I don't disagree with the criteria disparities. I found that to be true
as well. I have heard something a bit different about the Homicide
statistic in America, namely that if you shoot someone who has invaded
your home or in any other way defend yourself such that an attacker is
killed, the event is initially called a homicide until someone later on,
perhaps even a jury decides that it isn't. In the meantime it is called
a homicide and entered into statistics as such. There probably isn't
anything that can be done about that. Local police forces aren't given
the authority to determine when a death is a homicide and when it isn't.
As to the definition of violent crimes, probably we in the U.S., many of
us, wouldn't accept the idea that it is more acceptable that our wives
and sisters be raped than that we kill the rapist, e.g, he had your
sister down and had pulled her pants off and you shot him??? Did you
have to do that? Attempted rape isn't as serious a crime as an actual
rape. we're going to call that a homicide and you are in a whole lot of
trouble.
Would a few cases like that get gun owners stirred up so that they would
strenuously fight having their guns taken away? The way the media
works, just one case has gotten Geary stirred up -- a lot of other
people as well. If the threat of the creation of a bureaucracy to take
away the guns of normal American citizens became serious enough, counter
examples could be produced in abundance.
Having said all that, I was a rifle instructor in the Marine Corps at
one time and all the coaches I knew would agree that some of our
shooters couldn't be trusted with weapons. You get a shooter who falls
well below a qualification score, forgets that he needs to keep his
rifle pointed down range, fires a shot into the air by accident and you
tell the coach next to you, "I sure hope I never end up living next to
that guy." If "that guy" had a family that cared about him they ought
to make sure he didn't have access to any guns once he got out of the
Marine Corps.
Heck, a lot more people get killed by cars than guns, and each time my
son is in a car with me, he watches me suspiciously (even more so now
that I've entered my 80s) and threatens to take my keys away if I start
showing any signs of senility. He laughs and jokes about it, but he'd
do it. I read an article in this morning's paper about the Oregon
shooter showing homicidal inclinations. He was living with his mother
and had tantrums like the ones he had as a child. Also, he had a
fascination for murderers who killed a lot of people. If we are going
to authorize the intrusion of a governmental agency into anyone's life
to take their guns away, I would much prefer you do it to people who are
inept with firearms (as my shooters of old) or people with a fascination
with homicides -- than old fashioned folk who think its okay to protect
their wives and sisters.
Lawrence
On 10/3/2015 12:56 AM, Donal McEvoy wrote:
"According to the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace, the U.K. had 933 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2012, down from 1,255 in 2003. In the U.S., the figure for 2010 was 399 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Still, while the U.S. violent-crime rate is less than half Britain’s, its homicide rate between 2003 and 2011 was almost four times as high."
It would help to have access to reliable statistics but this kind of claim raises obvious issues as to its reliability: reliable comparisons should be like-for-like, but nothing in the above makes clear (a) whether the US and UK are using a comparable definition of "violent crimes" [is 'threatening behaviour' a "violent crime" in the US?] (b) how reliable is the data gathering process (given differences in underreporting of crimes or in the classifications of reports of crimes) (c) how prevalence of "violent crimes" relates to factors like population density.
These issues are particularly acute within the criminal justice system where parties [like police and government] may have their own agendas in how they define and assemble data.
As a rule of thumb, the figures as to "homicides" are likely to be much less questionable than figures as to "violent crimes" generally, as homicides are more clearly defined and less subject to underreporting and other forms of distortion within the societies in question.
The above quotation is inadequate to ground an argument that by having a much higher homicide rate the US avoids having such a high rate of "violent crime" generally as that suffered by the UK - an argument that (even if it were soundly based statistically) might be met with the (moral) argument that suffering the lower homicide rate is better than suffering the lower rate of "violent crime" generally.
D
L
On Friday, 2 October 2015, 23:30, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Here's another interesting article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-24/u-k-gun-curbs-mean-more-violence-yet-fewer-deaths-than-in-u-s- It includes the following paragraph: "According to the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace, the U.K. had 933 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2012, down from 1,255 in 2003. In the U.S., the figure for 2010 was 399 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Still, while the U.S. violent-crime rate is less than half Britain’s, its homicide rate between 2003 and 2011 was almost four times as high."
There is a lot more violent crime in the UK but fewer homicides. Perhaps a lot of bad guys that would be walking around in the UK with guns and occasionally killing people are now walking around with knives, clubs or small gangs and since all the innocent civilians over there (with few exceptions) are unarmed . . . they provide a great feast of victims -- so why kill them and draw the attention of the bobbies when you can rap them on the head with a steel pipe and take whatever you want -- and with so much of that going on the chance of being cot is way lower than if they murdered someone
We are still (in the US) a nation of Emersonian self-reliant people and would rather, many (if not most) of us, defend ourselves than hire a huge expensive bureaucracy to control us so that we don't kill to many of each other. The idea of letting ourselves be robbed or letting someone we love be raped in order to reduce the homicide rate wouldn't set very well with a lot of us.
And I always wonder about some of these statistics. If you shoot a bad guy who has broken into your house with the intent to do you or a loved one bodily harm, does that count as a violent gun-related death? Probably, but I'm not sure.
Lawrence
On 10/2/2015 1:15 PM, Mike Geary wrote:
What a sad little country we are. What is it that supposedly we value in our gun "rights"? Obviously not life. Are we all hoping that one day we will have a chance at shooting the bastards, to know the relief in blowing the sonsofbitches away? During the Vietnam war I was working (in Memphis, not Vietnam) with a guy who would talk about joining the Army so that he could get over there and mow those commie gooks down. He really, truly wanted to kill, to destroy everything that he didn't understand, that he saw as hostile to his own very small world.
I quit that job and I have no idea if he ever made it to Vietnam ( but 3 million Vietnamese were killed, so I doubt they needed his help), but on learning of massacres like this one today in Oregon, I wonder just how many people out there are cleaning their rifles everyday aching to mow the bastards down.
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