Violent crime, gun laws, and Europe

[divemedic]

How many times have we heard about how the US has such a high crime rate, and if we only outlawed guns, we would all be safer? Well, that is all a lie, according to UK's daily mail, and a study performed by the British government. The violent crime rate per 100,000 residents tells the story:

The US violent crime rate? 466

 

[Creature]

At least they listed the US crime rate!

 

[tmd11111]

Say it ain't so...

The dem's will still dismiss this as fiction instead of fact because it doesn't support their views.

 

[BobbyT]

In Europe, you can do things like publish a single rate that's pretty accurate, because the countries are smaller than our states and pretty much everyone is stuck in an urban slum.

You can't (honestly) list a "rate" for American violent crime, because the aggregate data doesn't mean much. Even when you put aside the sheer size of our country, you have vastly different layouts even within the same state.

Looking at counties provides a far more accurate picture. The single most telling fact I've come across is this one: 50% of the counties in the US have ZERO murders per year. An additional 25% have ONE single murder.

That's not in a given year; that's as an ongoing average. For 75% of the nation's counties, the typical year has either 0 or 1 murder. There is virtually no violence out in the real world; 99% of it occurs in the urban centers. Which are, coincidentally, surprisingly EuroPeon in the way both criminals and honest individuals are treated...

 

[tmd11111]

That didn't take long for someone to put a twist on it. If you read it again you will see it has noting to do with COUNTIES, it comapres COUNTRIES. And yes Canada and European COUNTRIES do have COUNTIES and regions and in some cases states. The survey doesn't say anything about cities or rural areas. It just shows crime rates based on PER CAPITIA, that is the rate of crimes per 100,000 people.

So yes you can compare fairly.

Oh and BTW I lived in Europe for over 8 years. Its not all urban slum...

 

[JagFarlane]

Been following these for a while. In the breakdown of the UK, Wales has the highest rate. This, they've attributed to blue collar people getting off of work and going right to the local pub.
The UK itself is interesting to watch, they don't have much in firearms crimes, but after the ban of firearms they saw a massive rise in knife crimes. Its bad enough over there, that, for example a butcher cannot leave his knives in his car overnight. They must be taken straight to work, and back home.
That law is due to the local teen gangs taking up knives as their preferred weapons, and making it a badge of honor to just randomly stab people.

 

[csmsss]

I think one conclusion is obvious - violence is not caused by accessibility to a tool but by a violent mindset on the part of the actor.

 

[Mello2u]

It is difficult to draw any conclusions from the article or chart. They do not give a break-down of the various "violent crimes". As reported in the article an act in one country might constitute a violent crime that does not in another.

"While the UK ranks above South Africa for all violent crime, South Africans suffer more than 20,000 murders each year - compared with Britain's 921 in 2007." This one sentence illustrates the dichotomy of crime. Obviously, if 90% of your violent crime is limited to theft of property by force or threat of force and another country's violent crime is 90% homicides you need to know that.

While this is interesting, it is not persuasive as it lacks authority of the underlying facts.

 

[divemedic]

Has that ever stopped the Brady bunch? Next time they spout off about how safe it is to be in a country with strict gun laws, throw this into the discussion. Let them do some research for a change. Who knows, you may just force them to think.

 

[Anticonn]

On a side note, the UK's population is about 61 million (2008), in the US we have about 270 million firearms owned by civilians. So we have 4.43 guns for every civilian in the UK, and the UK has 4.36 times the violent crime rate. As far as inverse proportions go, that's uncanny.

The numbers in the OP give 1,416,640 violent crimes in the US, and a country with 20% the population 1,240,740, 12.5% less.

I will also point out here that while correlation does not equal causation, even the Brits must realize that either their gun control isn't working, or their country is simply full of *******s.

 

[PhoenixConflagration]

Japan is another country where guns are not allowed. They don't have any mass shootings. They DO have mass stabbings. I would like to see a study of stabbing rates pre and post gun ban in a series of countries. I imagine the results would be interesting.