Guns, Guns Guns

PeterZ wrote:
I don't disagree with your caveats. That does of course strongly suggests that assuming fewer firearms DOES NOT automatically lead to fewer violent crimes. That was all I wanted to assert. I suppose I would also like assert that MORE firearms DOES NOT automatically lead to greater safety.

Firearms do appear to have a slight corelation to fewer violent crimes. How that corelation manifests is worthy of further study.

sorry if i sounded too confrontational. was supposed to be informative, not inflammatory.

Spacekiwi wrote:

PeterZ wrote:
I don't disagree with your caveats. That does of course strongly suggests that assuming fewer firearms DOES NOT automatically lead to fewer violent crimes. That was all I wanted to assert. I suppose I would also like assert that MORE firearms DOES NOT automatically lead to greater safety.

Firearms do appear to have a slight corelation to fewer violent crimes. How that corelation manifests is worthy of further study.

sorry if i sounded too confrontational. was supposed to be informative, not inflammatory.

You weren't confrontational. It appears that I was heavy handed with my style emphasizing my statements. I'll go for lighter and subtler next time.

Spacekiwi wrote:
Just checked the dates on your data, and the data for your facts is from between 2002 and 2004, according to the site. the Data I used was from a later study in 2012 according to the data on the wikipedia pages. Im not sure how they did it, but according to your numbers and mine, the british managed to drop their murder rate by around 4.5 per hundred thousand over 8 to 10 years.

That is pretty much correct yes. If you get a graph covering from the 90s to now, you will notice an increase in crime up until early 2ks, at which point the strict gunlaws took serious effect. Murder rates dropped seriously for several years then levelled out.

UK is actually a perfect example of the effects of strict gunlaws.

Spacekiwi wrote:the US also managed a respectable 0.8 per 100,000 drop, which assuming a population of 400 million, is still a drop of 3200 deaths.

USA had a longterm downwards trend, not a huge difference, but of course, someone had to exploit it politically, so in NY, it was claimed that the zero-tolerance regime was the cause. Conveniently leaving out that the downwards trend started before that and also happened elsewhere.

PeterZ wrote:
I don't disagree with your caveats. That does of course strongly suggests that assuming fewer firearms DOES NOT automatically lead to fewer violent crimes. That was all I wanted to assert.

Except that the statistics actually DO show the opposite.
And clearly so if you take a thorough look at them.

Personally i would prefer if the correlation wasn´t there, but it is.

Tenshinai wrote:

PeterZ wrote:
I don't disagree with your caveats. That does of course strongly suggests that assuming fewer firearms DOES NOT automatically lead to fewer violent crimes. That was all I wanted to assert.

Except that the statistics actually DO show the opposite.
And clearly so if you take a thorough look at them.

Personally i would prefer if the correlation wasn´t there, but it is.

Then you should be happy at being wrong.

UK Report
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/116417/hosb1011.pdf

US Report
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv11.pdf

Look at page 56 in the UK report on reported violent crime. There were 821,957 vilolent offences reported in 2010-2011 reporting year for a population of 60 million for a rate of 1.37%. In the opening pages of the US report it shows 7.2 reported violent crimes per 1,000 people. That's 0.72% or a bit over half the UK rate.

Whatever was happening in the UK also happened hear in the US. The UK had strict gun control laws and the US did not. The US with the less restrictive laws regarding guns reduced their violent crime rates even lower than the nation that prohibited private ownership of almost every firearm.

The rates for violent crime is still twice as high in the UK as it is here in the US. That suggests to me that the trend was driven by something other than guns. These reports also tell me that there IS a slight corelation between gun ownership and fewer violent crimes.

PeterZ wrote:
Then you should be happy at being wrong.

UK Report
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/116417/hosb1011.pdf

US Report
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv11.pdf

Look at page 56 in the UK report on reported violent crime. There were 821,957 vilolent offences reported in 2010-2011 reporting year for a population of 60 million for a rate of 1.37%. In the opening pages of the US report it shows 7.2 reported violent crimes per 1,000 people. That's 0.72% or a bit over half the UK rate.

Whatever was happening in the UK also happened hear in the US. The UK had strict gun control laws and the US did not. The US with the less restrictive laws regarding guns reduced their violent crime rates even lower than the nation that prohibited private ownership of almost every firearm.

The rates for violent crime is still twice as high in the UK as it is here in the US. That suggests to me that the trend was driven by something other than guns. These reports also tell me that there IS a slight corelation between gun ownership and fewer violent crimes.

Peterz, you missed something from my post that helps explain that. The US calculate their violent crime differently to the UK. the UK include pretty much every single direct crime with violence implied or even slightly shown as a violent crime, whereas the US has a high bar for accepting these crimes as actually being violent. this will distort the numbers.


And also, you read the wrong part about violent crimes. your page one of the bjs notes that there was 22.5 violent crimes per 1,000 people, of which 7.2 per 1,000 were described as 'serious': rapes, aggravated robbery and aggravated assault.

so using the very data you gave us, we can work out the violent crime in the US to be 2.25% or around 1 and a half time the UK level. Your data actually shows the complete opposite to what you claim sorry.

Hi, PeterZ and Spacekiwi,

Slow it down a little bit guys. You both are making valid points. Stop and think, instead of sniping back and forth. I would like for this discussion to continue, not have Duckk shut it down. There are other factors at work in the numbers that you are throwing around besides guns. Racial discrimination, economic opportunity and the criminal justice systems in both countries play a part in crime statistics. It is not simply a matter of the presence or absence of guns. Also, police presence and response times vary, reporting technics and criteria vary, and prosecutable cases are different not only from country to country, but from state to state. So once again slow down a little bit. You both bring valid points to any discussion you enter. I would hope to have you continue to do so.

KNick wrote:Hi, PeterZ and Spacekiwi,

Slow it down a little bit guys. You both are making valid points. Stop and think, instead of sniping back and forth. I would like for this discussion to continue, not have Duckk shut it down. There are other factors at work in the numbers that you are throwing around besides guns. Racial discrimination, economic opportunity and the criminal justice systems in both countries play a part in crime statistics. It is not simply a matter of the presence or absence of guns. Also, police presence and response times vary, reporting technics and criteria vary, and prosecutable cases are different not only from country to country, but from state to state. So once again slow down a little bit. You both bring valid points to any discussion you enter. I would hope to have you continue to do so.

Ok. stats can only tell you so much. will stop on this for now.

how about you peterz? trucs on this particular subject for now?

otherwise in a few months duckk might have 3 squashed flies to his name....... XD

Spacekiwi wrote:

PeterZ wrote:
Then you should be happy at being wrong.

UK Report
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/116417/hosb1011.pdf

US Report
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv11.pdf

Look at page 56 in the UK report on reported violent crime. There were 821,957 vilolent offences reported in 2010-2011 reporting year for a population of 60 million for a rate of 1.37%. In the opening pages of the US report it shows 7.2 reported violent crimes per 1,000 people. That's 0.72% or a bit over half the UK rate.

Whatever was happening in the UK also happened hear in the US. The UK had strict gun control laws and the US did not. The US with the less restrictive laws regarding guns reduced their violent crime rates even lower than the nation that prohibited private ownership of almost every firearm.

The rates for violent crime is still twice as high in the UK as it is here in the US. That suggests to me that the trend was driven by something other than guns. These reports also tell me that there IS a slight corelation between gun ownership and fewer violent crimes.

Peterz, you missed something from my post that helps explain that. The US calculate their violent crime differently to the UK. the UK include pretty much every single direct crime with violence implied or even slightly shown as a violent crime, whereas the US has a high bar for accepting these crimes as actually being violent. this will distort the numbers.


And also, you read the wrong part about violent crimes. your page one of the bjs notes that there was 22.5 violent crimes per 1,000 people, of which 7.2 per 1,000 were described as 'serious': rapes, aggravated robbery and aggravated assault.

so using the very data you gave us, we can work out the violent crime in the US to be 2.25% or around 1 and a half time the UK level. Your data actually shows the complete opposite to what you claim sorry.

I got that. The issue seems to be with the UK definitions. The UK does not include robbery as a violent crime while the US does. If you include robbery where no one was hurt in the 821,957 assault offences, number the stats go higher for the UK. Also, the definitions for violent crime which contribute to that 7.2 per 100,000 in the US is rape or sexual assault, robbery and aggrevated assault. It strikes me that the reported violent crime in the UK occurs at a higher pace than in the US.

To verify please check on pages 56-61 in the UK report.

Yes, the definitions are different but the one I cited are very similar and what differences there are exclude reports for the UK stats that the US does not exclude. None of this means that the availablity of guns either do or do not contributed to violent crimes. All it does mean is that other factors are MUCH more important in the increase or decrease of violent crime. What little corelation there does appear to exist is only that a corelation, not causation.

To our US friends. You need to know how the western world media portrays your country on the gun issue. Regarding the current NRA convention, today we saw two of your "shock jocks" discussing how they said their opposition were misrepresenting the issue. They were upset that immediate relative of recent victims were being getting airtime. The key comment that has gone around the world was (paraphrased) "How dare they bleat about their losses? It is much more important that free men not be ruled by Kings". There was much more of the same or similar. Sorry but if people like this are not only saying such, but not in padded rooms somewhere, the rest of the civilised world will not be sympathetic. I was raised with guns, put myself through university by selling kangaroo skins and wild pig carcasses, and still have a gun collection; but am appalled by such an attitude. How do you think the sheeples in big cities will react?
Incidentally what are the Kings that scare these idiots?