the gangs don’t need guns then the the figures would be a better comparison.
I can only assume that you are thick and now nothing of relevance on this matter so dismiss your opinion.
After the 1997 shooting of 16 kids in Dunblane, England, the United Kingdom passed one of the strictest gun-control laws in the world, banning its citizens from owning almost all types of handguns. Britain seemed to get safer by the minute, as 162,000 newly-illegal firearms were forked over to British officials by law-abiding citizens.
But this didn’t decrease the amount of gun-related crime in the U.K. In fact, gun-related crime has nearly doubled in the U.K. since the ban was enacted.
Might stricter gun laws result in more gun crime? It seems counterintuitive but makes sense if we consider one simple fact: Criminals don’t obey the law. Strict gun laws, like the ban in Britain, probably only affect the actions of people who wouldn’t commit crimes in the first place.
England’s ban didn’t magically cause all British handguns to disappear. Officials estimate that more than 250,000 illegal weapons are still in circulation in the country. Without the fear of retaliation from victims who might be packing heat, criminals in possession of these weapons now have a much easier job, and the incidence of gun-related crime has risen. As the saying goes, “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
No you just cant seem to accept that the USA has higher murder rate this would still be the case if you took away all your gun related murders.
If more people had access to fire arms in the UK this would result in a higher GUN RELATED MURDER RATE. It would also increase by proxy the UK’s overall murder rate.
In fact your post is irrelevant what point are you trying to make that the UK has a lower Murder Rate, yes we already know!!
Everything you have posted does not even have a point, there are 250,000 illegal weapons in the UK you say what is your point.
The fact still remains the UK has lower MURDER RATE.
And even lower GUN REALTED MURDER RATE, are you stupid?
Even if you you take away all your gun related murders and replace them with acts of good will to humanity you would still have a higher murder rate than the UK.
So by your own logic we can only assume that the average American is more likely to commit murder, is this due to a lack of intelligence.
Huh. The numbers show that the uk has a higher MUDER rate than the us. What are u talking about. The us has a higher homicide rate yes, but not murder rate
The numbers show nothing of the kind. The murder (not homicide) rate in the U.K. is much much lower than here in the USA. While it is true that most murders in the U.K. are committed with knives or blunt force instruments, it is not true that the murder rate is higher than the USA. It is not even close to the murder rate in the USA. I have lived in both countries and a Iguarantee you it’s not even close. There were just 619 murders in all of the U.K. last year, a country of 62,2181761 people. The USA had 16,799 in a country with 313,739,857. So there are 27.138 times as many murder (not homicides, I only looked up murders FBI stats., CDC Stats, CIA World Factbook Stats)
and yet the population of the USA is only 5.042 times as large. For the USA to have the same murder rate as the U.K. there would need to be just 3,120 murders a year not 16,799. That makes the USA’s murder rate 538% higher than the U.K.’s Sorry you don’t like the facts, but there they are. It is not an agenda, it is the truth. remember I am not including any homicide numbers just murders. As you rightly pointed out, there is such a thing as “Justifiable Homicide” i.e. self defense. This does not include those numbers.
check your numbers again mate, america doesent have 27 times as many murders, its 5 times as many…..
No there are 27 times as many murder. The rate per hundred thousand of population if about 5 times as high, but in pure numbers it is about 27 times higher. 16,799 (the number of murder in the USA divided by 619 (the number of murders in the USa is 27.138. or in other words 27 times 619 equals 16,799. So there are (in pure numbers) just over 27 times as many.
What you are thinking of is the rate per 100,000 of population which is about 5 times as high in the USA as in the UK. In total numbers the USA has 27 times as many murders, although it only has 5 times the population of the UK. You might wanna check you facts or rather understand the difference between total and per 100K better before calling other people’s comments into question, mate.
If you double something from 25 to 30 it sounds bad when you put it in % terms. But the fact of the matter is that the U.K. has a considerably lower murder rate and a considerably lower still gun murder rate. What all of the U.K. has in shootings (a country of 65,000,000.00) one year is equivalent to a town of about 300 thousand in the USA. Our gun death rate is many hundreds of times higher than that of the U.K. and the murder rate as a whole is a fraction of the USA’s. Washington DC has a murder rate of around 40 per 100k of population whereas London (which is a far larger city, actually larger than any U.S. city) has a murder rate of 1.1 per hundred thousand of population. So any way you slice it we have a much much higher murder rate and more than 95% of those murders are commited ith guns.
i personally think that its heart breaking to see all these women, like me, be raped and they have no control over whats happening. Those statistics are too high, nothing should be happening anywhere at any time to any girl.
It is important to repeat…all weapons for personal use should be banned from manufacture as well as the ammunition needed for these weapons. If not all, at least the hand gun which is too easily concealed. Statistics only matter to folks who cannot use their common sense.
hi im offically fro england and want to clarify i few misconceptions some of you have about british legislation…
1) firearms are not fully banned from our country….. individuals can posess fire arms but have to register for liscence in the case of sport (shut gun events shooting game etc or work permitted ie speciality police and army personel) in britian no typical citizen can apply for a fire arm like america.
2) yes america has a very high fire arm murder rate (something in the congjunction of their own firear policy handling)
3) murder is defined differently within the uk and us uk has typical murder or that in which defence, america has a number of statutes such as murder in the 1st and second degree etc british legislation does not define it within the same way.
4) rape victimisation does not include just women… men get raped and statistics are flawed within that as men are the ost likely to under report their own rape as well.
5) violent crime can mean anything such as attepted murder or a vicious attack that has not resulted in murder. so think of that more…
6) gun related crime may have doubled in the uk but the small propotion that have used guns to commit in the first place and the fact all crime rises each yr due to population factors recession factors…
and finally when looking at statistics if they state the percentage of killings per 100,000 they are taking out the bias of hightened population in dfferent countries…. the variation between number of gangs… can ppl please use a lil common sense before refuting their answer please its not difficult!
Us common sense “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” i like this saying you are right if they ban guns in America i can guarantee that there will be more burglarize and killings on innocent people in there own homes. And if guns are banned and America was to be invaded the law enforcement and national guard are not gonna be able to do anything about it.
Are you retarded? If that were the case then the U.K. would have a higher murder rate than the USA. If America were to be invaded, which is highly unlikely, but if it were I think our military could cope. What’s all the horseshit about the Naitonal Guard and Police?
Self defense is most unlikely , as home-invaders are usually surprising and very rapid giving little time to grab your weapon. If you do secure it, it will probably be after you’re shot.
If the ammunition is banned (not manufactured) what are the shooters going to put in their illegal weapons?
Slam me for sounding racist or profiling, but 53% of homicides in the US are committed by black people, with about 95% of that against other black people (i.e. gang related homicide). 45% were committed by white people (note that figure lumps in Hispanic groups who have a similarly bad gang problem but the stats don’t separate them out). This is a country where 12.9% of the population are black, compared to the UK where it is 2%. Basically, guns kill, but only in the wrong hands. Mexico has tightened it’s gun control, but has a raging drug war (will concede that a lot of it’s guns are coming from the US). Sorry, but we have to look at who is doing the killing, not that there is killing. If these gangs can import crack, they should have no problems with importing guns. I think we need to stop tippy toeing around the subject (Michael Moore especially as he glossed over this fact in Columbine)
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm
Also, we do focus on mass killings a lot as it grabs the media’s attention, but realistically they are far in the minority (even with March’s shocking events).
Jimbob, es, what you argue here is racist. The racist part is where you use the stats about black people “This is a country where 12.9% of the population are black, compared to the UK where it is 2%” to explain the stats about gun crime, as if blackness (rather than social factors) were the predictor.
Put it like this: how many women committed those homicides? Do you think that we should impose extra controls on the basis of sex? Me neither.
Thinking about Binghampton’s dead today.
Jimbob, yes, what you argue here is racist. The racist part is where you use the stats about black people “This is a country where 12.9% of the population are black, compared to the UK where it is 2%” to explain the stats about gun crime, as if blackness (rather than social factors) were the predictor.
Put it like this: how many women committed those homicides? Do you think that we should impose extra controls on the basis of sex? Me neither.
Thinking about Binghampton’s dead today.
His name is Jimbob that’s all you need to know! (do see what I did there?)
P.S. Emma I am also from England; however, although a lot of what you have posted is correct can please attempt some grammar and punctuation or the Yanks will think we have turned stupid 😉
i concur w/ us common sense. aside from that; although i dont want to legitimize jimbo with a response, id like to know if he/she thinks that it is a black problem or a class issue. Its no secret that because of the US’s history, blacks make up a large faction of the impoverished, why couldnt this be the reason for all of the violence in that particular community? Jimbo is probably also one of those american’s who thinks that black males gain more from afirmative action than anyone else, when in actuality it white women!
aside from his ignorance, the bottom line is this…a gun sitting on the shelf wont kill anyone untill its picked up by an idiot on a mission. if i were going to rob someone, it would give me piece of mind to know that they dont have any protection and as stated previously outlaws dont follow the law…so banning guns doesnt protect anyone, it just make law-biding citizens more vulnerable. I saw “Bowling for Columbine” although his documentaries are propaganda, i couldnt help but agree w/ michael moore.
p.s. i know ur name is jimbob
“Its no secret that because of the US’s history, blacks make up a large faction of the impoverished, why couldnt this be the reason for all of the violence in that particular community?”
I generally agree that the poorest communities in the U.S. are the most violent. However, I would not agree that poverty is the reason for “all the violence” in a particular community. Other factors play a roll, including the breakdown of the black family and the ascendancy of thug culture.
I’m not that old but I am old enough to know that poverty has existed in the hood for a long time. The level of violence (specifically gun violence) has increased. Shoot-outs were uncommon when I was growing up. By the 1980s, it seemed like there was a drive-by every weekend. A lot of this had to due with the crack explosion and subsequent crack wars that plagued much of urban black America.
But something else had changed. Back in the day, times were just as tough. There were drugs and similar negative influences. And it seemed like people were more poor (materially) back then than today. In the face of all these difficulties it was the institution of the family that kept things from falling apart. Strong families that placed a value on education and would not let their kids chill out on the corner at 1am on a school night. It was not acceptable behavior and you could get your butt whupped for doing so.
Another difference is the development of thug culture. There have always been thugs in poor communities who prey on their own. What has changed is how these criminals are perceived. They have gone from being despised to being lauded. Certainly not by everyone, but to a significant enough degree that middle-class blacks (and whites) emulate the thug lifestyle.
If your population is armed then the police are armed then the population arm themselves more it a self perpetuating problem.
As I have already stated if you have a gun in your hand and your angry enough anyone could kill more guns equal more murder its simple mathematics.
Not all the murders in the USA are going to be gangs a big percentage would be someone with a gun sees his wife with another man etc etc pulls the trigger then someone is dead.
A total ban on guns would mean less people carry them and less people die, carrying a gun in the UK is an instant 5 year sentence, if you shoot someone or not so that’s a massive deterrent to wanna be hoods!!
Just wandering by trying to pick up stats for an argument elsewhere.
Those Americans who claim that drug-related killings/mass killings skew the results … well, yes they do. Tough. Those are Americans killing each other. Also, we in the UK have inner-cities, and, yes I’ve lived in them, and they may not be as bad as US inner-cities, but we still count the results. If Brits excluded our inner-city killlings, we’d probably come out better.
The post-Dunblane thing always gets pulled out the hat as an excuse for the ineffectuality of “banning” guns. Bullshit. Guns were controlled before Dunblane, and after the laws were tightened, we’ve not had another Dunblane-like incident. IMO, in the UK, a real problem has been the influx of weapons and hoods from the East. That’s increased our gun-crime.
Quite a few states in the US do have some sort of “control”, but that control is so lax in most states it’s laughable. It is my understanding that gun-owners in North Carolina were supposed to possess some health-certificate saying they are fit to handle guns. LOL@Vtec.
Most murders, outside of gang and drug-related, are friend related. US soldiers come home from Iraq and blast the hell out of their partners. With their partners guns. Availability and attitude is the kill.
Someone mentioned Michael Moore; he’s almost always dismissed for “propaganda”. Yet his conclusion in Bowling for Columbine is telling, particularly if one compares US gun crime with Canada: he said that racism was at the root of gun-problems in the US. The reason that all you white-folks bearing guns is that you fear being raped or robbed by the fearsome blackman. A few of the comments on this thread seem to bear this generalisation out.
It is funny to read the comments back on forth on this issue. With freedom comes risk. An example would be if people are allowed to drive, there are going to be accidents. If people are allowed to drink, someone is going to drink and drive (how many people die each year from that?
We as Americans have the right to bear arms for protection against the state. Read the constitution, the right is there so that if we had to defend ourselves we can come together and do so. If we did not have firearms, we would never have broke away from the King.
So take the bad with the good, and be happy that you can defend yourself. Maybe in the present we would be better off without firearms, but there will be a day when we will need them. Pick up a history book, and then you might not be so keen on letting go of your rights.
I know this is late, but what about the freedom to be able to walk home from a bar at night without the risk of someone shooting you?
I think that trumps the freedom of someone being able to carry a gun.
Defend yourself from the state?
Huh?
You are the state. Democracy means people power
Americans… why do they hate the govt so much
American Freedom, you are absolutely correct. The feds. are out of control and our congressmen & senator are spineless. We need to separate Bills so the feds.cant piggy back like what just happened.They attached $108billion dollar IMF bill to a $80billion bill for the military. The IMF are known to funnel money to terrorist countries and this $108B will go to bailout the European banks.Our tax dollars(millions) also will be sent to Saudi Arabia, Africa, Jordan and many others so we suffer the consequences.
“The reason that all you white-folks bearing guns is that you fear being raped or robbed by the fearsome blackman. A few of the comments on this thread seem to bear this generalisation out.”
Not at all. Most Americans know the vast majority of “black” crime is black men (youth, really) killing other black youth. Believe it or not, even conservatives recognize this is the case. We see it in the news every day. The difference between American liberals and conservatives is the reason why each think this is happening. Conservatives generally focus on the breakdown of the black family, liberals on institutional racism.
As a doctor I am appalled at the rate of gun violence in the US. I AM Libertarian about illegal drugs. The drug war creates many many muggers and burglers and party store stick up men. In Britain they give Heroin to addicts (but I don’t think crack?)
With all the crazy people drunk people bad tempered people domestic violence etc etc a person with a gun is a potential “time bomb.” We also need to be a little more socialistic about wealth distribution healthcare and education here in the US. People should be encouraged to own dogs (but not fighting pits pleez lol) and tear gas. At worst they should have ONE gun in a lock box with an alarm connected to the police station so when they take the weapon out the authorities immediately KNOW. most of us should swear to our insurance companies that we don’t have guns in our homes cars or on our person and if found to be lying be fined or imprisoned. If you buy a gun you are part of the problem and feeding the redneck gun industry. YOUre the school shooter wife shooter gang banger b/c you are keeping them in business. That is why when an unjustifyable shooting occurs Glock and remington should be sued.
You people are morons. Do you even have an inkling of what the current crime statitics are? the UK has the highest violent crime rate in the west, beating out even the “evil” US. One American called Britain more “civlized” than the US. Clearly this braindead Oprah watching drone has been brainwashed by a europhila US media. Perhaps you should use the Internet (that evil American invention) for more than downloading recipes and porn.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/england-has-worst-crime-rate-in-the-west-693609.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html
Thanks for that Mario. I for one find you entirely convincing. I think it is your careful, well-referenced argument and polite, concerned style which made me warm to you.
The U.K> has very very high property crime rates. For example he car theft rate is 60 times that of the USA. What they don’t have is a very high murder rate. London has a murder rate of 1.1 per 100k of population, while DC has one around 40 per 100k of population. Property crime is not murder.
The independent I am willing to trust, to a certain extent, the Daily Mail not at all.
Violent crime and murder are completely different things. Violent crime rates are for pub fights and football (soccer) hooligans, not murders. Get real and actually read the information you are quoting.
What you are calling the “internet” is actually the World Wide Web (hence www) was invented by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau in 1990. In 1989, while What you are calling the “internet” is actually the World Wide Web (hence www). The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau in 1990. In 1989, while working at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), both men made proposals for hypertext systems. In 1990 they joined forces and wrote a joint proposal in which the term “World Wide Web” is used for the first time (originally without spaces). And in late 1990 and early 1991, Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser.
Berners-Lee went on to found the World Wide Web Consortium, which seeks to standardize and improve World Wide Web-related things such as the HTML markup language in which web pages are written. Cailliau also made ongoing contributions to the Web. Robert Cailliau’s a 1995 speech, “A Short History of the Web,” is an excellent resource for those who want to understand the history in more detail.
Tim Berners-Lee invented both the HTML markup language and the HTTP protocol used to request and transmit web pages between web servers and web browsers.
Mario you buffoon, the internet was invented by the English.
Self reporting surveys are unreliable and dishonest. Someone B***h slapped them or snatched their purse??
Heck I bet even Brixton is a joke next to Detroit and parts of Chicago and LA. Murders and shootings are what we’re concerned with here. And most times, guns would NOT prevent a rape b/c the perp has the element of surprise on his side. Avoidance tactics are much better.
Rock onto Electric Avenoooo….
Anonymous – “Defend yourself from the state?
Huh?
You are the state. Democracy means people power
Americans… why do they hate the govt so much”
I believe a Democratic Republic is more appropriate than Democracy.
We hate the Government, at least myself, because for the last 96 years said Government has been letting our currency be debased by a private institution, has been whittling away at our freedoms bit by bit. The Government no longer listens to the people, see the recent bailouts. It lets the Federal Reserve print money out of thin air depriving it of 96% of its value. It had the nerve to create a piece of legislation nullifying the 4th through 9th amendments in one fell swoop and named it The Patriot Act adding insult to injury.
Now that it is perpetuating the Economic Depression with continued money printing, “bailouts“/“stimulus” and excessive spending on BS I can not imagine being without my gun.
I fully believe the time is coming in the next few years that sooner or later we Americans will need those guns. I especially believe this will be true should Cap and Trade or similar bill passes.
Add to that the Governments Interventionist policy abroad, it is my opinion we have no business in other peoples business and that funding this policy is contributing to our current economic situation. I think it is wrong to tax the people to fund said policy.
Republic and Democracy are not mutually exclusive. Republic means without royalty that is all.
In a democratic republic or a constitional monarchy (which is a democracy with figurehead royalty such as in the U.K.)
The government is the people. You control the govrenment, not they you.
Elliott Bettman MD – “If you buy a gun you are part of the problem and feeding the redneck gun industry. YOUre the school shooter wife shooter gang banger b/c you are keeping them in business.”
Well by that logic I guess I inflict death through car accidents as I buy cars when needed. Similarly I must kill people through cancer because I like to smoke. Likewise I support my Government killing people because I pay my taxes. I must then support alcoholism because I occasionally drink alcohol…
Even if we “civilized” people stop buying the Guns there will still be a Guns as the criminals will obtain or craft them as we see happening in the UK with their extraordinary Gun control laws and as we have seen in DC.
Please note I did indeed intend to say craft them. Simply Google “Make your own Gun”.
By the way must be a racist; the usage of redneck in this context can only be taken as such. So much for your “educated” viewpoint… Pardon me if I do not feel awed over the “MD” after your name and suddenly accept the BS you printed.
I didn’t like that use of ‘redneck’ either.
But there’s too much wrong with your arguments for lethal weaponry for me to go into here and now.
BBC today.
UK Murder rate has fallen by 17% to the lowest rate since 1989
No break down yet of cause.
148 less people murdered in UK in 2008 compared to previous year.
Has to be good news.
The reason why police in UK do nto carry guns is because we have dedicated Fire Arms Team (FSU) that respond to an incident involving a gun when ever a call is made by a member of the public. Each police force has these teams and can be at the “scene” within 15 minutes. It may suprise the Yanks, but Armed Police are being used on an huge basis in the UK. I speak from experience being a UK “Bobby” and can honestly say we do not have the same threat level as the US when pulling a vehicle so i do not need a gun as people simply dont carry them as they are not as readily available.
That said i do have a TASER as each call has the potential for violence something that is unfortunetly identical as America hence why the UK violent crime figures are so high. Im sure that if UK government legalised gun possession, the UK murder rate would increase ten fold.
smokers are idiots and DO kill bystanders through cancer-employees at restauarants and bars. Not to mention the cardiac bypass lung cancer surgery chemo oxygen for emphysema dentures (smoking causes BAD gum disease etc etc. smokers are parasites on society worst than welfare cheats
The murder rate among whites in the U. S. and the murder rate among whites in Europe are about the same. The murder rate among Japanese people in the U. S. and the murder rate in Japan are about the same. A randomly-selected black is 8x more likely to commit murder than a randonly-selected white.
It doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out why the U. S. has a high murder rate.
Even though it doesn’t take a genius, you still can’t figure it out can you AC?
I hope you remain an infinitesimally marginal influence wherever you live.
that’s why we need presidents like Obama who continue affirmative action programs. Dr. Huxtable on TV was not an absentee father or criminal.
the ends justify the means
I have a couple of points for consideration.
1. The constitution.
Every single time gun laws are mentioned in the USA, the world-famous constitution is dusted off. “We have a right to bear arms” is all we hear. Yes, that is true, however both the USA and the UK (and – 2,000 years before – the Romans) had a right to own slaves, but we all got rid of that rule, didn’t we? The constitution could be changed again if there was enough public support.
——
2. The ‘Dunblane’ incident.
UK gun laws have been incredibly tough for the best part of a century. Even before that (i.e. the 1800s), gun crime wasn’t very high (even though many people owned guns as part of local militia or army regiments). The gun laws were tightened again after the Dunblane tragedy, and since then there hasn’t been another comparable incident (thankfully). The fact that gun crime has increased since the Dunblane tragedy is not a failing of the laws of this civilized nation, but a failing of the government to better control immigration and smuggling.
One last point – Dunblane is in Scotland, not England. People from the US always refer to the UK as England, and that’s the equivalent of me referring to the USA as, say Wyoming or Illinois – England is a component state within the UK, or “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Nothern Ireland”, to use the full name. England and Scotland have been joined (‘united’) for over 300 years. Please catch up.
Sorry to be pedantic, but I’m sure any self-respecting American would do the same if I called them Canadian (or vice versa).
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3. Immigration / Race
I don’t think that immigration plays a huge part in the number of gun crmes committed in the UK. There has been immigration to the UK for several hundred years, and a large upwards trend since just after WWII, where peope from ‘the colonies’ who had served this country with distinction were allowed to bring their families here in the hope of a better life. The 1950s influx didn’t spike gun crime, neither did the 1960s or 70s influx either. My thoughts on the real reasons comprise section 4…
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4. Drugs.
Pre-1960s, things like heroin, crack, cocaine and crystal meth were not used my very many people in the UK. Most ‘hippies’ were into cannabis, LSD and other ‘party’ drugs. Although these drugs cost something (they certainly weren’t being handed out for free), the amount of money / profit availale from them wasn’t huge, and in addition not many people were dealing to make huge amounts of money – they were dealing to their friends in a bid to share the love. However, since the early 1980s, things like herion and cocaine have really taken a hold. Whereas a kilo of cannabis costs (very roughly) about £4-5,000 GBP ($5,500 – $8,000 USD), a kilo of cocaine goes for about (again, very roughly) £22,500. With the increase in monetary value comes a increased danger of being robbed, and therefore dealers started carrying guns for protection. Once one dealer had a gun, the oters needed guns also, and for that reason the vast majority of gun crime in the UK is gang related. The vast majority of gun crime is also black-on-black (not asian-on-asian, whie-on-white or any other combination of races). Now, there have been inner cities fo a number of years. There has been poverty for a number of years. There have been drugs for a number of years. There have been immigrants for a number of years. So why is there an increase now? On to point number 5…
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5. Families
Since the 1960s, there has been a big drive to give women ‘equal rights’ and get them into the workplace. Before this (with the exception of during the world wars), women generally stayed in the house with the kids, and men generally went out to earn money for the family. This gave the traditional ‘nuclear family’ unit, the family unit that has been the blueprint for humans since before we were all ape-like creatures. The breakdown of this family unit – party by feminism and ‘equal rights’ for women, partly by absentee fathers who get a girl pregnant and then run off into the sunset and partly thanks to the much-relaxed divorce laws in the UK (which mean that you now no longereven have to enter a court to get divorced) – has caused generations of children to grow up without fathers, without a structured family and without any role models (more about role models soon). Kids now WANT to get pregnant so that they can sponge off our benefits system – you’re now better off having a kid and not working than earning the minimum wage in some crappy job, so why not simp turn yourself into a baby factory? These kids without fathers, or more specifically without a single responsible parent, are the ones much more likely to pick up a gun and/or join a gang.
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6 Role Models.
Role models used to be football players or people like the Beatles / Rolling Stones. Nowadays many kids (especially kids of an ehtnic minority) listen to rap music. Now, rap music does not MAKE people pick up a gun. It DOES however advocate using guns, glamourising guns and also glamourising the material things in life that poor kids can’t afford. Instead of working to earn the money for the finer things in life, kids now see crime as an easy way of making money. Crime leads to drugs, drugs lead to gangs, gangs lead to guns.
Other bad role models include ‘Crime Tyme’, the tag-team wrestlers from the WWE. In my day it was Hulk Hogan, the clean-living all American hero. The kind of guy who said “drugs are trouble” and “just say no”. Now we have wrestlers called Crime Tyme – what kind of role model is this for our kids?
Standards have slipped in the entertainment world also, to such a point that we now expect to see people being shot on TV on a nightly basis. Even in the UK, where guns are a rare item, people are shown on TV running about with them as if they are John Rambo – it doesn’t reflect reality, but breeds a culture of fear amongst the criminal underclass and impressionable kids – leading to more guns, and more violence.
I’ve not even touched on the media, but I don’t have time to write about everything.
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I’ve only scratched the surface with this rather large rant. I’ve probably offended some people, and made sense to others. There are many more examples as well, but I’d be looking for a Phd in Gun Rantology if I wrote any more. If anyone’s read this far, thanks.
great post. i have to say you were very persuasive and i find myself agreeing with you on your point about the ‘family unit’. people are just now catching on the fact kids are purposefully trying to get pregnant to sponge off the taxpayer.
Basically only people who deeply want to be parents should be getting pregnant. At the same time, it would be an absolute travesty if poverty were to stop somebody from going ahead with their pregnancy. And I’m not prepared for the state to arbitrate over who is deserving-pregnant and who not.
The only thing to do is to make social housing more plentiful, so you are not incentivised to instrumentalise a pregnancy to get to the top of the list.
I don’t like the way you talk about sponging – I’d like to be sponged off a bit more, because I remember how it felt to be young and very poor.
I really appreciate this very thoughtful and thought-provoking comment, Leon. It was a very personal, rather than rigorously substantiated, comment drawing on your own world-view and I have to say I didn’t find much convincing in your section on families.
Some good points, however…
1. The Rolling Stones and Beatles are/were not exactly “clean living.”
2. Hulk Hogan took MASSIVE amounts of steroids to get that big Worse, he denied it and covered up saying he took them “to recover from an injury.” He has been recovering for Decades!
3. Divorce?? whatya gonna do. Let people stay in abusive relationships?? The NeoCons won’t hire a bloke unless they have the “Ozzie and Harriet” image of wife two kids and a Golden Retreiver in the back yard. In the “divorce no murder yes” generation lots of Andy Capp and Flo couples I bet.
4. I strongly oppose the Drug War here in the US. OK have an age limit and give crack and Heroin to addicts only as in the UK. But prohibition just makes Al Capone (or the Mob the Gangs the Cartels the Pimps etc etc) rich causes lots of crime and the “small fish” end up with hardened killers and rapists in prison. Stop locking up America!!
For me this is very persuasive, Elliot.
Elliott, I feel sorry for your patients. If you actually have any.
To explain, you come across incredibly rude, arrogant and uniformed especially the comment re: “neocons”. Most neoconservatives recognize the reality of divorce in the U.S. and are not opposed to it on principle. Out of wedlock births are another matter. Most neocons are critical of this. But divorce? You must be thinking of palecons and other so-called traditionalists. But it’s no surprise that a knee-jerk liberal like yourself would lump the two together.
You know, I saw “NeoCon” and thought to myself “I don’t like it when people bandy around that term”.
Generalisations feed off generalisations. So, herewith, the mammoth interview Alan Johnson conducted with Joshuah Muravchik in Democratiya. It doesn’t address the issue of divorce, but it will serve to atone for my passivity in the light of this generalisation of Elliot’s, despite the fact it made me uncomfortable at the time. Let nobody use ‘neocon’ as a coded insult again.
http://www.democratiya.com/interview.asp?issueid=11
I have to say NC, though, you are using Liberal in much the same way.
I realize there are a wide variety of liberals out there. That’s why I qualified the term with the words “knee-jerk” as opposed to moderate liberal, centrist liberal or thoughtful liberal.
Thanks fleshisgrass, really stimulating topic (obviously!). Your initial stats aren’t a truly ‘fair’ comparison – but then again, I’m struggling to find two states/ countries that define crimes the same way! Your numbers are at least indicative. This whole area raises another point.
There’s a fundamental issue here with elected representatives controlling the categorisation of crimes – they’re always after short-termist PR stories, and manifesto pledges have to be met, even if that means massaging statistics or redefining crimes altogether. That’s one sentiment from the more right wing posters on this blog that I can sympathise with – never trust your government! That does not mean I endorse holding a gun to their heads btw.
One correlation that everyone seems to be agreeing with (remarkably) on these comments is the link between illegal drugs and gun crime. This then leads to arguments around the possibility of legalising drugs to remove them from the equation. I don’t want to go down that route – this is more of an info request.
Has anyone has come across any data that strips out violent crime around specific drugs by country? What is the ‘most violent’ drug?
I’ve not been able to find data for Holland’s experience – it’d be interesting to see if once you legalise certain drugs you find a significant drop in violence associated with it or not.
fleshisgrass said, “Jimbob, es, what you argue here is racist.”
I hate when people say such stupid comments. If what he said is a statistical fact then it is a statistical fact. It has nothing to do with being racist. Facts are facts and you can hide behind saying something is racist but, you are not solving anything by hiding the facts. Take out black crime and you will see how our crime rate drops. Too bad it is that way because if effects so much. White flight comes to mind and that also adds to our energy consumption because whites are driving their SUV’s much further to avoid the gun fire. Sad but true. This black crime has huge impacts on all kind of things. I think people need to stop thinking it is racist to state facts and that will help in fighting the problem. I wish there was an easy solution but, there isn’t.
“Take out black crime”
How, h? We’re all in this together – that’s the point.
h, are you suggesting getting rid of black people from America, or just black criminals. Do white criminals get to stay?
I can’t work out what you’re after.
There is racism and reverse racism. But it is segregation that CAUSED all the crime and blight. In my native Detroit, whites left after WW2 b/c the freeways and VA home loans made it easy to build new homes with big lots out in the burbs. US is only about 10% black but hoods like Detroit Newark and whole sections of Chicago LA and NY are african american. If we just integrated the cities or gave subsidized housing scattered in the suburbs (Wayne Oakland Macomb) county of the Detroit area there would BE no black majority, black mayors, black juries or congressional black caucus. Also noone would live in a deep Ghetto. HIspanics?? that’s another issue
There is no such thing as reverse racism. Racism is racism no matter which direction it comes from.
Just a little correction. Often in this post the the abbreviation UK and and country England are used as if they are interchangeable. The UK consists of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Scotland and England are both indivudual Kingdoms and the Dunblane shootings occured in Dunblane, Scotland.
Actually they aren’t individual kingdoms any more, hence United Kingdom. Acts of Union 1707. The Acts of Union, passed by the Parliaments of England and Scotland respectively, created a political union in the form of a united Kingdom of Great Britain. England and Scotland are constituent countries of the United Kingdom.
Did I miss something? Why is the word ‘murder’ used in the UK stat, while ‘homicide’ is used for the US? Not all homicide is murder.
What about comparing the gun banned Russia to the US? Or Mexico…where it’s illegal to sell guns…?
UK is fortunate enough to have one very dominant culture that’s a firm majority. The US is a completely different country. Look at ethnic statistics in the US, where (literally) over 90% (when you seperate hispanics from the “white” category of US FBI crime stats) of the homicides in the US are carried out by minorities that are MUCH larger percentages of the population than the UK. There is a much larger cultural conflict in the US.
Guns are legal in Italy, Greece, and Spain…yet homicides are even lower than the UK. This contradicts what you’re trying to show.
States that made guns easily accessible universally show crime going down statistically as compared to states/municipalities that make guns very difficult to access.
Try reading something that doesn’t just promote you’re theoretical political agenda (supported by those without real life experience as a victim of violent crime)
http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7212&context=expresso
No Italy, Greece and Spain have higher murder rates than the U.K.
London, which is the largest city in Europe and bigger than any U.S. city has a murder rate of just 1.1 per 100k of population, making in not only the lowest in Europe (depsite being the largest city by quite a large margin) but also the lowest in the world, with maybe the exception if one or two Japanese cities.
In 1908 Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. At the same time there were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A. ! In 2008 all these drugs are now illegal and there were 380 murders just in Los Angeles alone.
The population of the U.S. in 1909 was 90,490,000
by 2009 it was 305,000,000 an increase of 300% the number of murders in the U.S. in 2009 was 16,204 an increase of over 7000%.
I don’t think the availability of guns in the U.S. is what is fueling the high murder rates there.
Several sources around the Internet report that the homicide rate in 1910 was 4.6 per 100,000. (Google search 1910 homicide rate). The U.S. census was conducted in 1910 and reported a U.S. population of 92,228,496. Simple multiplication reveals an answer of 4,241.
Sorry to join this discussion so late…
The two legislative acts that followed the 1987 Hungerford Massacre (a firearms spree-killing in US terms) and the 1996 Dunblane Massacre (The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 & The Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997) have the effect of limiting the ability of persons lawfully in possession of a firearm to engage in mass murder. The firearms regulations in the UK have been tailored to try and prevent people who undergo psychotic episode ‘going postal’ and so the whole ‘criminals are the problem’ argument is rather pointless when discussing gun ownership laws in the UK.
I think Parliament realised that criminals would still find ways to carry out their business of violence but it was worth attempting to stop guns falling into the hands of people who were not criminals because the horror that results from just one person running amok with a firearm was worth preventing.
In the USA it seems that limiting the possibility of this horror is not a priority. Perhaps that is because 16 or 17 murders by firearm in one event seems like a very great deal indeed when that represents a fifth to a quarter of all firearms murders for a year (as it does in the UK) but is statistically insignificant and utterly unimportant when it is represents less than a 1 hundredth of a percent of the firearms murders for the year (as it would in USA).
N/B the UK has also taken multiple measures to restrict the use for criminal purposes, the sale or marketing, and the carrying of knives.
Listen to all the crying liberals…I have 7 guns count em up 7. Including assault rifles and concealable pistols.
I have a concealed carry permit, and I do everyday. I have never been arrested, and never used my gun for illegal purposes.
I have an MBA and consider myself to be quite educated…why do you care what I do if it does not affect you. Oh yeah by the way, someone with a gun might actually save your ass some day….
Because it effects society in general. Most people have never used their guns for illegal purposes until the shoot or kill someone.
All that means is that the thugs will gang up and shoot first. Understand I AM Libertarian about the “war on drugs”…I oppose it and it causes most of the break ins and muggings. Ralph Nader cartoonist Gary Trudeau former surgeon general Jocelyn Elders agree with me on that.
The UK murder rate involving a firearm is minimal…it’s like 20 or 30 per year for the whole country. That’s probably why it isn’t listed, for all intrinsic purposes, gun murder doesn’t exist.
thank you great post for murder uk
Well the US has more Black people and Hispanics as well, so that partly explains why their murder rate is higher.
Eric…DEUTSCHLAND!! You should join Pat Buchanan and ann Coulter.
I’ve had problems with folks of ALL races!
blacks and hispanics tend to be poorer and faced discrmination
Blame it on the FDA and the food proccessing companies! They are the ones poisioning the people of America!
P.S. I agree with Glenn Beck. There are no daedly weopons only deadly people. Even a baseball bat in the hands of the wrong person can become a murder weapon.
look at the swiss every family has assault rifles and pistols, yet there have been no school massacres, and the firearm crime rate is incredibly low. they pratically let young children carry their hunting rifles in school. yet their crime rate is so low, the problem isn’t guns its the people, and putting on gun control laws may take away guns but the mafia and other criminal organizations will ALWAYS have guns no matter what gun controls you have to mater how hard you try. so why disarm the citizens and give the criminals more opportunity?
Almost everything you have said in this statement is untrue.
We’ll start here, the firarm death rate in Switzerland is the highest in Europe. It is not as high as in the USA, but then the Swiss do not have the levels of poverty the USA has.
In UK a murder is only recorded as such if it is proven and they are convicted, even then it only accounts for one murder even though there may of been several.
In UK there is a higher missing peoples rate than in the US. A percentage of missing people are inevitably victims of murder / homicide with bodies effectively disposed of (UK is an island, its well known that organised gangsters have contracts with fishermen etc dispose of bodies out to see).
Even with these factors taken into account, US will still have a far higher murder rate. Why? Some factors are, no wellfair system, little nationally funded health, and the cost of healthcare in US is 5X the cost of UK private health! Needless to say a lot of people in the US are in desperate situations whereas in UK people often get the basic essentials provided for them. The fact that guns have been banned for last 15 to 20yrs also helps. A lot of domestic killings whereas firearms were used has obviously dramatically decreased, however youth gang shootings have increased, at the moment its sort of balanced out but could go either way?
Other ethnicities often get blammed for the murders in the UK and big urbanisation but ironically England has the lowest murder rate, Scotland & Northern Island where other ethnicities are far lower the murder rate is much higher plus the populations are smaller so that turns that on its head. Obviously there are more gangsters and shootings in England / general murders but percentagly it is the lowest. One of the reasons why the murder rate is lowest in England, more money, although there is poverty there is less poverty, England is the wealthiest state in the UK. UK is a violent country throughout, this is mainly alcohol fueled street fighting and thug mentality for which it is well known for, also pritty much all other crime is very high here, rape, burglary, GTA etc, murder not so bad. UK is the CCTV capital of the world, with a very high success rate, 90% of murderers are convicted provided the police are in possession of the body. I can’t be certain but I think this is one of, if not the highest success rate in the world and criminals know it. Murder in the UK and you will very likely get caught unless your a professional and you know how to operate.
I hear people mention, US has a drug problem and the UK doesn’t????? BEHAVE!!! UK is one of the biggest consumers of drugs worldwide. We also export the most UK produced cannabis than any other European country including Holland! Drugs are widespread here and its always been that way. Drug dealers though mostly operate in a chummy fashion. Here drug dealers often hang-out, know each other, share contacts etc, in America there appears to be much more competition which is likely due to the desperation a lot of poor people are in (remember no wellfare, little national provided health), cost of basic healthcare is extortionate, everyone gets sick but in America a simple surgical procedure could have you re-mortgaging your house, whereas in the UK its provided, its fucked up, its a western country with poverty conditions worse than most 2nd and some 3rd world countries!!!
What might help reduce murder rates?
Drug legalisation will help America, will help UK in so far that it will take away the easiest income to make illegally, less crooks is always a good thing (remember we do have gangsters that use guns here but less so than America).
Provide decant wellfare
Put the police efforts into cutting down on thug mentality, i.e street fighting, yob’s etc, a lot of people die each weekend due to this but its not accounted as murder. This, at least in the UK would be a good area of focus.
In terms of trying to compare UK, US stats, what would be better would be homocide stats (that I can’t find) i.e intentional / non intentional, missing people stats. Then you get an absolute bearing on who has died due non health related factors (i.e illness) and how many people are missing in total, then you can intuitively gage / essess to picture clearer, although it wouldn’t be absolute.
Very good points. Please use spell check and punctuation. You have sentences that are a whole paragraph long and quite a few spelling mistakes. I agree with everything you said, but it detracts from your very good argument when your punctuation and spelling are so poor.
Oh yeah, US would do very well to invest in CCTV, bann firearms and eventually take the firearms away from the police / take note of how the British police operate, too often I see footage of America police coming hard at people, my bother was in Chicago a few weeks back, he had a rented car and the tail light went, he told me the police were mental, if I was a crook in the US that intensity of policing would encourage me to carry a gun.
What utter nonsense your whole argument is.
sighs.
Attempting a decent rational debate on a topic with Americans is just fraught with difficulty,as you seem like children in some ways.
I mean honestly.To refuse point blank that other countries can do things better than you, have a better education system ,health care, public transport and on this topic, a much lower murder and rape rate…just because you are AMERICAN.
What,is it the 10th amendment or something?
‘No country can on any account do things better than the United States’
All you are doing is deluding yourself,seriously, which is both kind of sad and dangerous.You seem to have an inability to back up anything you say with those little unimportant superfluous things called …facts and independent data….you just make things up.You know you do and you don’t seem to care.
Britain has crime, ALOT of it.We have scumbags ALOT of them. It’s just that the culture and temperament are a little different here and
it is a far less deadlier country to live in than the USA.
Yes you most certainly can get a hiding, mugged, burgled, car stolen in the UK,possibly even more so than on the continent,no Brit says you wont.
We actually do mostly tell it like it is, that’s usually our temperament,it just doesn’t seem to be yours.
I’m sorry to burst your bubble but you’re just far more likely to end up in a body bag in the USA than in the UK, which is i think after all said and done,the stat that’s the most important, no?
Many Americans just cant seem to bear the thought that its far saner and safer living in Europe especially if that country is the UK!
Sorry, but you don’t do maturity very well.As is evidenced by some of your comments.
The boring stuff….Some data
15,241 murders for 2009, compared to the UK’s 18 year low of 648. Google it you’ll find the data.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/16/crime-figures-recession-impact
51 gun related deaths recorded in the United Kingdom, yes that does include Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland ,compared to nearly 12,000 American gun related homicides.What do you think this tells us?
That’s not too bad for a nation of near62 million is it really?
Oh and by the way i actually do like Americans, even though I am on my soap box here.If only you’d just try and see some things as they really are instead of ‘gut instinctively’ waving the stars n stripes full in our face, you might actually get somewhere
well i’m out.
My point exactly. The belief in American exceptionalism blinds people to the truth about the matter. Ou healthcare system is dismal, we have very very high murder rate, our schools are failing and our economic model has proven to be completely unsustainable.
to be Devil’s advocate..Canadians hunt and own many guns and the Swiss soldiers keep their Auto Rifles at home. Both have VERY low homicide and violent crime rates. No QUESTION this is a multi faceted problem
Yes of course, it’s not just gun ownership, poverty plays a big role and the USA has the highest number of people and highest percentage of people living in poverty in the first world.
The Canadian poverty rate is much lower and the Swiss lower still. One misconception about the Swiss is that they are all required to have automatic rifles, but notihng is ever said about the controls and regulation of this.
Although the Weapons are kept at home currently which may well soon change, the ammunition is not.
The Swiss Armed Forces perform the roles of Switzerland’s militia and regular army. Under the country’s militia system, professional soldiers constitute about 5 percent of military personnel; the rest are conscript citizens 18 to 34 (in some cases up to 50) years old. Because of a long history of neutrality, the army does not take part in armed conflicts in other countries, but is part of several peacekeeping missions around the world.
The structure of the Swiss militia system stipulates that the soldiers keep their own personal equipment, including all personal weapons, at home. Compulsory military service concerns all male Swiss citizens, with women serving voluntarily. They usually receive initial training orders at the age of 18 for military conscription. About two-thirds of young Swiss men are found suitable for service, while alternative service exists for those found unsuitable. Annually, approximately 20,000 persons are trained in basic training for a duration from 18 to 21 weeks.
Since 1989, there have been several attempts to curb military activity or even abolish the armed forces altogether. A notable referendum on the subject was held on 26 November 1989 and, although defeated, did see a significant percentage of the voters in favour of such an initiative.
However, a similar referendum, called for before, but held shortly after the 9/11 attacks, was defeated by over 77% of voters.
The reform “Army XXI” was adopted by popular vote in 2003. It replaced the previous model “Army 95”, reducing the effectives from 400,000 to about 200,000 personnel, 120,000 active duty and 80,000 reservists.
An army recruit has been sentenced to 17 years in jail after being found guilty of murdering a young woman by shooting her at random with his military-issue gun.
The sentence in the Hönggerberg case, as it is known was imposed by a Zurich court on Tuesday after a one-day trial. The prosecution had demanded 20 years, while the defence had called for 12 years maximum.
The Swiss army has since introduced a number of measures to stop such incidents happening again. A national vote is also due to be held on whether army guns should be stored at home.
On November 23, 2007, the man, then aged 21, had just finished training camp for new recruits to Switzerland’s militia army.
After stopping at home, he climbed a small hill in the Zurich Höngg district, taking with him his army-issue gun and some ammunition he admitted stealing from the camp.
The man then took aim at the 16-year-old victim, a trainee hairdresser, who just happened to be waiting at a nearby bus stop, as if in a computer game, reports say, and fired a fatal shot.
The trial, which had aroused huge public interest, was not held under military colours because the man went home before he carried out his attack.
In an interview in Monday’s Tages-Anzeiger newspaper, the parents of the dead girl – speaking for the first time – said that the accused had only shown remorse late in the day.
The couple believe that the army should take some responsibility, as the perpetrator was able to steal munitions and was allegedly known to the justice authorities.
“No gun should be given to this kind of person,” the father was quoted as saying.
” No gun should be given to this kind of person. ”
Victim’s father Army and political action
The army has taken action since the incident, said Christoph Brunner, the deputy spokesman of the Swiss armed forces.
A pilot project at the Recruiting Centre in Sumiswald, one of six places where people undergo fitness and psychological assessments before being accepted into initial army training, has been carrying out personal security checks. These tests, to weed out security risks, are normally done after training is completed.
“We hope to be more efficient and faster in getting the results of personal security checks,” Brunner told swissinfo.ch. The results of the pilot project will be communicated soon.
Brunner said that the army had also ordered the cantons to take assault rifles away from 100 members of the Swiss armed forces.
A third measure allows a person with concerns over the psychological state of a relative to hand over their army rifle to the police.
In addition, last week the government announced plans to allow checks on any serving army staff member. This was previously banned for data protection reasons. The move still has to be approved by parliament.
“The army and the chief of the armed forces are in favour of every measure that can be of use so we don’t have another Hönggerberg,” Brunner said.
” We hope to be more efficient and faster in getting the results of personal security checks. ”
Christoph Brunner, armed forces Nationwide vote
Tom Cassee, secretary of the pacifist Group for Switzerland Without an Army, believes more should be done. It is one of the groups behind a proposal on banning military firearms at home, which is slated for a nationwide vote next year.
“The army knows that there is immense pressure on them so they try and do tiny little steps but for us it’s clear it’s not enough at all,” he told swissinfo.ch.
Storing army rifles at home is a long-standing tradition for the militia army, to be ready for a call to arms in times of crisis. Around one million military weapons are estimated to be in circulation.
But most active members are no longer allowed to store munitions, following a decision by parliament two years ago. Ammunition is mainly kept in central arsenals.
Gun debate
Anti-gun campaigners argue that having guns at home is a safety risk, with Cassee adding that munitions were reportedly easy to steal or to declare lost.
Experts claim that around 300 deaths each year are caused by army weapons, which can also play a role in domestic violence and suicides.
Apart from the Hönggerberg case there has been a series of other highly publicised murders with army weapons over the past decade, including an attack on the Zug cantonal parliament in 2001 which left 14 people dead.
However, those in favour of keeping the tradition argue that decommissioning is a weakening of Swiss security and a vote of no confidence in soldiers.
A security study last year suggested that support for the practice was falling. It found that just 34 per cent of the population was in favour, compared with 57 per cent in 1989.
Isobel Leybold-Johnson, swissinfo.ch
In US folks feel “naked” without their guns eg the concealed carry law in Detroit.
1. we should integrate the inner cities. Heck The SOUTH BRONX has come back (not all the way.)
2. UK and other nations give Heroin for addicts who cant quit the habit. WE should do this for Horse AND Crack! Stop the carnage in Mexico too!
3. we need a national conversation on non lethal defense such as pepper spray tazers and Dogs at home..nooo not pit bulls Dogo Argentinos or Rotties! An alarm dog or well trained shepherd serves Fine.
4. putting armed robbers away for fifteen years sounds tempting but is cruel and will animalize them in prison. In other nations inmates don’t get sodomized and THEN want their manhood back on the streets. also juries may be less likely to convict if sentences are draconian. CHINA?? Yeah they slaughter criminals and dissidents but WE are not like that! At least Communist governments redistribute wealth and take care of their people
London has large areas that are mainly Pakistani or Afro Carribean, and yet it is one of the safest capital cities in the world with a murder rate of just 1.1 per 100k of pop.
It has to do with the level of poverty we have in this country and it is exaperated by the easy access to firearms..
I think they actually give methadone not heroin.
I don’t see what horses have to do with it though, not sure where you’re going with that one.
We have a higher prison population than China, but maybe that’s because they ust execute them.
Take all of the non violent offenders out of prison, you know the ones who have been busted for having a joint etc. That makes more room for the violent offenders and keeps them away from the general population. That said though, most shootings are not done by violent career criminals, but rather by familiars, that means someone known to the victim, family, friend, associate etc. Most murders are commited by legal gun owners, not criminals, at least they weren’t criminals until they decided to shoot someone in a fit of rage, which is in over 77% of cases what actually happens.
everyone talks about how guns are a risk to safety,insult to the government,and without guns we wouldn’t have problems and have world peace.Well when you have rights there comes consequences,its life get over it.If your government finds it insulting to have a personal firearm, then obviously its not because you think their not capable of protecting everyone(which they can’t)its because they have fear of people being able to do something if the government abuses their power.The only reason why someone wants to take away someone else firearm is to make them weaker then them so they can do something they wouldn’t do if that someone were armed.Its common sense.Another issue is that we NEED guns because of those crazy people,thugs,corrupt government etc.They are always going to exist as long as the human race exists and there is nothing anyone,government,or law can do about that.There will never be “world peace” as long as the human race is still alive. Our race is filled with angry,ignorant,stupid,and clueless people that cant control themselves.So therefore we must have guns to put them down.America doesn’t dislike the government, they dislike the PEOPLE in it that’s ruining it for everyone.People hate America so much because we interfere with other countries business.Well its not the population its those fucked up people in the government running these operations that’s messing with everyone.The only reason why they do it is because they have a military backing them, and THIS COULD HAPPEN TO ANY GOVERNMENT NO MATTER HOW MUCH THEY PROMISE.That’s when guns play a role so you can shoot those fuckers in the face and take back your freedom.Now people also complain about suicides, well its not a weapons fault, its obviously the parents.If a kid Shoots himself in the head because he was depressed then the PARENTS did something wrong.Not a simple tool of war,hunting,or sport.If you have so much trust in your government then why to do the right thing
everyone talks about how guns are a risk to safety,insult to the government,and without guns we wouldn’t have problems and have world peace.Well when you have rights there comes consequences,its life get over it.If your government finds it insulting to have a personal firearm, then obviously its not because you think their not capable of protecting everyone(which they can’t)its because they have fear of people being able to do something if the government abuses their power.The only reason why someone wants to take away someone else firearm is to make them weaker then them so they can do something they wouldn’t do if that someone were armed.Its common sense.Another issue is that we NEED guns because of those crazy people,thugs,corrupt government etc.They are always going to exist as long as the human race exists and there is nothing anyone,government,or law can do about that.There will never be “world peace” as long as the human race is still alive. Our race is filled with angry,ignorant,stupid,and clueless people that cant control themselves.So therefore we must have guns to put them down.America doesn’t dislike the government, they dislike the PEOPLE in it that’s ruining it for everyone.People hate America so much because we interfere with other countries business.Well its not the population its those fucked up people in the government running these operations that’s messing with everyone.The only reason why they do it is because they have a military backing them, and THIS COULD HAPPEN TO ANY GOVERNMENT NO MATTER HOW MUCH THEY PROMISE.That’s when guns play a role so you can shoot those fuckers in the face and take back your freedom.Now people also complain about suicides, well its not a weapons fault, its obviously the parents.If a kid Shoots himself in the head because he was depressed then the PARENTS did something wrong.Not a simple tool of war,hunting,or sport.
How simplistic
i hate the thought of being helpless and relying on someone else to save me from a robber, When all i need to do is pullout a 9mm and dispose of the problem.People then argue about how then the gun could be wrestled out of your hands and be used against you.Well,in order to carry a concealed weapon,you must have a concealed weapons license, and in order to obtain a license you must have training to do so.In these classes they teach you how to properly arm yourself,disarm someone,and discharge your firearm.The training is then followed up by a test to review everything you learned in that class and you cannot earn your license unless you scored a 100%.Would you depend on society, who are nothing but followers, to save you from a life threatening situation?The problem with policemen is they are human and Humans are IMPERFECT. We can be fat,lazy,ill mannered and uncaring.Policemen have also been known to exploit there authority, especially in the 2000s.the GDP (Generally Dumb Public) are completely and repulsively oblivious to the bigger picture.All they care about are Luxuries,for the moment secure feeling, and day dreams of a personal or universal utopia.Wake up people,this is life.To live is to suffer, but we must make the best of it.Sitting on your ass watching jersey shore or playing call of duty is not living life to the fullest.Exercise your god given right to life,liberty,and the pursuit of happiness.We should be active in nature and stop arguing over needed or irrelevant things and try to get in touch with our natural and free spirited self,rather then being cooped in a house all day staring at a electric screen of some sort. You should be able to have whatever you want in life as long as you work for it.Free medical care is not the answer,it is NOT free and never will be,don’t be fooled because you don’t have to pay up front it could be in taxes,debt,bills or other things we might not even know about that’s hidden from the public eye.
Why use lethal force against someone who is only commiting a property crime. How about a stun gun, Puts them out of action just the same, but nobody loses their life on account of some property.
crazed men/vigilantes are NOT one of the biggest reasons homicides occur.two out of every three homicides are suicides, and drug related murders in America.China does not take care of their people.they slaughter them and and watch them at all times and have almost no connection with the outside world.everything is monitored and punishments are cruel and are carried out with no remorse,china might as well be a giant prison nation.You are limited on what you can have (including children) and have no rights.that’s communism folks,it is complete and utter dictatorship, nothing more.
Again, where are you getting your information from. It is completely untrue that 2 out of every 3 muders are suicides, completely untrue.
2 out of every 3 murders are not drug related either. Once again it is up to you to provide real sources for your point of view. It is not incumbent on the person you are arguing with to prove what you are saying is true it is incumbent on you to prove it.
China and communism have nothing to do with this conversation. Why branch of into communism. Nice try, but stay on point.
I used to live in Texas Fred. and we know how to use a gun.We back-woodsmen/ mountain men don’t ever run into problems with thugs because they know we have a shiny 357. on our waist to send them to the creator if they dare threaten the safety of our family.The removing of weapons is a threat to others and my safety and i would gladly and lawfully use my right of the second amendment on whoever tried to take my weaponry or jeopardize the safety of myself or my family.You shouldn’t be scared of guns that’s mainstream bullshit media trying to persuade you in doing the seemingly right thing when its not.A gun is a TOOL, nothing more, just like a hammer and nail.
2 things from a very fiddly keyboard. Will, you are in a trough of mistrust which in turn breeds the thing you most fear people with violence always on their mind and a gun in their pants. Second thing is that triggers and distance are related to impulsive acts. You can to some extent blame the tool. I’d ban it for any civilian use if I had my way.
Coming from TX no more means you are able to use a gun responsibly than coming from innr city New York. For example TX has a firearms death rate of 11 per hundred thousand of population and New York has a firearm death rate less than half of that at 5.1 per 100k
NJ has even less at 4.9 per 100k Alaska has a gun death rate of 20 per 100k of population.
DC is the only place in the USA that has tight gun laws, but also has a high (the highest at 31.2 per 100k) of firearm deaths. It is however, surrounded by states that have very lax gun control laws. Again I will provide the evidence to support what I am saying, you can find it at statemaster dot com.
Firearms Death Rate per 100,000 (most recent) by state
Right on Fleshisgrass
so basically your saying a tool kills people.That’s a smart conclusion there pal.Sounds like your saying if i were to put a firearm on the table and back away from it the tool would then discharge and and kill someone because its the guns fault.A gun is not a person or living thing. Therefore it cannot be the “guns” fault, because the tool is incapable of functioning without an owner and the pull of the owners finger
it cannot and never will have emotions or the brain power to decide when it should or shouldn’t discharge.If that were the case it would no longer be a tool because it would have free will.you shouldn’t put so much trust in society.Because if it came down to it they would sell you out if they got in a sticky situation.If you really think society cares about each other like you dream about in your day dream magical fairy tale’s of a peaceful world, you got another thing coming.do you think someone is willing to be nice to you just because you think they should? then that is obvious ignorance.If you cant see in the world we live in today that people like to kill,rape,rob and assault which has been proven through science and medical standpoints.Think about the t.v. shows,movies and video games we play.They all revolve around violence and have an influence on certain people.
Tools only kill in the hands of someone who wants to use them to kill. The argument goes like this.
Usually if you get into a fight with someone, it is out of anger and done in the heat of the moment, when your decision making process is compromised. Now if the only thing you have is your hands and feet, firstly you are much less likely to attack in the first place because you run the risk of being beaten yourself and even if you do act, it is far less likely to end in a fatality. It is much much harder to beat someone to death then it is to shoot them. Now let’s say you have some kind of tool that requires you to get in close to make the attack, let’s say a hammer or a knife. You have an advantage over your unarmed opponent, but still you run the risk of them being able to get that tool away form you and then getting a beating or worse, them using it on you or you are succesful and use it on them. But you still run a high risk to your own personal safety. Now let’s take the example of a pistol or any kind of firearm, now you are just as angry, but you are far enough away from them that you don’t have to get in close, so there is no risk of you being overpowered by your opponent. You pull the trigger he is either dead, dying or seriously injured and all you had to do was move your finger, you yourself were never in any danger.
Conclusion, there is far less risk of injury or death to you if you attack someone with a gun than with no weapon/tool or with a weapon/tool that requires you to get in close. So yes, people do kill people, however a firearm makes it far easier to kill someone (as already discussed) and therefore in a situation like those discussed the possession of a firearm makes it far more likely that someone will die or be seriously injured.
Of course the tool itself can never have the “emotions or the brain power to decide when it should or shouldn’t discharge”
However the fact that you now run no risk of being injurured or killed yourself in a confrontational situation, merely by the possession of a firearm, means that in a heat of the moment situation, you are far more likely to attack using it than if you only had your hands and feet to fight with and even if you had a knife or a hammer etc. as those kinds of weapons/tools require you to get in close and therefore present you with a certain amount of risk. You can fire a gun from a distance and by doing so never put yourself in any risk.
Most murders are not planned they are heat of the moment things. Of course murders that are planned will happen anyway, regardless of whether we have firearms or not, but those kinds of murders are few and far between. Our murder rate would be drastically decreased if we didn’t have such easy access to firearms.
In addition, the majority of the population does not want to rob, rape, kill and assualt, that has never been proven by science at all. If you believe it has, then cite your sources. The crime rate has dropped drastically already when compared to the 1970ies 80ies and early 90ies. In 1992 there were 34,000.00 in the USA that has dropped to about 16,000.00 by 2009. It’s still way too high and much much higher than the rest of the 1st world, but it is a big improvement.
I don’t know about you, but I for one don’t want to go around raping, robbing and killing and if you do, you are just the sort of person who should not be carrying a gun.
Of course all of my comments are directed at Will.
i never said the majority of the population, i said people,not most people.And yes it has been proven,That people like to rape,kill,etc because alot of people have psychosis.Yes it is true, many people have psychosis because they do the same thing every single day of their lives and so they think that life is all about working and nothing else so they drift away from reality and try to form different outcomes of life by doing things they enjoy but are wrongfully done because they know no better.Our soceity has been taught to act and beleive in a certain way to be accepted as “normal and funtiong member of soceity”.my definition of society is a massive gathered metropolis of people who are conditioned (brainwashed) from birth to do labor for the economy and markets of a government by schools,media,authority figures, and laws.Think about it,what do you do when you wake up every morning and at the end of the day? Based on my personal conclusion,For instance if someone rapes, they like sex.If someone robs, they like pleasantries.If someone kills they like to hunt.This relates to the homesick of being in the nature/wild and they dream of being able to do whatever they want without the bonds of society which sounds exactly like an animal.Now we are not animals, but we are mammals and are a race of this earth and so we have that natural wild instict to survive and chase things we desire. Life really is about enjoying nature and natural things, to be free spirited and close with whatever higher power you belive in and to enjoy and preserve natural beauty for the next generations to come.not of irrelevent, for the moment industrialized luxuries.You are correct,it is easier to kill someone with a gun,i have personally seen it happen.Yes you are less likely to die without a firearm in the situation,but there is no guarantee that the criminal is going to play by the rules.Thats what you must understand.Criminals do not think like law abiding citizens they think they can do whatever they want so they go out and rob someone with a pistol/knife/tool.If you take weapons away they are still going to find a way to kill people bats,chains,pipes,steel toe boots,brass knuckles etc.No matter what you take away criminals will always have weapons of some sort.But wouldnt you like to atleast have the choice of defending yourself with equal advantages? rather then letting those people rape,rob,or assualt you like a push over? sounds to me like someone has self esteem issues.If you dont have the will to defend yourself against something thats wrong then why are you even posting?the bottom line is Firearms are not bad.Yes they bring death to very high numbers, but those are for the select few people that cant control themsevles.Yes, people can act in the heat of the moment, but those people are a minority.Most of those people are criminals not law abiding citizens.I personally do not rape and kill either,i also agree 100% those people should not have access to weapons, but they do.there is nothing me,you, or anyone can do about it so we MUST defend ourselves otherwise we will always and forevermore be tormented,raped,robbed, and assualted by criminals.If criminals are not taught a lesson they will always come back again and again until they are put down or worse.But now that i said that, i know someone is going to say its the polices job, not mine to take care of the problem.Well,what happens when me and my family are lying dead on the floor because some lazy ass cop didnt show up in time to stop an armed robbery?
The facts are that the police cannot be there when it happens,they cannot prevent it,and they cannot defend everyone in one time,that is impossible and irrational to think a policeman can stop everything bad.The policeman himself could be bad.So therefore you cannot rely on society,government,or private government force to protect you.Its a fact,you must learn to adapt and fend for yourself.That is how the human race has survived all this time.Chazz you are correct i am in mistrust of everyone,it is naive to trust a feeble and easily corrupted and destroyable society that can be decieved by propaganda,television,radio, and games.Why do you think there are wars? its an easy conclusion:nationalism,militaryism, and social darwinist thinking.These are facts and if i really must tell you where i find my resources, i find them in books,websites,magazines,quotes,personal experiances,eyewitness accounts,common sense and school.If i must be specific,i say find your own data, this is a blog not a service.If there is something you feel is wrong, please correct me, i enjoy debates,i learn and take something out of each one and become all the wiser.Thank you for your replies.
Will, your psychological theories have no basis in research evidence. I don’t know why you think they are worth bringing up in public.
Moving on to the guts of what you are getting at, have you come across Rousseau’s ‘The Social Contract’? It sets out the difficulty you’re embroiled in:
~~~
“”The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.” This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution.”
~~~
The laws about gun control need to be subject to the democratic will of the people, as they are in your country and mine. In my country we decided to give up the right to carry a weapon because we collectively wanted to reduce our chances of being subjected to armed or lethal force by somebody else. I am proud of this, and while I understand that you are scared of criminals with guns, I prefer to think of myself as a citizen who has a contract and duty to my fellow citizens, rather than as a lone individual perpetually under threat.
Rousseau says:
~~~
“Let us draw up the whole account in terms easily commensurable. What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses. If we are to avoid mistake in weighing one against the other, we must clearly distinguish natural liberty, which is bounded only by the strength of the individual, from civil liberty, which is limited by the general will; and possession, which is merely the effect of force or the right of the first occupier, from property, which can be founded only on a positive title.”
~~~
In short, if you think the police are poor, then you need to campaign for a better police force. For pete’s sake, you are American – there is everything to play for. Hardly anywhere gives its citizens more freedom than you have. If you want to take pride in your country, begin by building a police force which upholds justice and the rule of law. And if you refuse to rely on your police force, and if you successfully urge your fellow citizens to act on their own behalf without respect to the law, you will soon find that civic life disintegrates and you ultimately meet a violent end in the lawless world which is currently, thank god, largely a figment of your imagination.
And what I find particularly difficult to stomach about your arguments is that you want to blame people who have died from gun crime for their own deaths. No. You are blaming the victim. The person responsible is the person who pulled that trigger. You are the lawless one.
The majority and most are the same thing. If I have ten apples and I give you 6 then you have the majority of the apples or the “most apples. The majority and most are the same thing. Your conclusions for why people rape, ron and kill are completely of your own making without any basis in any kind of research, study or science. Rape, for example, is a crime of violence and control and has nothing to do with the perpetrator’s like of sex.
As mamals we survive best as a group with each other helping each other, that is why we and almost all other mamals live in societies, i.e. packs, groups, herds, nations etc.
I know I am correct in saying that you are more likely to die if there is a gun present. That is what I have been saying all along. Your misconception is that you have to protect yourself from criminals and that criminals won’t play by the rules. It is proven beyond all doubt, that over 70% of murders are not committed by career criminals, gang members or anything even remotely similar. Almost 80% of murders are committed by freinds or family members on other friends or family members with legally owned weapons. You actually stand far more chance of being hit by a car and killed than of being shot by a criminal.
In your world we are all under constant threat of rape, robbery and murder from hords of roaming criminals. Your world is howver a figment of your immigination and those of people like you. People who have some kind of difficulty controling their impulses are not the select few, that’s why there are so many bar fights etc. especially between young men. Between the ages of 15 and 34 a young males most likely cause of death is gunshot wounds. Those gunshot wounds arise from situations which if they didn’t have access to weapons would result in injuries maybe some would be serious and there might even be some beating/stabbing deaths etc. thrown in for good measure, but it reamins a fact that it is much much easier to kill in a fit of rage, which almost 100% of young men have at some time or other, than it is to kill without a gun. Yes you must be specific and it must be backed up with proper citing. You can’t just say find the proof of what I am trying to prove yourself. I do not have to prove what you are saying, you do. My sources are, The CIA World Fact Book, The United Nations Human Development Report, The United Kingdom Crime and Punishment Report, NationMaster dot com,
interpol dot int, FBI dot gov, unodc dot org and lots more besides. I can prove what I am saying and am not asking you to prove my point, you should be willing to do the same.
Using the word people, rather than some people or a small percentage implies people in general or most people.
Gun control like in England works GREAT.
I mean, let’s see…. who else had gun control like that……..
OH YEAH, HITLER =) stfu up you ignorant twats.
Oh so now you are going to compare Hitler with a democratically elected government doing the bidding of the people that elected them. Get real.
Hitler was elected first and loved by the peoole. That’s how it starts don’t be naive
Hitler got 32% of the vote, hardly a vitory, he seized power, he did not win any elections. Study your history. Don’t be so naive or silly
This Hitler gun control meme is the purest of bullshit aimed at provoking an emotional response. The facts: after WWI the government of Germany (commonly known as the Wiemar Republic) was induced by the Allied Powers to disarm.Germany at the time was awash in weapons having a long tradition of gun ownership. The new laws imposed a number of restrictions on firearm and ammunition. AFTER Hitler came to power he ELIMINATED these restrictions. Pretty much the opposite of gun control.
The primary reason for owning and carrying a firearm is to protect yourself…particularly against your government. All living things have a right to protect themselves: even rabbits will fight if cornered; many plants are poinsonous. All this statistical debate just obscures the real issue: We are born free and have the right to protect that freeddom.
OK, you’ve convinced me that rabbits are vulnerable and deserve guns. You, though – you aren’t cornered, you’re writing on my blog from your internet connection in a democratic country where your freedom is underwritten in law. Your fixation with lethal weapons is a mystery to me.
But statistics prove that high gun ownership levels have exactly the opposite effect.
I can’t believe this is still Bering discussed!
For the love of GOD it really is very simple if there is easy access to guns you will have a higher gun related murder rate.
Your right to bear arms to defend your self against the king (LOL) and your constitution mean nothing you still have a higher murder rate.
You either accept this as a given or live in blissful ignorance (as most of you do in all things wordily)safe in the knowledge you can defend yourself against king.
You are an idiot. First the Constitution doesn’t say it is to defend ourselves against the king. It is to defend ourselves against anyone that would take any of our rights away, but even the Constitution doesn’t say that. It just says it is a right, not a privilege. I would say it is for law abiding citizens and mentally sane people. Second, your anecdotal “evidence” doesn’t support the evidence that when the states started allowing people to conceal carry guns and gun ownership went up, the crime rates in those states started dropping. (http://www.naturalnews.com/038700_gun_facts_violent_crime_statistics.html) But I have to ask the question, why is a Brit, who has never owned a gun, and probably never shot one, talking about a topic you have no first hand knowledge of? I wouldn’t really expect a subject of the king (LOL) to understand what it means to be given the freedom of owning a gun responsibly.
In addition to a previous comment about people getting their ass kicked and then running to their cars…it’s not that it doesn’t happen but how many times have you all got your ass kicked and then immediately gone to your car to get a gun? Or how many times have you kicked someone’s ass and then seen a gun get put in your face? Or for that matter even witnessed it? The fact is that bad things happen, but it is a few people who choose to do these things. If someone wanted to get back bad enough the fact is they would wait with a knife or a chain or a bat. All you are doing is trying to raise fear amongst people, probably because you yourself are afraid of handling a gun. You most definitely have to respect them, but they are a tool, just like a knife, chains, or clubs. It is the responsibility of the person wielding it to do so in an appropriate way. If we were to blame the tool for the killing then we should take away vehicles first because they are the tool responsible for most deaths in America.
Also to a comment made about mass shootings that have taken place, most of them happen where concealed carry of a gun is not allowed. While this is purely an observation on my part I think it warrants some study. These mass shootings are taking place in schools, churches, temples, malls, movie theaters where patrons, worshipers and students/teachers are not allowed to defend themselves or others. How often in America do you see someone walk into a police station and start shooting it up, or go to the nearest gun store and try to rob it at gun point. I don’t think I have heard of one time in my life time that someone has opened fire on people at a shooting range. It appears someone who intends to harm to others usually does it in a place where they know they are not going to get messed up themselves. Again these are just anecdotal examples, but they should really be examined to see if there is something there. In the mean time law abiding citizens have a 2nd Amendment Right to keep and bear arms, and the right shall not be infringed.
Right then, Common Sense. Nuclear arms for all. Right? Chemical weapons for all.
Just thought i’d come in with an interesting fact, in England in 2010 there were 48 gun related murders, including the 12 Derick bird caused in his shooting spree.
so one man on one day caused over 20% of an entire nation of 50million people’s gun murders for 2010. 1/5 gun related murders where caused by him.
if gun ownership causes more murders or not it doesn’t matter. the US people would never let somebody take their guns away and Brits would never won’t someone bringing guns back in.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that those who protest against gun control the loudest are the ones who should be allowed guns the least. They are ill educated on the facts and spout the usual spoon fed talking points which have been repeatedly debunked. When that doesn’t work they get angry and show who they really are. And they want to be able to carry guns.
The fact is there is crime everywhere, in the US you have problems with guns in the UK we have problems with youth gangs who carry knifes, inner London has had a lot of problems, also the fact with knife crime here is it does not always get reported. Also guns defiently are not that hard to get hold of in inner cities in England, as many gangs sell them but they do cost a bit! But I still feel safer knowing guns are illegal here, so u can’t just go down your local supermarket and get one
to be honest, i reckon none of you guys live in areas badly affected by crime; either in the states or here in good old ‘Great’ Britain. But I do. The problem lies where, in the UK’s case, young people feel separated from the rest of society. As a 18 year old growing up in london i know why a lot of kids these days feel like they have nothing to live for, they feel like they need respect (especially amongst black kids from cities like London, Liverpool, Brum and Manchester). You don’t know what its like growing up in these conditions, irrespective of whether it’s in Charlotte North Carolina or my hometown of Croydon South London. So stop throwing out facts that really and truly mean nothing, because the crime rates your given are not factual. i’ll tell you that for free.
you’re trying to compare homicide numbers to murder numbers. they’re not the same
I googled homicide rates and the info I got shows that the murder rate in the UK is much, much higher than in the US. Don’t know where you got your statistics from, but they are grossly inaccurate. Interestingly, regarding this statistic in relation to gun laws, guns are virtualy illegal in the UK, yet the violent crime rate is mutiple times higher than in the US where guns are legal to own. The UK has effectively disarmed its people and handed them over as prey to the criminal element of their society.
I don’t know what absolute garbage you chose to read that said that. Fact is the rate is far higher in the US. You can check the figues at nationbuilder dot com, the CIA World Fact book which you can look up on line, Violent crime does not mean murder, it means fights in pubs and at soccer games. The murder rae in the USA is far ihgher than it is in the U.K. Get your facts straight and use reliable sources for your information.
from my cold dead hands, you hear that Washington d.c.?
Either way, around here we don’t have as many murderers ans rapists running around as uk, England and london does! (Mary Bell, James bulgars killers) and Many more! On top of that, they are more concerned on protecting the criminals than they are keeping the public safe and informing their public of having a baby murderer as a neighbor! Here they stay locked away or get capital punishment like they deserve kids or not! It’s pretty bad that UK has more child murderers than any country in the world, idk what they do to their kids over their but I wouldn’t even go visit for a day!
what are you talking about????
first “uk, England and london” dose not make sense thats like me saying USA, america and washington D.C. I don’t even need to do the research to say that the UK dose not have the most child murders in the world that is stupid its one of the most civilised nations on the planet. you clearly need to go back to education because what did make sense in what you said was still a pack of lie’s. and capital punishment is another thing not only dose america have the worst murder rates out of all the 1st world western nations its also the only one to kill its own people. america is a young nation so maybe one day you will learn like the rest of the western world that guns a capital punishment are bad.
If I created a White utopia sovereign nation (called racist by you). I guarantee the murder rate would be the lowest in the world. Go ahead and call me racist, but that would be the only argument you would have. The statistics absolutely prove that black and brown people commit the majority of murders in the USA. Not sure why this is even a discussion?
I live in San Antonio, so believe me I know the reality. The majority of murders in our little Texas area are committed by Mexican-Americans (brown people) around 80%.
Go ahead and spin your little argument about how I am racist and it is the white man’s fault….blah blah blah.
The truth hurts sometimes.
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These are homicides and not murders. These deaths are counting the bad guys that are killed with guns when they are attacking innocent people in their homes. These stats are used to push agendas. The murder rate in the uk is higher and people over there just kill each other with knives and bats instead of guns.
That is completely incorrect. The murder/homicide rate in the U.K. is much much lower than here in the USA. While it is true that most murders in the U.K. are committed with knives or blunt force instruments, it is not true that the murder rate is higher than the USA. It is not even close to the murder rate in the USA. I have lived in both countries and a Iguarantee you it’s not even close. There were just 619 murders in all of the U.K. last year, a country of 62,2181761 people. The USA had 16,799 in a country with 313,739,857. So there are 27.138 times as many murder (not homicides, I only looked up murders FBI stats., CDC Stats, CIA World Factbook Stats)
and yet the population of the USA is only 5.042 times as large. For the USA to have the same murder rate as the U.K. there would need to be just 3,120 murders a year not 16,799. That makes the USA’s murder rate 538% higher than the U.K.’s Sorry you don’t like the facts, but there they are. It is not an agenda, it is the truth. remember I am not including any homicide numbers just murders. As you rightly pointed out, there is such a thing as “Justifiable Homicide” i.e. self defense. This does not include those numbers.
16000 homicides is great compared to the 10000 innocent people that have been killed in Syria by their own tyrannical government. Maybe if these people had a method to defend themselves they could fight back or at least die trying. There’s a reason the Nazis didnt allow Jews to have weapons before they threw them in trains and slaughtered them
God bless America
Rifles and handguns won’t do the job in Syria. You can’t fight artilary and helicopter gunships with a rifle or a handgun, get real. It’s a fact that we have a far far higher murder (not homicide) but murder rate than the rest of the first world. Most of our murders are commited with guns. There were 16 gun murders in the U.K. last year and 619 total murders. Our murder rate is 538% higher than the U.K. when you take the relative size of the populations into account.
you know a university (cant remember what one) did a study about internet arguments and they came to the conclusion that the person that losses the argument is the first person to mention the Nazis unless of course its about WW2 ha. Anyway there is a rebel army in Syria who do have guns that the United Kingdom have paid for ironically. also the fact you feel the need to have guns to defend yourself from your own government is rather worrying.
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Have just discovered the site and simply wanted to say thank you for being so thorough on your article
A 17 year old in China just killed 9 and seriously injured 5 people with a knife.
Yeah and? When was the last time something like that happened? Since Columbine we have had almost 130 mass shootings.
So what do you propose, what is the solution?
Tighten gun licensing laws. All of the recent mass shootings, including the one on Sunday at the Sikh temple were done with legally (not illegally) purchased weapons. You won’t stop all cases, as we can see from other countries that have stricter gun laws, but we will reduce them greatly. Less guns in circulation mean less shootings, it’s simple math.
Gun-related death rates in the United States are eight times higher than they are in countries that are economically and politically similar to it. Higher rates are found in developing countries and those with political instability.
A quarter of robberies of commercial premises in the United States are committed with guns. Fatalities are three times as likely in robberies committed with guns than where other, or no, weapons are used, with similar patterns in cases of family violence. Criminologist Philip J. Cook hypothesized that if guns were less available, criminals might commit the same crime, but with less-lethal weapons. He finds that the level of gun ownership in the 50 largest U.S. cities correlates with the rate of robberies committed with guns, but not with overall robbery rates. A significant number of homicides are the consequence of an unintended escalation of another crime in which firearms are present, with no initial intent to kill. Overall robbery and assault rates in the United States are comparable to those in other developed countries, such as Australia and Finland, with much lower levels of gun ownership. Although the numbers of gun deaths have increased in countries like the United Kingdom they are still amazingly low. There were just 16 murders in the U.K. commited with firearms last year and more than 12,000 in the USA. The USA’s population is only 4.6 times that of the U.K. (300mil vs 62mil) and given the same level of gun violence the U.S.A. would have just 73 gun murders in an entire year. The overall murder number in the U.K. with any weapon, be it a hammer, a kitchen knife, a car, fists or a gun was just 612. If the USA had the same murder rate, we would have had just 2,815 murders last year we have roughly 15,000 a year. Almost all of those are commited with firearms. Those cold and hard facts tell us that contrary to what gun advocates will have you believe. We will not be overrun by gun carrying career criminals if we make guns harder to get. Pro gun advocates like to quote percentages of increase in the gun death rate in the U.K. because when you go from 8 gun murders a year to 16 it looks much scarier when you say there was a 100% increase in firearm violence once gun controls were introduced. This is not untrue, but on numbers like 8 and 16, while it may appear like a huge increase when percentages are used, the actual numbers are very small indeed. A 100% increase over 1 is 2 or a 100% increase over 2 is 4, or 100% increase over 4 is 8 and so on. With very very low numbers as a starting point, percentages that look big are really very small in total numbers.
Why isn’t anyone mentioning that the globalist tyrants [the middle part of this comment is a lengthy and turgid rant. It would turn any impressionable person off politics and onto conspiracy beliefs, so I censored it. Not welcome here. Save this kind of self-indulgent baseless trash for your own blog, Kurt. Love, Flesh.] lack of arms has placed them in the cross-hairs of the most brutal and deadly criminals possibly, the members of the globalist government.
Censorship causes blindness.
Facts and statistics are funny things, they can be used to make just about any point or push any agenda one wishes to push. Here are some facts that everyone should consider before deciding whether or not America has a “gun” problem:
1. According to the FBI, as much as 80% of all crime in the U.S. is gang related. Will adressing this problem reduce crime by 80%? Maybe; can’t hurt.
2. According to the U.K. Daily Mail, Britain’s violent crime rate is 5 times higher than the U.S. (2,035 incidents per 100,000 residents vs. 400 in the U.S.) This is rarely mentioned by gun control advocates.
3. According to a Northwestern University study (Kleck & Gertz), women fend off an average of 200,000 sexual assualt attempts every year with their guns and homeowners foil 2.5 million attempted home invasions likewise. One could make a persuasive argument that in the absence of private gun ownership, those attempted crimes would be committed crimes, driving up the U.S. violent crime rate to a number similar to Britains.
My opinion is that we do not have a gun problem in the U.S., we have a behavioral problem with gangs and drugs. I Iive in the midwest U.S. Everyone I know owns a gun; no one has shot anyone yet. My local news however shows a shooting nearly everyday, the vast majority gang related using stolen guns and committed by felons who legally cannot possess a gun. America needs to address the root cause of gun violence and leave law abiding gun owning citizens alone in my opinion.
1) According to the Department of Justice 80% of murders are committed by familiars. That is friends or family members with legally purchased and owned guns. It is completely untrue that 80% are gang related. Show me the study that says that.
2) Your numbers are incorrect. Violent crime is roughly twice as high in the U.K. as the USA. What you fail to mention is that violent crime includes “drunken brawls outside of pubs are a major contributor” from the Daily Mail. Violent crime and murder are not the same thing. A brawl outside a pub is not murder, but does count as violent crime. If you take just 5 small cities in the USA you have already exceeded the total number of murder for all of the UK, which has a population of 62,000,000. For example the following:
1. Flint, Michigan:
Population: 102,357
2011 murders: 52
2. Detroit, Michigan:
Population: 713,239
2011 murders: 344
3. St Louis, Missouri:
Population: 320,454
2011 murders: 113
4. Oakland, California:
Population: 395,317
2011 murders: 104
5. Memphis, Tennessee:
Population: 652,725
2011 murders: 117
Total number of murders 730 Total Population that those 730 murders were spread over 2,174,092. The population of the UK is 28.50 times that of these 5 cities and yet they had fewer murders.
My sources were the FBI, UK Daily Mail and the Dept. of Justice. Would suggest you go back and do some more research and include YOUR sources. Also suggest you read and comprehend what I am saying. I DID NOT say 80% of murders are gang related did I?
And violent crime from all sources in the UK IS 5 times higher that the US (2035/407 = 5). I couldn’t care less if some of those are “drunken brawls” as you put it. People are severely injured from fights every day. The facts are an “apples to apples” comparison puts violent crime in the UK 5 times higher than the U.S. according to the UK Daily Mail report.
Please refer to the UK Home Office.gov.uk report of violent crime. It’s available in .pdf form. In it, their estimates of violent crime against UK citizens is 2.2 million incidents in a population of 60 million, or 3,600 incidents per 100,000, even higher than the Daily Mail report.
Finally, the Kleck and Gertz report was found to be accurate, home owners and females in the US do fend off a significant number of attempted crimes each and every year. I again maintain we do not have a gun problem in the US we have a behavioral problem.
1) My sources are the Daily Mail “Drunken brawls” was their wording not mine and the US Department of Justice for the 80% of all murders being by familars. Fact is violent crime is roughly twice as high, not 5 times higher. But even if it were 5 times higher, it is still not murder. There are no two ways around that. Fact is 5 small cities in the USA have murders murders than an entire country. Why do you think that is? It’s not rocket science,
‘Violent crime in England and Wales has fallen by almost a half a peak in 1995 but we are not complacent and know there is still work to do. That is why last year we published ‘Saving lives. Reducing harm. Protecting the public. An Action Plan for Tackling Violence 2008-11′.’ (Daily Mail)
“But Police Minister David Hanson said: ‘These figures are misleading.
Levels of police recorded crime statistics from different countries are simply not comparable since they are affected by many factors, for example the recording of violent crime in other countries may not include behaviour that we would categorise as violent crime.” (Daily Mail)
“In Britain, an affray is considered a violent crime, while in other countries it will only be logged if a person is physically injured.” (Daily Mail)
“According to the figures released yesterday, 3.6 per cent of the population of England and Wales were victims of violent crime. In the U.S., only 2 per cent of the population” (Daily Mail)
The murder figures in the USA are astounding for Brits who are used to around 600 murders per year. In 2010 there were 12,996 murders in the US. Of those, 8,775 were caused by firearms. The USA has roughly 4.6 the UK’s population so you would think they should have roughly 2,400 murders a year, instead it is more than 500% higher. Most of those murders are commited with firearms. It’s not rocket science.
A couple of things you fail to mention is that this report in the Daily Mail is from 1997.
If you are going to quote the Daily Mail as a source then you need to give the whole story. Affray without injury would not be recored as a violent crime in the USA for example. Causing an affray can be just threatening behavior and recorded as a violent crime in the U.K. not here.
My source of the Daily Mail was an article from 2005, not 1997. Please show your sources for your assertion that violent crime in the UK is only twice as high.
The UK government’s own report from 2011 lists violent crime as 2.2 million in a population of 60 million. You do the math. Your statistics are skewed in that they show individuals involved, not incidents. Big difference.
Also, your reference of murders committed by “familiars” is misleading, whether intentional on your part or not. Pimps, drug dealers, mules, gang members and members of organized crime generally know their victims and are included in your FBI statistics. Law enforcement makes no distinction between victim and offender in that regard.
Regarding “affray without injury” again according to the UK government’s own report from 2011,incidents of violent crime with injury were some 3 times higher than without injury.
Fact remains, violent crime is 5-9 times higher in the UK than the U.S. Yes, the murder rate is higher in the U.S. but that is no more a gun problem than are cars that kill and claw hammers that kill. It is people, not guns. It is a behavioral issue caused by inner city drug cultures, inequity in incomes, and gang activity. I live in an area where EVERYONE owns at least one gun. There is a gun club a half mile from my house, even the old ladies shoot there. We haven’t had a murder here EVER even though the number of guns per person, per square mile, etc. is FAR higher than any inner city.
Ps. What you actually said was “According to the FBI, as much as 80% of all crime in the U.S. is gang related” I’m pretty sure that is incorrect, although I would need to do more research. However we are talking specifically about murder so it’s not relevant anyway.
Being “pretty sure” and backing up your claims with sources are two entirely different things. Everything I claimed above comes from UK reports, U.S. Dept. of Justice and FBI crime stats, all published as accessible .pdf files.
Eveything I have claimed also comes from United Nations reports, CIA World Fact Book, CDC Reports, Daily Mail, Department of Justice Reports and more. You only give half the information in support of your argument. I give it all. The Daily Mail links I put above are not flattering to the U.K. for example, but the fact still remains we have a far far far higher murder rate and most of those murders are committed with firearms. The ONLY thing I said I was pretty sure about was this “I’m pretty sure that is incorrect, although I would need to do more research. However we are talking specifically about murder so it’s not relevant anyway.” Right there though I say I would need to do more research. I was talking about your 80% of crime being gang related. What I am not pretty sure about, but rather absolutely positive about is that our murder rate is roughly 500% higher than the U.K. and that the vast majorty of those murders are carried out with firearms. What I am also absolutely positive about is comparing “violent crime” in the USA to the UK is bogus, because the UK measures things as “violent crime” that we don’t. Also where do you get 5-9 times more likely? there’s a big difference between 5 times and 9 times. Again that said, the Brits would record things as violent crime that we do not, so that comparison is bogus. However murder is murder and cis not recoreded differently here and there. Notice I say murder not homicide which includes suicide etc.
This report shows the twice as high number.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-25671/Violent-crime-worse-Britain-US.html
Since you are so fond of the Daily Mail, here are some more reports for you.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2160943/As-budget-cuts-lead-police-layoffs-dangerous-cities-U-S-violent-crime-rise.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2160943/As-budget-cuts-lead-police-layoffs-dangerous-cities-U-S-violent-crime-rise.html
In 2008, according to the FBI, 14,180 people were murdered in America. In 2009, according to the UNODC, 60% of all homicides in the United States were perpetrated using a firearm (Homicide also includes suicide and justifiable homicide, i.e. self defense)
The US homicide rate, which has declined substantially since 1991 from a rate per 100,000 persons of 9.8 to 4.8 in 2010, is still among the highest in the industrialized world. There were 14,748 murders in the United States in 2010 (666,160 murders from 1960 to 1996). In 2004, there were 5.5 homicides for every 100,000 persons, roughly three times as high as Canada (1.9) and six times as high as Germany.
The reported US violent crime rate includes only Aggravated Assault, whereas the Canadian and British violent crime rate includes all categories of assault, including the much-more-numerous Assault level 1 (i.e., assault not using a weapon and not resulting in serious bodily harm). A government study concluded that direct comparison of the countries’ violent crime totals or rates was “inappropriate”.
“Also where do you get 5-9 times more likely? there’s a big difference between 5 times and 9 times.”
The UK Daily Mail report listed a volent crime rate in the UK of 2035 incidents per 100,000 population. The FBI for the same year listed 407/100,000 in the U.S. or a 5:1 ratio. The UK Home office report for 2011 listed 2.2 million incidents of violent crime in the U.k. in a population of 60 million, or 3,666 per 100,000 or a 9:1 ratio with the U.S. You pick, the Daily Mail or the UK Home Office report for 2011, I don’t care. The fact remains that the violent crime rate in the UK is 5-9 times higher depending on which report you want to use. perhaps the Daily mail ferreted out the “Affrays” you mentioned in order to come up with a more fair comparison. I don’t know; whichever figure, most UK citizens I have heard from are both appalled at our murder rate and frightened by their own violent crime rate, so much so that a significant number of British citizens now back private gun ownership rights for the home. Our murder rate is a behavioral problem, not a gun problem. If it were strictly a gun problem, I would be living in the murder capital of the nation with all the guns in my neighborhood instead of a peaceful community with no history of murder whatever.
Even at 5-9 times, it’s an invalid comparison because the Brits record things as violent crime that we do not. You can not make the comparison when the things being compared are not the same.
Our murder problem is a combination of behavior coupled with easy access to firearms. It’s not just one or the other. Fact remains we have the highest murder rate in the first world, fact remains, most of those murders are commited with firearms. Fact remains, most are by members of your own family or friends (Department of Justice Report). Where do you live, I will look up your murder numbers. I only want the town or if you don’t feel comfortable with that then the state. Murder is murder everywhere, but what is considrered violent crime in the UK is not considered violent crime here so fact is you can’t say it’s 5-9 times worse there because they’re recording things as violent crime that we do not.
Please list those things the Brits list as violent crime that the U.S. does not. I am beginning to think you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, you are just pushing an agenda. For example, you maintain the U.S. has the highest murder rate in the world. We’re not even close!! Mexico, most of South America, Russia, much of Asia, ALL of Africa and the southern pacific area (Phillipines, Indonesia, etc.) all have rate per 100,000 far higher than us and many of them have bans of private gun ownership.
Please educate yourself!
List your source for yur assertion that most murders are by family members. The FBI merely maintains stats where the victims knew each other; that is not the same as being a family member.
BTW, I live in Illinois. The state murders in 2010 were 706. Back out Chicago’s gang murder rate of 435 and East St. Louis’ rate of 75 and you get a rate for the entire state outside of chicago of 2.1 per 100,000 which includes cities of Peoria, Springfield, Chicago suburbs, Rockford, etc. AND Chicago had a gun ban in 2010!!!
Again,we do not have a gun problem, we have an inner city behavioral problem.
I am very educated on this matter. I didn’t say the USA has the highest murder rate in the world. I am well aware that it does not. I said it has the highest murder rate in the first world. Maybe you should read alittle more carefully. As I said the rport that states that 80% of murders are commited by familiars is from the Department of Justice. I have listed several sources and even provided links to those reports. BTW, “familiiar” doesn’t mean just family members it means people who were familar with the victim. You might want to read back through my comments. I am not advocating a gun ban, I just believe that gun owners/users should be put through at least the same levels of testing and scrutiny to legally own and operate a gun as a car driver is to operate a car legally. With 706 murders and a population of population of 12,830,632 Illinois has a murder rate of 5.5 per 100,000 of population. Chicago with 436 murders in 2010 has a murder rate of 15.2 per 100,000 of population with it’s population of 2,707,120. Now lets compare those stats to the whole country of the United Kingdom, just over 600 murders for a whole year for over 60 million people. Any way you slice it the murder rate here is horrendous. We can also compare them to individual cities London with a population of 8,174,100 has a murder rate of just 1.1 per hundred thousand of population. What is the common denominator between the two, or rather what seperates them? In London and the U.K. generally it is hard to get guns and they are so expensive that most can not afford them, whereas here, even in cities with gun bans, it is very easy to get guns and they are cheap. Result=more gun deaths and as a results more murders generally. It’s easy to shoot someone from 20 feet away it very hard to get in close to kill them, even if you have a knife. You are close and therefore at some risk yourself. There’s no risk involved in standing 20 feet from someone and squeezing a trigger. That is what makes high levels of gun ownership so dangerous. It’s not the gun, it’s the person, BUT, without the gun the person is far able to commit the act and therefore far less likely.
“Fact remains we have the highest murder rate in the first world”, Your words, not true. If by first world you mean industralized nations, you are still wrong. Russia and most of industrialized Asia as well as Mexico (9th largest economy in the world) and the BRIC nations have murder rates far higher. If you mean white, european then you are racist as well as uninformed.
“Fact remains, most are by members of your own family or friends” Your words, not true.”Familiars” means known to the assailant; many are criminal associates, rival gang members, ex-girlfriends, or simply innocent children caught in the neighborhood cross fire.
Please stop pushing propaganda. It’s obvious you are “very educated” in your own mind only.
Nearly every state requires background checks to purchase a gun. In Illinois we also must have a FOID card. That requirement coupled with the hand gun ban in Chicago did not stop CHicago from becoming the murder capital of the nation. Same with Washington DC. Those two cites had the strictest gun laws and the most murders. That alone ought to tell you this is a behavioral issue, as it did not stop the black market for guns in either city.
I think you are simply pushing an agenda regardless of facts. I you admire the UK system, go live there and leave the rest of us alone. The fact is you will be at least 5 times more liable to be a violent crime victim there than here, a fact not lost on the UK Daily Mail nor the UK Home Office.
It seems that with a lack of a real argument you are now resorting to insults. I shouldn’t have expected more. I’m done discussing this with you. You have supplied no links at all, I have, you have supplied no evidence of any kid whatsoever except a dated article from The Daily Mail, which to be honest is a rag. Even then you only quoted from it without provding a link to the article. Fact is that we have the highest murder rate in the First World. You misread that or misrepresented what I said and took out “first”. Everyone knows what the first world is. If you don’t then I suggest it is you that needs to educate yourself.
“Fact remains we have the highest murder rate in the first world”,
First World (minus the USA)=
Belgium Canada Denmark
France Germany Greece
Iceland Italy Luxembourg
Netherlands Norway Portugal
Spain
United Kingdom
Israel
Japan
Korea (South)
Australia
New Zealand
Austria
Ireland
Sweden
Switzerland
First world is a somewhat dated description. !st world were all the Alligned countries of the cold war, second world was all of the countries of the Warsaw Pact and alligned countries such as Cuba and third World was everyone else. I am talking about First World Contries. Not countries that until very recently were on the ass end of the world and not countries that are still struggling with the idea of democracy.
Fact is Violent Crime is not murder. Fact is that when compared to the countries listed above, we have by far the worst murder rate
When just a city has strict gun controls but everything around it has very lax gun controls, it does no good.
Obviously the background check we have are not enough. Also No background checks are required for private sales (not by a dealer) gun shows.
Why should I go live in another country because I admire their system? That is unreasonable. I can try to change the system of the country I live in and love. Just because I don’t like one thing about a place doesn’t mean I want to move away, just means I want to fix it.
I too am done discussing this with you. You provided no links and no facts. I gave you sources that anyone with a basic knowledge of google or bing could have checked. The UK Daily mail article was from 2009 (not 2005). It is online should you care to check. The 2011 UK Home Office report on violent crime is also online should you care to check.
Additionally, when the UK Home Office reports 2011 violent crime from all sources of 2.2 million out of a population of 60 million, for you to assert that the majority of that is “non violent” or “Tavern brawls” without providing sources is ludicrous. Even they don’t go that far, admitting that sex crimes, violence against children and assaults are up year over year.
Did you know that in the UK if you kill a person who has broken into your home with malevolent intent, you can be charged with murder? No wonder the UK is the violent crime capital of Europe.
BTW, since you haven’t done much basic research, here is a 2009 link to the UK Daily Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/5712573/UK-is-violent-crime-capital-of-Europe.html
Here’s a little snippet for you (keep in mind gun ownership was banned in the UK in 1997):
“A breakdown of the statistics, which were compiled into league tables by the Conservatives, revealed that violent crime in the UK had increased from 652,974 offences in 1998 to more than 1.15 million crimes in 2007.”
2011 violent crimes were 2.2 million, an additional increase over 2007 of nearly 100%. Looks to me like they need their guns back.
The 2010/11 (British Crime Survey from the Home Office) BCS showed overall violence was (Link provided a few posts down, but here is a snippet from the actual report)
down 47 per cent on the level seen at its peak in 1995; representing nearly two million fewer violent
offences per year.
The introduction of the NCRS in April 2002 considerably increased the recording of less serious
violent crime by the police and figures are not directly comparable across this break in the series. In
more recent years, recorded violence against the person has continued to show declines – with yearon-
year reductions in the range of four to eight per cent in each of the last four years (down 6%
between 2009/10 and 2010/11).
Overall rates of crime in the U.S. have showed declines similar to the UK, so you shouldn’t brag about theirs without including ours. Addtionally, in the year after the Supreme Court struck down Washington DC’s handgun ban,residents purchased handguns d the muder rate dropped 25% the following year. Ditto for Chicago.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/30/media-silence-is-deafening-about-important-gun-news/
This was also widely reported by the WSJ, Wash. Post, and other meda outlets in case you don’t trust FOX.
I’m not bragging about theirs. I am combating the untruth of their increasing violent crime rate. It simply isn’t true. Letting you know it isn’t true is not bragging. I am well aware that the rate here has been decreasing too. I didn’t say it was increasing here. You said it was increasing in the U.K. and it isn’t. Here’s yet another report that proves that. If you say something that is untrue and someone sets you straight, that isn’t bragging, that’s letting you know the truth that you seem to be ignorant of.
Click to access uk-riots-ho-report.pdf
Ps. I don’t trust either, but that’s not the point.
Chaz and Ken…..fascinating debate and great arguments on both sides. You have kept me amazed with the breadth of knowledge you have to support your opinions. I read every link and followed all your posts, I know that I am not a referee, but I have to say that one of you won this repartee and convinced me with your presentation. Ken, you have earned my respect and my vote. Job well done!!
From the Daily Mail article Ken is speaking about. It’s the very last sentence.
“Violent crime in England and Wales has fallen by almost a half since a peak in 1995 but we are not complacent and know there is still work to do. “
.
FBI data also shows in the U.S. violent crime fell from 700/100,000 to 400/100,000 during the same period (nearly half); So it is not a fair comparison to pick out one statistic from UK and use it as an argument against another country without including that country’s similar statistic. Right?
Murder fell from 9/100,000 to 5/100,000 over the same period despite a dramatic increase in private gun ownership.
Again, here is link:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl01.xls
Gonna have to do better than mis-quote some UK official whose job is on the line. The facts are simply that the UK is far more violent than people want to admit, while our murder rate looks bad because we have an inner city drug and gang violence problem. Outside of those inner cities, our murder rate compares favorably to Europe (approx 2/100,000 vs. 1/100,000).
Fix the behavioral problem in the inner cities and you fix the murder rate.
One piece of misinformation after another. The U.K. was NEVER like the USA, they never had high gun ownership rates and as a rule didn’t use them to protect their homes. They don’t need their guns back, because they never used them in the way Americans do anyway. Guns have always been a very rare sight in the U.K. Having more guns in the USA wouldn’t increase decrease the murder rate. In fact the murder rate as been steadily falling in the U.K. since handguns were banned. Not that that really made much of a difference one way or the other. People didn’t really use them either for protection or to murder people. 1996 saw more murders than 1997, the year of the Dunblane Massacre. The UK has less than 50 gun murders in a year, usually less than 30 and less than 700 murders total. I agree fully with Chaz, a large percentage increase on a small number is still a small number, which is why they show the percentage rather than the actual number. 400% of 1 is still only 4. And yes Chaz you are right getting into a fist fight is not the same as getting shot to death. Violent crime is not murders.
James:
Which do you feel is “misinformation”? Be specific instead of talking in generalities. You say in the UK they never used their guns for protection. That is because it is illegal to do so and a homeowner can be charged with murder for defending his home against an intruder. And neither you nor Chaz have provided any statistics regarding “fist fights” as you call them as they relate to the violent crime rate in Britain which is 5-9 times higher than the U.S. Even if half of the reported violent crimes were what you call “fist fights”, the rate would still be substantially higher than the U.S. Provide proof if you can. The report I read seemed to indicate that the significant components in 2011 were sexual assualt, robbery and crimes against children.
Similarly, you provide limited proof that we have a gun problem in the U.S. We do not. We have a behavioral problem. Take away the 48/100,00 murder rate in Detroit, 16/100,000 in Chicago, 21 in Philly, along with the rates in the other top 10 cities in the U,S, and you come up with a rate of less then 3/100,000 for the rest of the country.
If we truly had a “gun” problem, one would expect to see murders across the country corresponding to the areas where gun ownership is the highest. Instead, we see the reverse, murders committed by inner city residents often with black market or stolen guns. In fact, 25% of all murders are committed in less than 8% of the population in the top 10 cities. That is a behavioral probelm, not a gun problem.
In addition, more than 90% of UK is the same race, limiting racial tension there. In the U.S. in 2007 (last year dept. of justice figures available), the murder rate committed by black offenders was more than 35/100,000 while the rate committed by white offenders was 3.5/100,000. This was compiled by Columbia University and is available online in a pdf file.
In short, what neither you nor Chaz understands is that 1. we have a cultural and behavioral problem in certain cities skewing our murder rates upward and 2. Neither of you know what portion of UK violent crime is in your opinion “non violent”, therefore it is a useless argument. The UK Home Office reports 2.2 million incidents of violent crime in 2011 in a population of 60 million, a rate 9 times higher than the FBI reports for the U.S.
Well the “maybe they need their guns back comment” is misleading. You yourself admit that they never used them the way Americans have, so why would they need them back. How about you provide proof. You have not done so as far as I can see. So what if the rate of violent crime is higher, it isn’t murder. Our murder rate, whatever reason you want to tack onto it is much higher. I believe that Chaz as well as I understand that we have a cultural and behavioral problem in certain cities which skews our rate upwards when compared to the U.K. No one has said violent crime is “non violent”. What has been said repeatedly is that violent crime is not murder. I know that Brits are far more willing to fight than your average American, it’s almost like a passtime to them. Go Out have a Curry, have a few beers have a shag and if you can’t get that then have a fight to finish off the night. We know it about the Irish, but it’s really true of anyone from the British Isles. Now put guns in their hands as freely available as they are here, it would be armageddon.
Violent crime contains a wide range of offences, from minor assaults such as pushing and shoving
that result in no physical harm through to serious incidents of wounding and murder. Around a half of
violent incidents identified by both BCS and police statistics involve no injury to the victim.
From this United Kingdom Home Office Report. (Copy and paste it)
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/hosb1011/hosb1011?view=Binary
Here’s some more from the same report. You can read it here or go to the URL above.
There was no statistically significant change in the number of violent crimes estimated by the 2010/11
BCS compared with the 2009/10 survey (the apparent 6% increase was not statistically significant).
The underlying trend for violence was downwards on the BCS between 1995 and the 2004/05 survey
(although not all year-on-year changes were statistically significant) and overall BCS violence fell by
44 per cent over this period as a whole. Since the 2004/05 BCS, the trend has flattened, with the
minor year-on-year fluctuations that are to be expected with any survey-based measure being more
prominent in the absence of a strong directional trend. The 2010/11 BCS showed overall violence was
down 47 per cent on the level seen at its peak in 1995; representing nearly two million fewer violent
offences per year.
The introduction of the NCRS in April 2002 considerably increased the recording of less serious
violent crime by the police and figures are not directly comparable across this break in the series. In
more recent years, recorded violence against the person has continued to show declines – with yearon-
year reductions in the range of four to eight per cent in each of the last four years (down 6%
between 2009/10 and 2010/11).
Homicide
The latest provisional figures showed that there were 642 homicides in 2010/11 (up by 4% from 618 in
2009/10 and including the 12 victims of the Cumbria shootings in June 2010). Final homicide data,
extracted from the Homicide Index,3 will be published in January 2012. Caution should be taken in
looking at short term changes in homicide figures, as they can fluctuate from year to year. Although
there was an increase of 24 homicides between 2009/10 and 2010/11, there has been a downward
trend in the number of homicides recorded in recent years. These falls have followed a pattern of
increasing levels of homicide (at around 2% to 3% a year) from the 1960s through to the end of the
twentieth century. Taking into account the inherent variability in numbers of homicide from one year to
the next, a trend analysis showed that levels of homicide incidents are statistically significantly lower
now than those seen in the early to mid 2000s, and are broadly similar to the levels seen in much of
the 1990s (Smith et al., 2011). The latest findings do not alter that overall picture and if the provisional
figure of 642 homicides is confirmed when the final figures from the Homicide Index are published, this
would represent a fall of 19 per cent in homicides since 2001/02.4
Use of weapons
Crimes involving guns or knives are always of great public concern and understandably attract a great
deal of attention. The number of such crimes is relatively low in volume terms and in a general
population sample survey such as the BCS the number of victims is too few to produce reliable trend
estimates. Bespoke data collections from the police provide better information on the number of such
offences but are limited in covering only those that have come to the attention of the police.
Provisional5 figures showed that 7,006 firearm offences were recorded in England and Wales in
2009/10, a 13 per cent decrease from 2009/10 and continuing a downward trend seen since 2005/06.
The provisional number of firearm offences in 2010/11 is 37 per cent below the number of offences
recorded in 2005/06.
3 The Homicide Index is a separate database to the main recorded crime dataset and contains detailed information about each
homicide recorded by the police in England and Wales. It is updated continually and is therefore a better source of data than
the main recorded crime dataset.
4 As measured by the Homicide Index. There are 794 currently recorded homicides for 2001/02 (the 943 currently recorded
homicides for 2002/03 include the 172 victims of Harold Shipman that were all recorded in 2002/03 but took place over a
number of years).
5 Final figures will be published in ‘Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2010/11’ in January 2012
17
Actually I take that last sentence back, they would put them down and say “guns are for pussies. I just want to have a bit of a laugh and a punch up. I don’t want to kill anyone”
CHANGE THE LAW so a homeowner can defend his “castle” instead of simply being another victim of a violent crime wave 9 times higher than the U.S.
And instead of saying Brits are more likely to fight than Americans you should provide a breakdown for us instead of a link to wikipedia of all things.
I’m Irish heritage and you are being racist when you say we shouldn’t have guns in our hands. Shame on you!
Again, you provide nothing but your opinion, which frankly means nothing.
Read everything else I posted. Your misleading comment about letting them have their guns back was still misleading. If you check the sources quoted at the bottom of a Wikepedia page they are valid sources. Anyway, I also have put links to Home Office Justice Ministry documents on here. Irish is the same race as me, so I am not being racist. It can’t be racist even if I were not from there myself as Irish isn’t a race it’s an ethnicity. Nice try though.
Ps. Hardly just an opinion. Or did you miss all the hypertext links to the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office reports. I don’t see you providing anything at all like that. You talk about stuff without any proof at all. When you do eventually give proof it’s one link to a Daily Mail article, now that hardly credible. It’s a tabloid news
paper out to get readers with shocking headlines.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/period-ending-march-2012/stb-crime-stats-end-march-2012.html
Yet another report of crime in England and Wales. Also shows a drop in violent crime not an increase as you would say.
1. The rate of violent crime in the UK is 9 times higher than the US using the UK own figures. It is a big concern to them.
2. The murder rate in the US would compare favorably with the UK if certain behavioral and cultural problems in our inner cities were addressed.
3. You and Chaz have both stated that the UK rate of crime is down since 1995 without admitting that the US rates are down equivalent amounts during the same period.
These are not opinions, they are facts that you can easily get for yourself through the FBI.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl01.xls
What you have NOT done is provide any factual data regarding the differences in the way the UK reports violent crime. So I must assume that violent crime is violent crime and compare their rates to ours.
As a gun owner who lives in an area of high gun ownership and ZERO murders in the past 30 years, you wil never convince me and it appears I will never convince you of certain factual information about both the US and UK so let’s leave it at that.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/period-ending-march-2012/stb-crime-stats-end-march-2012.html
You’re making statements about violent crime increasing in in England and the U.K. that are simply untrue. Yet another link to another report. Everything you provide is from newspapers I wouldn’t use to wipe my ass. I simply do not believe your town has not had a murder in 30 years. Where do you live? I’m not saying you are lying, I am saying you are probably ignorant about what is going on around you. The violent crime rate and the murder rate have decreased in the USA also, does that make you happy? It still remains true that we have a far higher murder rate than the U.K. Also you asked about violent crimes were no one is actually injured. I provided you with a link (several in fact) that explain how almost 50% of the reported “violent crime” in the U.K. ends without injury. They record shoving as a violent crime. Read what I copied from the reports or click on the links and read the actual reports. And again, where are you from? I want to look up the murder rate.
You actually think I’d tell you where I live? You’ll just have to trust me on this. It is downstate Illinois right next to a gun club.
AND, I never said the UK crime rate was increasing, I quoted a report from a British source that showed it was. What I DID say was that the violent crime rate in the UK as reported by the home office in 2011 WAS 9 times higher than the US rate (2.2 million/6 million = 3,666 compared to US rate of 407). Even if you eliminate the 50% they claim is without injury, they would still have a rate 4 times higher and you would have to adjust US fugures to eliminate anything they had listed without injury (for example domestic violence where no one is treated at a hospital).
Nice try, but life in the UK is still far more violent.
This is what you said “2011 violent crimes were 2.2 million, an additional increase over 2007 of nearly 100%. Looks to me like they need their guns back.” It’s patently untrue. Read the reports. What the whole town lives next to the gun club or your street is next to the gun club. I can believe a street or even a neighborhood not having a murder in 30 years, but not a whole town. Why wouldn’t you tell me where you live? I don’t want your address, just the town. I live in Raleigh NC. Where do you live?
Yes, I did say that; it was from a report in the Daily Telegraph which I provided a link to. Those were their figures not mine. If you have issues with the veracity, take it up with them, not me.
What you and Chaz seem to be arguing is that we need more gun control in the U.S. and you hold up the UK as a model. It is anything but a model with their violent crime rate.
And a “one size fits all” gun policy in this country is completely unnecessary. Fix the unruly behavior in 10 cities and we have a murder rate for the rest of the country similar to the UK AND a violent crime rate at least one-fourth of theirs. us we can keep our guns.
BTW the murder rate in Raleigh is 12% higher than the national average and violent crime is 33% higher than the national average. Would suggest you roll up your sleeves and work toward getting your own community squared away before you suggest fixes for the rest of the country.
I do not give out my location online for obvious security reasons. I live in a community of several thousand and our school system is the envy of much larger neighboring cities whose residents are always lined up to move out here. No crime (except a few juvenile vandals occasionally), good schools and even the old ladies have guns. Maybe that’s a partial reason we have little crime.:>)
http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/statistics/mojstats/stats-race-cjs-2010.pdf/
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/hosb1011/hosb1011snr?view=Binary
You might want to double check your facts. Rather than using newspapers read the actual reports. You assume I am not trying to do something about the murder and violent crime rate here as well as in the rest of the country. Not sure where you got your numbers for Raleigh from though.
(BTW 41.3% of the population of NC own firearms
20.2% of of the population of IL own firearms
Per http://www.usacarry.com/forums/general-firearm-discussion/9841-percent-firearms-ownership-state.html )
Below is what I got from the FBI Uniform Crime database.
Violent Crime Rate
Raleigh, North Carolina has a violent crime rate of 578 incidents per 100,000 people. This compares with a rate of 710 in North Carolina and a rate of 676 nationally. Lower numbers are better, indicating that fewer crimes happen per person in the population.
Violent Crime Rate
Incidents per 100,000
Raleigh 578
NC 710
National 676
Raleigh Best place to live.
http://business.blogs.starnewsonline.com/18011/businessweek-raleigh-is-no-1-place-to-live-in-u-s/
More news about Raleigh
http://www.raleighnc.gov/home/content/PubAffairs/Articles/AccoladesRaleigh.html
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/which-is-americas-best-city-09202011.html
http://blog.lindacraft.com/2012/01/03/raleigh-ranked-1-best-place-to-live-by-bloomberg/
Please show your source for FBI uniform crime rates. Mine came from this report from 2010 (latest available) and shows a violent crime rate for the U.S. of 403.6/100,000 as compared to Raleigh’s 578.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl01.xls
Regarding Illinois gun ownership rates, the 20% figure you quote is skewed due to Chicago having a handgun ban through 2010 and their slowness in approving civilian permits (a subject of numerous lawsuits currently). Takeaway Chicago (25% of state population) and downstate gun ownership is at least as high as NC.
Did you read the report? http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/hosb1011/hosb1011snr?view=Binary
It completely disproves your claim of a 100% increase in crime in the U.K. doesn’t it. No need to answer it’s a rhetorical question. You said as follows:
“2011 violent crimes were 2.2 million, an additional increase over 2007 of nearly 100%. Looks to me like they need their guns back.”
Nice try at trying to turn this into a conversation about Raleigh. The conversation is about U.K. vs. US crime figures and in particular the murder rates and gun death rate. Raleigh only came into the conversation because I showed I was willing to let you know where I live. You weren’t willing to do the same. Why I don’t know, no one is going to find out who you are from saying what town you live in. It’s not like you’re posting your address and real name now is it. Rhetorical question btw.
Yes I did read the report, and no, James, the claim was not mine, but the UK Daily Telegraph report in 2009 which is referenced above and which you obviously did not read. Here is a quote from the article:
“But last October it emerged that levels of violent crime in England and Wales had been underestimated for more than a decade because of a blunder in recording methods.
Ministers admitted that some police forces had not been recording offences of grievous bodily harm with intent as serious violent crime. When the offences were included violent crime figures immediately increased by a fifth.”
This is one of the reasons both the UK and the U.S. have suposedly independent media, to ferret out the gov’t propaganda and get to the truth,which is that the UK is in much worse shape than you want to admit and the U.S. murder rate is concentrated in small geographic areas instead of reflective of the entire country.
Which failed to verify for accuracy because you don’t want the truth you want an echo chamber. There’s really no point us talking about this any further. I will never agree with you. I believe in facts you believe whatever you think is going to prove your point, which is why you use statements from tabloid newspapers as if they were fact. Did you see the one about the Batboy in the tabloids at the checkout in the supermarket? Bye have a nice day. I have more important things to do than talk to you. I am off to the range to go shoot my HK.
it would seem you and Chaz are in the minority of those who believe the UK is a utopia comapred to the U.S. The UK gov’t, the European Union, the UN, EVERY news source in the UK and europe all agree that the UK has a serious violent crime problem compared to the rest of the industrialized world. And yet you insist that YOU are right.
You are a perfect example of why top down, one size fits all liberalism never works. You ignore the human behavioral aspects and project your rage on inanimate objects. You ignore the fact that murders in this country are concentrated in small geographic pockets of the county and want to dictate to the 99% in a misguided attempt to prevent the crimes of the 1%.
Good day to you. Thank God your illogoical views will never prevail.
Violent crime isn’t murder. The USA has an astronomically high murder rate when compared to the rest of the first world (we already discussed which countries make up the 1st World) I don’t know why I even bothered to answer you. I have to meet a friend at the local shooting range to shoot my MP5. I’ve gotta go, I won’t answer you again. Have a nice holiday.
“I have to meet a friend at the local shooting range to shoot my MP5. I’ve gotta go”
Nice attempt to butch it up there, Nancy. Be safe; remember, the bullet comes out the end with the hole in it. Try not to shoot off anything important.
Being ex military, I think I know that already Kendra.
Sent from my smart phone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_London
States With Higher Levels of Gun Ownership Have Higher Homicide Rates
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2007-releases/press01112007.html
True, but read the report: (a quote):
“These results suggest that it is easier for potential homicide perpetrators to obtain a gun in states where guns are more prevalent. “Our findings suggest that in the United States, household firearms may be an important source of guns used to kill children, women and men, both on the street and in their homes,” said Miller.”
DUH! So in states where a perp can more easily steal a gun, theycan more easily commit a homicide. That makes sense, but misses the point entirely and is another attempt by anti gun forces to paint legitimate owners as the bad guys instead of focusing on the behavior of those who steal guns then kill people with them.
Since I live in Illinois I am very familiar with Chicago. In the years of chicago’s handgun ban, criminals still bought, sold and stole guns by the millions up there, so much so that those of us in downstate Illinois used to joke about the ease with which one could purchase a gun on the streets of Chicago.
Texting while driving killed 5,000 last year; where is the Harvard report conculding that in those states with higher cell phone ownership it is easier to kill someone? Or car ownership?
When will liberals start focusing on the behavioral issues instead of an inanimate object?
Are you saying you agree with this?
“These results suggest that it is easier for potential homicide perpetrators to obtain a gun in states where guns are more prevalent. “Our findings suggest that in the United States, household firearms may be an important source of guns used to kill children, women and men, both on the street and in their homes,” said Miller.”
It’s saying higher gun ownership rates lead to higher murder rates.
Yes, I might agree with this even though it is a flawed study that ignores the crime of theft and appears to be selective if you agree that 1. Banning private gun ownership never stopped thugs from obtaining black market guns (Chicago, Wash. DC, Oakland, SF. LA, etc.) 2. solving the behavioral problems in inner cities would bring our murder rate close to the UK’s without infringing on the rights of law abiding citizens to leagally own and use guns.
But you can’t do that can you?
“What you and Chaz seem to be arguing is that we need more gun control in the U.S. and you hold up the UK as a model. It is anything but a model with their violent crime rate.”
You keep talking about the violent crime rate in the U.K. Firstly there are differences between what is recorded as a violent crime from the U.K. to the USA. Secondly, violent crime is NOT murder, the two are not the same thing. Would you rather get pushed (which counts as a violent crime in the U.K.) or shot to death. Be realistic, talking about the violent crime rate is different countries that count different things as violent crime is not a valid comparison. However murder is murder in both places and our murder rate is much much higher. Stop the nonsense about the violent crime rate, because that’s all it is. Compare apples to apples.
Would you rather get stabbed, beaten, sexually assaulted or have your kid abused? All of these happen with more frequency in the UK than here. As I said above, which you obviously missed, even backing out the 50% you claim is “shoving”, the UK still is far more dangerous than you want to admit.
Here in Illinois, take out the thugs in Chicago and East St. Louis and our murder rate is 1.6/100,000 compared to UK’s 1.2 plus our violent crime rate is one quarter of theirs even using your claims.
The plain and simple truth that liberals pushing anti gun agendas can’t seem to figure out is that the majority of the country enjoys a low murder rate and a far lower overall crime rate than the UK.
If I were you, I would concentrate my efforts on those cities (like Raleigh) where the murder rates are problematic and stop trying to legislate for the entire country. Then maybe you can actually do some good in the world instead of pestering law abiding citizens who safely handle guns every day without incident.
I’m off to the gun range to exercise my 2nd Amendment rights, so have no more time for you. Goodbye!
Actually the USA has far higher violence against children rates than the U.K. the rape rate is roughly same. I would much rather take my chances with somebody with a knife than with a gun. Especially when I am 500% more likely to be murdered with a gun in the USA than I am to be stabbed to death in the U.K.
Did you miss the FBI Uniformed Crime report above. Violent crime is lower in Raleigh than in the rest of the USA. I don’t have any more time for you. I have to catch a flight to your neck of the woods. Goodbye.
[censored for extreme offence against people with cerebral palsy – FiG]
The murder (not homicide) rate in the U.K. is much much lower than here in the USA. While it is true that most murders in the U.K. are committed with knives or blunt force instruments, it is not true that the murder rate is higher than the USA. It is not even close to the murder rate in the USA. I have lived in both countries and a I guarantee you it’s not even close. There were just 619 murders in all of the U.K. last year, a country of 62,2181761 people. The USA had 16,799 in a country with 313,739,857. So there are 27.138 times as many murder (not homicides, I only looked up murders FBI stats., CDC Stats, CIA World Factbook Stats)
and yet the population of the USA is only 5.042 times as large. For the USA to have the same murder rate as the U.K. there would need to be just 3,120 murders a year not 16,799. That makes the USA’s murder rate 538% higher than the U.K.’s
Violent crime numbers in the U.K. are higher, but they count simple shoving as violent crime. Almost 50% (according to a report linked to above) of violent crime does not result in any injury and would not be counted as violent crime here. Even if it were directly comparable, violent crime is NOT murder.
Let me correct you. The UK had 619 real murders. The USA had 16,799 humans killed by another human by any means including police killing criminals, accidental killings etc.
Let me correct you. You are wrong. I am talking about murders only.
Ken wins again……great arguments and backed up with great article website links. thorough and solid analysis Ken. Compelling debate on both Chaz and James. You are very educated and resourceful. I am impressed.
Ken wins nothing. He did not give any web links at all. His argument is weak and false. I gave lots of web links, scroll back up and double check. Ken gave one (which he kept re-using) and which was in itself a clumsy attempt at pivoting from the real argument.
Correction, he gave one weblink which he re-used
I guess I must bring some sanity to this conversation. In the USA- if you remove BLACK INNER CITY drug related deaths from the Gun Violence statistics the USA has about as much crime as the Island of Bali. No one wants to talk about or deal with BLACK CRIME in the US. The Liberal Press wont touch it with a 10 foot pole. So- we all see the Stats and scratch our heads…..Liberalism has reduced once proud Cities to war torn drug infested rubble. Monuments to failure. That carnage overwhelms the statistical data that so many tip toe around.
You are wrongly hung up on skin tone Matt when in fact the only thing skin tone has to do with this is that historical injustices and imbalances in social capital perpetuate the over-representation of black people in poor areas, and poor areas are associated with crime.
If you bring up race as a reason for a high homicide rate rather than, if anything, an associated circumstance which deserves sensitivity and further inquiry, you will be prevented from posting comments here.
I’d like to know why people from UK are so interested in American gun laws… see I thought America wasn’t answerable to the UK after 1776… hmmm… must be believing too many of the lies I was taught in “school”
Who the hell said the USA was answerable to the UK? What a stupid statement. The UK is an example of how gun laws work, that is all.
USA statistics can NOT be compared to UK statistics… they contain two entierely different cultures… UK has a MUCH smaller population, and UK tracks crime differently than the US… and finally UK has a MUCH higher violent crime rate (per capita) than the US… US gun laws are no ones business except Americans…
Not to mention they the UK are a stinking monarchy that’s why we developed democracy/republic ! Here all our voices count and matter !
m, No crime statistics in general cannot be compared, especially violent crime. In the U.K. simple pushing and shoving without injury counts as violent crime, here it doesn’t. You can’t have it both ways, you can’t say you can’t compare and then compare violent crime rates. Murder is murder and is counted the same everywhere. The USA has 5 times the population of the UK, but 27 as many murders (most of which are committed with firearms). Measuring the murder rate per hundred thousand of population enables you to compare places with different total numbers. The USA has something approaching 5 murders per 100k of population and the UK has about 1.1 per 100k of population. BTW m, you are talking to somebody from America, so your last comment is completely irrelevant. London is the largest city in the EU and larger than any US city, yet has a murder rate of just 1.1 per hundred thousand of population. It is also very mulitculteral with many people from the British Commonwealth (read people of color).
Jim, you’re an idiot, no two ways about it Britain’s Constitutional Monarchy is not an absolute monarchy it is democracy. The Monarchy is kept on for a purely ceremonial role. The Queen (or King when there is one) is just a figurehead, like a living version of our Stars and Stripes. They, the British people, vote members into their House of Commons in the same way we vote people into the House of Representatives in Congress. Everybody’s voice counts there at least as much as it does here. You might want to watch the House of Commons on C-Span to see real democracy in action. they can say what they like without being told to sit down by the Speaker of the House and they represent “The People” that voted them into office.
Thanks Chaz is it? I may very well be an idiot however if calling me names gets you points towards your better living than so be it! If in fact every voice counts then why did the so called “voices that matter ” allow the democratic monarky to take away all the guns? I personally believe our country is what it is because too many liberal thinking people are running the show and have allowed to much violence into a child’s life and nt enough structure towards being a kinder and more loving society! The liberals bring agencies like DCS into our homes and literally tie our hands from even telling our children they are bing bad! Teachers and school reps need to be teachers and not interfere whith the one lives! Not to mention the Internet that gives our children free learning of all the misinformation and not necessarily things of the truth! Take this conversation for example you getting all jacked up because you have a different opinion, that’s ok however no need to name call I might very well be the guy you might someday need to fix your aircraft or bus or auto and you will not have the knowledge needed to do that hypothetical of coarse! I honk that I live in an state that has more than enough gun control already in fact I live in CT where he recent event took place and till the kid to hold of such weapons to do such terrible crime! Criminal or mentally disturbed folks are not gong to stop violent things nor will taking guns away thy the criminals will always find a tool comparing one government to the next is not accurate in of itself ! We are not they we are we and very liberal thinking at that going back to this post comparing the UK to USA I’m sure they have a different prison system and are not enjoyable visits either there are too many variables not being considered! That’s all I’m saying!
Whatever, the British democracy (which is what it is, not an absolute monarchy) outlawed most guns because the British people “the voices that matter” wanted them to. They did the bidding of the British people, how much more democratic can you get? Gun control is needed on a federal level. It makes no sense when you can drive one state over and easily purchase guns. I didn’t cal lyou a name, it was merely an observation. For an adult to NOT know that that Britain is a democracy and to say “Not to mention they the UK are a stinking monarchy that’s why we developed democracy/republic ! Here all our voices count and matter !” is both idiotic and isnulting to the British. You seem to be able to dish it out, but unable to take it. And before you spout off some more, I am American, I just know a bit about my own country and the rest of the world.
“Measuring the murder rate per hundred thousand of population enables you to compare places with different total numbers” but it does nothing to take into account the different cultures of the two nations or (for instance) the differences in the way we educate and raise our children… if you like it in UK move there and leave my rights as they are, because i will not relinquish a single right even if giving up that right makes you safer… your safety is NOT my concern. the safety of my family is, and i will use any means necessary to ensure their safety
No it doesn’t do anything to take into account the different cultures, that’s true. One of those differences in culture is the American obsession with guns. Why is it that people like you always resort to “if you like it so much there, then move there”? That is a weak argument, in fact it isn’t an argument at all. My safety is my concern and the safety of my family. Whether YOU want to be able to carry guns is no worry of mine. I don’t care whether or not YOU carry a gun. What I do want is for it to be more difficult to for those that are not fit to carry guns to have them. BTW, statistically speaking, you are in more danger of being killed with a gun if you have a gun in your home than you are of using it to protect youself or your family. Homes with guns in have a 5 times higher gun death rate than those without.
that 5 times statistic is bs… look it up.. it is propagated by anti-gun lobbiests then pushed by the media… i’ve been around them since i was a baby, no firearm in my family has ever even accidently discharged let alone hurt anyone… the only crowd that statistic holds clout with are those who buy a gun and falsely believe it keeps them safe… if you acquire the proper training, as i have, a gun is no more dangerous than a hammer or a car…
CDC shows gun death rates you imbecile, not crime rates. I did not imply what you said at all. “what you are implying is that if i concealed carry, every person i encounter is 5 times more likely to get shot than if i had left my toaster at home… bullshit…” Are you really that stupid????? I said you (as in one aka people in general) are statistically 5 times more likely to die of gunshot wounds if there is a gun in the home. That is borne out by gun death numbers that’ the CDC keeps a track of. Jesus H Christ, you are a complete halfwit. I don’t know why I am even bothering to respond to your simple minded bullshit. I won’t answer you again, not matter what the provocation. I have more important things to do than to talk to a simpleton who doesn’t understand simple English. The facts of the matter is that you are wrong.
ad hominem… your logic skill are horrendous and yet you claim to be a critical thinker? please refrain from logical fallacies… it shows your true mental capacity… you sir are not worth my time… anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot.. that is a sign of the feeble minded
Man, you are making a complete fool of yourself. Just saying. It’s not a cplaint, it’s an observation.
that was aimed at chaz, not you james… *feeble mind was what i meant to say
I know who it was aimed at. You are still making a fool of yourself. You don’t do gun owners any favors when you unable to follow a simple chain of logic. Shut up, you are doing more harm than good.
elaborate
Your argument about concealed carry had nothing to do with the CDC stats for people who die of gunshots wounds in homes that have a gun. Your response had nothing to do with what he said. Just shut up, let those who know what they are doing argue and those that don’t shut up. That means you. I don’t want to lose my right to carry a gun because a know nothing like you has to open his stupid pie hole.
remember… ad hominem proves nothing… you are right, i used a red herring.. kinda funny you are the only one that noticed… have you ever taken classes in statistics? i have and one of the first things they teach you is that statistics ARE fallacious by nature. statistics are appeal to authority… and any scientist worth his salt STAYS AWAY from statistics to prove a premise…one cannot model laws off of statistics, that would be paramount to passing laws based on mass appeal and any idiot knows that universal truth is not measured in mass appeal. unless you’ve been educated in the US, then mass appeal means everything.
no one in this discussion (including myself) has used sound logic in their arguments… americans wouldn’t know sound logic if it slapped them across the face.
if a person having a gun in his or her home increases the likelihood of being shot, why are there not hundreds of thousands of police being shot in their own home? that stat is horse shit and i’ve done the leg work to prove it… and for your information there are few individuals that are more qualified to argue this topic than myself… but go ahead and make mass generalizations about me and then claim you use sound logic… as long as there is a first amendment you will not be able to shut me up… do you really believe me opening my opinionated mouth is going to determine which rights you loose? yea.. and i’m the idiot… uh huh…
He noticed too. That was obvious from his reply. Keep putting your foot in your mouth if you choose. You’re doing such an admirable job of it.
will do… and damn proud to be that thorn in your side… have a knack for it…
i’ll take your silence as you being in agreeance with the second half of my statement… i know you didn’t read it but i choose to take your silence as capitulation… the american way and all that…have a wonderful day!
It means no such thing. 5 times more likely doesn’t equate to hundreds of thouasands of Police being shot in their own homes. The lack of an immediate response is because it takes longer to formulate the response in a well thought out and informed manner. The CDC numbers are not horseshit and to say they are is horseshit. All your horseshit about statitistics is horsehit though. In applying statistics to a scientific, industrial, or societal problem, it is necessary to begin with a population or process to be studied. Populations can be diverse topics such as “all persons living in a country” or “every atom composing a crystal”. A population can also be composed of observations of a process at various times, with the data from each observation serving as a different member of the overall group. Data collected about this kind of “population” constitutes what is called a time series. For practical reasons, a chosen subset of the population called a sample is studied—as opposed to compiling data about the entire group (an operation called census). Once a sample that is representative of the population is determined, data is collected for the sample members in an observational or experimental setting. This data can then be subjected to statistical analysis, serving two related purposes: description and inference.
Descriptive statistics summarize the population data by describing what was observed in the sample numerically or graphically. Numerical descriptors include mean and standard deviation for continuous data types (like heights or weights), while frequency and percentage are more useful in terms of describing categorical data (like race).
Inferential statistics uses patterns in the sample data to draw inferences about the population represented, accounting for randomness. These inferences may take the form of: answering yes/no questions about the data (hypothesis testing), estimating numerical characteristics of the data (estimation), describing associations within the data (correlation) and modeling relationships within the data (for example, using regression analysis). Inference can extend to forecasting, prediction and estimation of unobserved values either in or associated with the population being studied; it can include extrapolation and interpolation of time series or spatial data, and can also include data mining. There are four main levels of measurement used in statistics: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio. Each of these have different degrees of usefulness in statistical research. Ratio measurements have both a meaningful zero value and the distances between different measurements defined; they provide the greatest flexibility in statistical methods that can be used for analyzing the data. Interval measurements have meaningful distances between measurements defined, but the zero value is arbitrary (as in the case with longitude and temperature measurements in Celsius or Fahrenheit). Ordinal measurements have imprecise differences between consecutive values, but have a meaningful order to those values. Nominal measurements have no meaningful rank order among values. Statistics rarely give a simple Yes/No type answer to the question asked of them. Interpretation often comes down to the level of statistical significance applied to the numbers and often refers to the probability of a value accurately rejecting the null hypothesis (sometimes referred to as the p-value). The rapid and sustained increases in computing power starting from the second half of the 20th century have had a substantial impact on the practice of statistical science. Early statistical models were almost always from the class of linear models, but powerful computers, coupled with suitable numerical algorithms, caused an increased interest in nonlinear models (such as neural networks) as well as the creation of new types, such as generalized linear models and multilevel models.
Increased computing power has also led to the growing popularity of computationally intensive methods based on resampling, such as permutation tests and the bootstrap, while techniques such as Gibbs sampling have made use of Bayesian models more feasible. The computer revolution has implications for the future of statistics with new emphasis on “experimental” and “empirical” statistics. A large number of both general and special purpose statistical software are now available.
awesome! you can regurgitate what you’ve been told… rout memorization says nothing about critical thinking…
i notice you conveniently left out error propagation and the ethical implications of dealing with outliers in human populations… like i said.. convenient
as a scientist i deal with statistics on a daily basis, and we have use for them… we never regard them as absolute, stats are a tool to allow us to form models or to develop experiments to test a hypothesis.
the very moment that you apply mathematical formulas to HUMAN nature is the very same moment that you are completely wrong…
but if stats you like, i can play that game well (and i chose the word “game” appropriately)…
you are EIGHT times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist…(NCS)
“Since 2007 there has been a 16.2% decline in murders committed with personal weapons which are defined as “hands, fists, feet etc. The number of murders of this type in 2011 totaled 728.
While gun ownership has dramatically increased since 2007, murders for both the shotgun and rifle categories have seen declines faster than the rate of personal weapons related crime.
The rates of decline for the shotgun and rifle categories are 22.1% and 28.7% respectively. In 2011 there were 356 shotgun murders and 323 rifle murders for a total of 679 murders.” (FBI)
~an armed society is a polite society
but as i have said before, stats are always to be taken with a grain of salt, and one must consider the cultural, ethical, and educational (just to list a few) differences when comparing HUMAN population statistics between two different countries.
but, what do i know, i’m an idiot remember… of course if you’d had formal logic you’d know that me being an idiot has no bearing on the truth value of my statement.
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”
― Plato
You’re no scientist. You can’t even string two words together into a coherent sentence. Don’t make me laugh. You are a liar and a fraud.
hahahaha… and you are completely wrong… i am a scientist, have been for years and you tout logic skills that you simply don’t have
You are a very poor liar.
oh no… the anonymous troll called me a liar… i just don’t think i can go on living knowing someone thinks i’m a liar, whatever will i do… ? damn you reply fast… must have nothing better to do than argue (poorly) over the internet…
I call it as I see it. You are so obviously lying that it is embarrassing, even to those watching.
Ad hominem LOL. Lying frauds prove nothing. That’s what you are a lying fraud. Scientist my ass. Don’t make me laugh. You’re unemployed and live in a damn trailer or mom’s basement don’t you. Come on, it’s okay you can admit it.
you make habit of being wrong… there is no need to prove myself to the likes of you… i easily defeat every argument you pose and that is obvious to all who read the thread… you can’t handle an opposing opinion so you do what typical american preschoolers do…. “you’re a liar and poo poo head!!” here.. i’ll speculate myself… you are 19 single and and in school for a business degree… or maybe psychology… or some other pseudoscience… wow.. that accomplished a lot… now how about you do something useful and address my premise…
You are completely delusional. You’ve completely lost the plot. You have not proved me wrong on a single point. I would get more sense talking to a wall than I would from you. You are a liar and a fraud and you are not even very good at it. All you’ve done is spew BS out. To use your own words you used “a red herring”. Why do that? Because you had no real response to for the person you were arguing with. Your pivots and tactics are at the very best clumsy and completely transparent. I am done arguing with you. All you are doing is trying to prove you are right rather than look at facts. You’re a joke and certainly no scientist. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that you are a lying, delusional…Why go on? I’m done with you. Anyone following this conversation can see what a complete liar and fraud you are. Ad hominem nothing, you village idiot.
you argue like a preshcooler… you are more likely to be killed by a police officer than a criminal… you are more likely to be killed by a hammer than a firearm… these are conclusions based on your precious statistics… i made valid points and you are so overcome with cognitive dissonance that you can’t even answer all you can do is call me names… the use of one fallacy does not negate my argument… your lack of the ability to respond reasonably to mine does negate yours…
“you are more likely to be killed by a hammer than a firearm” hahahahahahahahahahaha you complete driveling idiot. Let’s take a look at that then. In 2008 for example there were 14,299 murders total of which of which 9,484 were committed with firearms (66.3%) 1,897 cutting or stabbing, 614 blunt objects (clubs hammers etc.) 949 beating, strangulation etc. (no weapon), 86 arson and 993 other methods. I’m done with you, keep spewing your BS. You are proving nothing. You’re simply showing your complete and utter lack of a grasp on reality. Now I really am done.
sources? oh right none for that drivel…
Done with you. No point in continuing this argument with you
Click to access 12s0310.pdf
you’re done when i’m finished with you…
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/08/168853287/how-do-gun-bans-affect-violent-crime-rates
you prove my point for me jim…. notice you went through and picked the statistics that best prove your beliefs, just as i did. statistics are too easily manipulated to be used as premise for laws and regulations period… laws don’t prevent crimes they create criminals the more laws you invoke the more criminals to fill the prisons…
Really? MURDERS WITH FIREARMS 9,203 MURDERS WITH BLUNT OBJECTS 623. So hammers kill more than firearms do they? Very very clumsy attempt at pivoting away from you stupid, moronic statement that more people are killed by hammers than firearms. Why do I keep coming back. That’s it. I’m out of here. You were wrong and that’s an end to it.
you prove my point for me jim…. notice you went through and picked the statistics that best prove your beliefs, just as i did. statistics are too easily manipulated to be used as premise for laws and regulations period… laws don’t prevent crimes they create criminals the more laws you invoke the more criminals to fill the prisons…
PS scientist, you don’t have a premise. Bye now, don’t drink too much white lightning today, it rots the brain. Oh, maybe it’s a bit late for that. Byeeeee y’all have a nice day now.
gradeshool logic son
M the 5 times figure is from the CDC, they are, last I checked, non partisan.
cdc… center for DISEASE control… great place to get crime stats there guy… if you purchase a firearm and have no training in how to use that firearm, yes statistically you are more likely to kill a family member than defend yourself…what you are implying is that if i concealed carry, every person i encounter is 5 times more likely to get shot than if i had left my toaster at home… bullshit… when i carry my firearm, those around me are safer for it and you can scream and yell it’s not but it dons’t change the facts of the matter…
you are NOT using logic properly, if you were you wouldn’t be using ad hominem so much… don’t claim proper use of logic then use fallacies in the next breath…
Really? MURDERS WITH FIREARMS 9,203 MURDERS WITH BLUNT OBJECTS 623. So hammers kill more than firearms do they? Very very clumsy attempt at pivoting away from you stupid, moronic statement that “more people are killed by hammers than firearms”. Why do I keep coming back. That’s it. I’m out of here. You were wrong and that’s an end to it.
Go for it, you are and yes I knew you were ll along an American never thought otherwise! And yes I can take it though you might consider moving to Britain in fact since you both defend insults thrown they’re way and believe they have a better system! I myself do not need guns though I own them and not any full auto or large cap mags I hunt and do exercise some sporting clays as well as lock everything out of reach and or sight of anybody else because I am responsible! Something most Americans raised since 1975 have none of.
Pathetic, I’m not going to even bother with you.
As to the “no it dose not do anything to take into account different cultures” you need a lesson on respecting elders and sociology because when in Rome do as the romans do has a very strong affect on foreign visitors I assure you! If you were to say go to a country that has corporal punishment rather than prison time with Cable TV, Free education, three Square hot Meals, dry warm bed,! Tell me really do you actually think there is no difference ? BTW I know that UK is not like my description !
So tell me do you think I am not trained to handle guns safely? I personally train others officially in fact! I don’t care about all the statistics you are spouting about I never raised claim they were inaccurate just wanted to input my opinion regarding the way of life I lived in France for a short period and noticed many things one of coarse stuck out the most was they have very few if any cars driving around with damage to them at all and i witnessed an auto verses an pedestrian accident a very disturbing one at that the ped was laying on the sidewalk with an obvious broken leg though conscious and alert she just waved the auto driver on and no police or ambulance came she was helped to her feet and limped away! So tell me, do you really believe what you are saying regarding cultural influence?
There will always be a difference in total numbers they are different ! That’s what I’m saying the data is not fare it is skewed by cultural ways and how important it is to stay out of trouble!
I said I wouldn’t bother, but this is ridiculous. Limped away with an obviously broken leg hahahaha, I call BS on that. And yes of course there are culteral differences. I lived in London for several years and in Germany for several too. Both of those countries are different (to each other), but both have gun control that is stricter than ours and both have much much lower murder rates and somewhere around 30 (for the UK) and 50 (for the GFR) gun murders a year. For a whole country of 62 and 80 million people respectively. That’s the last exachange you’re getting from me until you start talking sense.
Yes limped away jack! I also observed a bicyclist riding the edge of the parked cars between the traffic and the parked cars had a car turn in front of him totaling his bike and thy just both went on they’re way as he carried his bike away no police no ambulance no exchanging insurance info nothing! Here forget it you would have the cops ambulances attorney’s and insurance law suits won’t end till the judge says so! Go to hell for calling me a liar! Hope you find peace in your life!
What’s pathetic is people like yourself with closed minds! You need to take a deep breath hug your kids and enjoy your life! My mind is very open to logic!
Really? MURDERS WITH FIREARMS 9,203 MURDERS WITH BLUNT OBJECTS 623. So hammers kill more than firearms do they? Very very clumsy attempt at pivoting away from you stupid, moronic statement that more people are killed by hammers than firearms. Why do I keep coming back. That’s it. I’m out of here. You were wrong and that’s an end to it.
FBI:
Quote:
Information on simple assaults. Assaults that do not involve the use of a firearm, knife or cutting instrument, or other dangerous weapon and in which the victim did not sustain serious or aggravated injuries are reported as Other Assaults–Simple, Not Aggravated. These data are not included in the aggravated assault statistics. See arrests for information on other assaults.
Quote:
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program defines aggravated assault as an unlawful attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury. The UCR Program further specifies that this type of assault is usually accompanied by the use of a weapon or by other means likely to produce death or great bodily harm. Attempted aggravated assault that involves the display of—or threat to use—a gun, knife, or other weapon is included in this crime category because serious personal injury would likely result if the assault were completed. When aggravated assault and larceny-theft occur together, the offense falls under the category of robbery.
Overview
In 2011, there were an estimated 751,131 aggravated assaults in the nation.
The estimated number of aggravated assaults in 2011 declined 3.9 percent when compared with data from 2010 and 15.7 percent when compared with the estimate for 2002.
In 2011, the estimated rate of aggravated assaults was 241.1 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants.
A 10-year comparison of data from 2002 and 2011 showed that the rate of aggravated assaults in 2011 dropped 22.1 percent. (See Tables 1 and 1A.)
Of the aggravated assault offenses in 2011 for which law enforcement agencies provided expanded data, 26.9 percent were committed with personal weapons such as hands, fists, or feet. Slightly more than 21 percent (21.2) of aggravated assaults were committed with firearms, and 19.1 percent were committed with knives or cutting instruments. The remaining 32.8 percent of aggravated assaults were committed with other weapons. (Based on Table 19.)
Quote:
Definition
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program counts one arrest for each separate instance in which a person is arrested, cited, or summoned for an offense. The UCR Program collects arrest data on 28 offenses, as described in Offense Definitions. (Please note that, beginning in 2010, the UCR Program no longer collected data on runaways.) Because a person may be arrested multiple times during a year, the UCR arrest figures do not reflect the number of individuals who have been arrested; rather, the arrest data show the number of times that persons are arrested, as reported by law enforcement agencies to the UCR Program.
Data collection-juveniles
The UCR Program considers a juvenile to be an individual under 18 years of age regardless of state definition. The program does not collect data regarding police contact with a juvenile who has not committed an offense, nor does it collect data on situations in which police take a juvenile into custody for his or her protection, e.g., neglect cases.
Overview
Nationwide, law enforcement made an estimated 12,408,899 arrests in 2011. Of these arrests, 534,704 were for violent crimes, and 1,639,883 were for property crimes. (Note: the UCR Program does not collect data on citations for traffic violations.)
The highest number of arrests were for drug abuse violations (estimated at 1,531,251 arrests), larceny-theft (estimated at 1,264,986), and driving under the influence (estimated at 1,215,077).
The estimated arrest rate for the United States in 2011 was 3,991.1 arrests per 100,000 inhabitants. The arrest rate for violent crime (including murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) was 172.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, and the arrest rate for property crime (burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson) was 531.3 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Two-year arrest trends show violent crime arrests declined 4.9 percent in 2011 when compared with 2010 arrests, and property crime arrests decreased 0.1 percent when compared with the 2010 arrests.
Arrests of juveniles for all offenses decreased 11.1 percent in 2011 when compared with the 2010 number; arrests of adults declined 3.6 percent.
Over 74 percent (74.1) of the persons arrested in the nation during 2011 were males. They accounted for 80.4 percent of persons arrested for violent crime and 62.9 percent of persons arrested for property crime.
In 2011, 69.2 percent of all persons arrested were white, 28.4 percent were black, and the remaining 2.4 percent were of other races.
There is a clear difference here between the two sources as only aggravated assault, not assault, is listed as a violent crime.