Caporegime
- Joined
- 30 Jul 2013
- Posts
- 29,016
In the United States they have 12 firearms deaths per 100,000 people
UK has 0.23 deaths per 100,000 people.
Bit of a difference...
But 65% of those are suicide, 15% law enforcement, 17% gang related and 3% accidental. According to this article when you break the stats down to remove suicide and gang violence, law enforcement, accidental etc then you have around 5100 a year. You could also arguably remove Puerto Rico murders, as it's such a different latin American culture - a couple more hundred.
Whether you should remove the gang related like this is debatable...
Also of the 5100, 25% of those happen in 4 cities with strict gun laws California having some of the strictest in the country.
5100 works out at 1.57 per 100,000.
I am sure you could break down these stats even furthur, I'm not sure if mass shootings, mafia activity, are included etc.
So really it's a very small number of murders when you look at it like this.
So it's important to explain these stats.
https://www.quora.com/If-you-take-g...ide-rate-look-similar-to-other-G20-countries#
Last edited:
Associate
This is what happens when you allow a country to bear arms
Those four statistical examples make up the entire 100%. Is that right? Leaving zero for other gun related murders / manslaughter?
Not questioning the claims or the overall stats, just seems the maths might be wrong there.
I see what you are saying, it's a well written answer so I'm assuming the numbers are off here and there, you'd need to research.
Also up to Dec 2017 in E & W, there were 6,604 gun related offences, now for a country where guns are essentially totally banned except in special cases and obvioulsy therefore you can't train with them then it's not suprising that these are mainly only offences and not actually murders as the weapons and skills will be poor. Now considering the US has nearly 400 million guns and if you take the 5100 murder stat yet we have 0 guns yet over 6604 offences, you could almost say we have worse gun crime than the US in some senses.
I bet our knife crime is relatively higher than the US also.
So the point is that banning guns will just lead to other forms of weapons used or gun usage to be swept underground and also that gun crime is not out of control in the US.
Soldato
- Joined
- 13 Sep 2005
- Posts
- 4,312
Why remove 3% accidental anyway? We don't have accidental knife deaths in the UK.
Law enforcement deaths could also be argued are largely down to the population being armed in the first place which is why compliance with police demands is so important there.
Law enforcement deaths could also be argued are largely down to the population being armed in the first place which is why compliance with police demands is so important there.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
So if you remove most of the gun deaths, which other countries include, you get a new statistic... but that statistic still puts it at what 7-8 times worse than the UK?
They you completely mess up the numbers because 25% of those happening is stated to be Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit and Washington... none of which are in California. The author of that post (with no sources) states that 25% of all gun crime happens in those cities... by using the 5100 number excluding gang violence but uses the actual homicide numbers from the city not making that distinction, ie that 25% number is utterly incorrect and had nothing to do with California.
There were seemingly ~1900 murders in California as a whole from a population of 39.25million in 2016, while Chicago alone had 480 murders from a population of ~2.7million. So California with the 'strictest gun control'... and like, Compton and huge portions of LA that have huge gangs had around 4x the total murders with about 15x the population. As for strict gun laws, firstly gun laws that are established AFTER there are 10s of millions of guns passing around don't have a huge effect in a short space of time, it would take decades of strict gun control to have entire cultural level changes on gun crime rates, but it's something that will always take decades so you can start in 50 years and have a reduction in 80 years or you can start today and see the outcome of said actions 30 years from now. If you included gun buyback programs which have proven effective many times over, you can reduce this some what.
On the actual strict gun crime, if you can travel 30 mins to a different county and get far less strict gun laws and then drive back to the city.... that city doesn't really have strict gun control. As almost all gun control is fought from the right tooth and nail at every turn almost no gun control legislation that has ever passed in the US is all encompassing or sensibly done. Much of the law ends up effecting one city on a local level leaving you free to buy guns easily in the rest of the state which monumentally reduces the effectiveness of such gun control.
https://www.npr.org/2017/10/05/555580598/fact-check-is-chicago-proof-that-gun-laws-don-t-work
As pointed out by me already and in this article, Chicago is within spitting distance of two other states.
The US needs country wide laws that aren't torn to pieces with amendments and loopholes and it needs to start getting old guns off the street with buyback programs. Real national gun laws would have dramatically higher impact because you couldn't go 20 minutes outside of Chicago to buy a gun, making the gun laws in CHicago almost pointless. There are also issues in that this would be less difficult if the states borders had better policing/checks but again republicans prevent money going to these issues to prevent gun sales dropping.
60% of new guns used in Chicago gang related crimes and another 30% of non gang related crimes used guns bought in neighbouring states.... so a gun law that everyone travels 20 minutes to beat.... is really not a gun control law at all.
If you couldn't buy that gun in the next state, or the next one after that, you'd suddenly actually cause people problems in buying guns at the drop of a hat with no checks, no licence, no id and no waiting period.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
No, you should question them, his answer had zero sources and don't add up. As you say those 4 things alone immediately state that no gun related deaths are down to non gang related activity, it's bull.
It's more like 13% of all homicides (not gun deaths) are gang related. It's actually massively overplayed how gang related gun deaths make up the majority of all homicides.
https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/survey-analysis/measuring-the-extent-of-gang-problems (bottom of the page)
When it comes to people killed by the police
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36826297
and
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/...years-of-life-lost-to-police-violence/559835/
Together these say, numbers for killed by police have been around the 1000 mark in the last few years, and number of police killed is tiny, far less police die than many other jobs, it's not the safest job in america but it's FAR from the most deadly yet the police are acting as if they are an endangered species these days. Overall we're talking about somewhere in the 33-35k deaths, of which 20-22k are suicides. The maybe 1100-1200 police related deaths per year is not 15% of the ~12-13k.
They are badly misrepresenting stats to imply that 4 cities with 'strict' gun control which really have anything but (see previous post) are worth 25% of the deaths they really consider murders, even though excluding all the things they say means the numbers used for murders from the city don't add up so it's not at all 25% as they say.
Essentially making up numbers that add up to 100% because that's how they think stats work, mixing up % of all gun deaths with % of homicides.
The numbers aren't a million miles off in places, they are miles off in others and the overall picture they are painting is horse manure.
Even with their incredibly skewed, incredibly inaccurate numbers as said, they are showing it to be 7-8x worse for gun crime than the UK, in reality their murder rate with guns is much worse than that using non made up numbers.
Soldato
Exactly, sure we dont have nowhere near as many guns but they just use knives instead.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 30 Jul 2013
- Posts
- 29,016
Even the knife deaths per capita is higher in the United States though...
I think the gang related of 17% was probably meant to say 7%. So depends on the stats you use. Gang related seem to be difficult to come by. Still over-exagerated imo and with all the debate around gun control I'm suprised there aren't more people/agencies doing serious research into the exact breakdown of numbers.
Soldato
Lucky for the wife he didn't have a gun. Extrapolating from my understanding of mental US gun laws the likely outcome would have been crazy gunmen a and b shoot and kill crazy gunman c. Between the bullets being fired and dying of stupid, crazy gunman c shoots and kills crazy gunmen a and b. Crazy gunmen a and b are not to blame as they stood their ground against a crazy gunman, crazy gunman c is not to blame as he stood his ground against 2 crazy gunmen. However since 3 people are now dead the only logical step is to charge the wife with manslaughter and not standing her ground as, if she had brought out her gun, then all of this might have been avoided.
America has a drug and poverty problem, most people with guns are sensible and obey the law, they never shoot anyone and they should be allowed to keep their guns. There aren't really short term solutions to this, investment in education is what's needed, there's also a problem in poor black communities where most young men are growing up without any sort of father figure, this combined with their lack of job opportunities makes joining a gang quite attractive.
Good answer roar but what is it about human nature that when poor your more likely to commit crime?
And the poverty problem is inevitable in their somewhat extreme capitalistic system, it's built around winners and losers. Not much of a welfare system to fall back on. Personally I think I could thrive and have a great life in that system.
And the poverty problem is inevitable in their somewhat extreme capitalistic system, it's built around winners and losers. Not much of a welfare system to fall back on. Personally I think I could thrive and have a great life in that system.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 30 Jul 2013
- Posts
- 29,016
Off you pop then.
I think being poor means you have less to lose from committing crime and more to gain, relatively. If there are no opportunities for a good job then selling drugs is attractive considering the amount of money involved, if you're unemployed and have a pretty rubbish life, shooting someone and being thrown in prison might not actually seem that bad. I don't think welfare is the answer, it just takes away aspiration, there's no correct balance for welfare. If it's too good then people will just live on it, if it's not good enough then you just have lots of poor unemployed people. I think legalising drugs and treating drug addiction as a health issue makes more sense, the communities that are infested with drugs and gangs would have to turn to legal work and create legal businesses. These areas would improve very quickly once people were going to a regular job every day rather than stood on a street corner with a pistol selling drugs till 6am.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 30 Jul 2013
- Posts
- 29,016