- 1,684
- Houston, TX
- The_TetsuKobura
Mass shooting in Southern Texas Church
- Thread starter ryzno
- 441 comments
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- 20,681
- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
That's a city of 14,000,000 people that's had 59 gun murders in that year. Gun crime stats are up partly because of a rise in the number of recorded crimes such as possession and supply, that's due to far stronger (finally) police enforcement. Every single one of those murders shouldn't have happened but it's ridiculous to compare that level of gun murder to the US.
EDIT: At 2014 US figures that same area would have had 1,440 gun murders. Bear in mind that that's comparing a particularly violent area of the UK to the whole of the US demographic... "good" and "bad" areas alike.
If we take the UK city with the highest murder rate (59 murders as above) and compare that with St. Louis's murder-rate-per-hundred-thousand then for Metropolitan London's population there would have been around 7,500 murders (over 90% of murders in St. Louis are committed using a firearm).
Some of these data are taken two or three years apart but in this case that's irrelevant - the order of magnitude of the difference is so great.
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- 24,612
- Anoka, MN
Most stats are per capita, so overall population shouldn’t matter too much. What does matter as far as overall population is demographics and the U.S. is rather unique in that regard and makes it difficult to make any real comparisons.
Danoff
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KungFury
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So Europe copes with it better because their numbers are lower?
UKMikey
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- Grea'er Laandan
- UKMikeyA
- UKMikeyA
I don't understand. Are you trying to bring population difference into it again? Compared to the St. Louis murder rate he quoted (59.29 per 100,000 people) it's about a fourteenth as small. Not sure how this counts as some kind of failure to "cope". And these are the most murderous cities in both the US and UK (not across the whole of Europe).
I couldn't agree more.
UKMikey
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KungFury
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I didn't cherry pick anything, the person I quoted said that Europe copes with it better and I asked what they cope with better?How else would you determine "better" without some kind of quantitative comparison?It's like you cherry picked the shootingest town in Britain and said "look, people still die over there despite legal guns being banned". 1:14 is a pretty large ratio (more numbers again, sorry).
Cope with not owning guns because less people die? Cope with the death of a loved one because at least guns are illegal? I don't know what all this other conversation is about.
- 20,681
- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
In fairness there was a clear (almost sarcastic) implication in your question as you followed up with a video about gun crime in London:
London is the gun crime capital of the UK (these things being relative) so your question was interesting. As I subsequently pointed out to you the gun murder rate is utterly negligible if you compare it to a similar gun crime city in the US, rate for rate. For London's 59 gun murders St. Louis would have over 7,500. That's an insanely staggering difference.
Maybe @EarnerRed wouldn't have used the casual "coping just fine" if he'd realised just how hard you'd jump on those words... but there remains a colossal difference.
KungFury
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I'll keep that in mind, I guess if I loose a loved one there I'll be able to cope with it much better than if I lost one somewhere else.
- 20,681
- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
KungFury
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Considering I was responding to someone else when you jumped in with numbers, meh.
- 140
- Melbourne, Australia
The US has 5 times more intentional homicides than the UK (population adjusted, as always)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country
Or 3.5 times more if you look here, either way, it's more:
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Violent-crime/Murder-rate-per-million-people
Murders with firearms are 138x higher in the US v UK with population adjusted.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Murders-with-firearms-per-million#-amount
Using the same source, the UK has more 'petty' crime than the US, much more, so it certainly suggests that for the Americans, the ease at which a violent crime can occur is causing a problem. The great thing is that having no weapon gives you a certain amount of time to think.
I agree in that fixing the disease rather than the symptom is always beneficial, but again, why does this seem to be a US-only problem? I studied Psychology at university, I'm by no means an expert but I'm relatively clued up. The US is miles ahead of Europe (or at least the UK) in terms of accepting that mental health has a part to play in behaviour - I can't find the statistic right now but far more people in the US have received therapy v people in the UK (again, per capita). This would suggest a more advanced attitude to mental health in the US, and yet, violent crime is so much higher there.
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- 24,612
- Anoka, MN
I wonder that myself. It’s not like there aren’t guns at all in Europe, which makes me believe there is more to the story than just guns.
From what I’ve seen, a good portion of that “treatment” is handing someone a prescription and sending them on their way. Things like talking to a psychologist are ridiculously expensive and don’t seem to be covered by most health plans that I’ve come across.
Aside from mental health, it would help if we finally got serious about gang and domestic violence as both of those contribute quite a lot to murder numbers.
- 7,598
- Exorcet
- OE Exorcet
The implication here is that the US has the most guns, so guns must be the problem. However we've already agreed that the US is unique outside of this, so why jump on the number of guns?
It's not that it's an unreasonable link to make at first glance, but it's far from conclusive. People have responded negatively to the idea of handing out guns to everyone as a way to curb violence. I don't agree with that idea, but it's not very far off what was done in Switzerland at least where people were given military weapons and ammo to keep at home.
I don't see how just having guns is the problem. A person owning 100 guns or 100 people owning a gun is nothing to raise an eyebrow at. The problem is that they are getting into the wrong hands. We can alleviate this in a number of ways. We can make it harder for those people to use guns. We can also prevent these people from becoming part of the criminal demographic. We absolutely should not punish innocent people, so these options sound a lot better a flat gun ban. They also don't let the underlying problems remain to express themselves in other ways, like using another tool to kill large groups of people.
I want to ask again, do you think anything besides a total gun ban will improve the situation? Smart guns that limit who can use them/where they can be used should definitely help the situation.
- 20,681
- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
It's very far off - those guns are issued to the (roughly 200,000) people who are in compulsory military service, ammo is not provided with them but rather stored at a central arsenal. The guns are not meant to be kept in immediately fire-able condition and may only be fired in military activities.
- 7,598
- Exorcet
- OE Exorcet
I suppose you can argue how similar the two ideas are. I wasn't trying to promote free guns given to everyone, more so that giving that providing them to a portion of society doesn't necessarily lead to them abusing the weapons.
While ammo is no longer provided, it was previously. The guns can also be kept once military service is complete, so while you may only have a few hundred thousand in the militia at a time, the amount of guns in circulation may be higher. I don't know how many soldiers opt to keep their weapons.
Danoff
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No weapon? Guns are not the only deadly weapon. Someone in this very thread quoted to you statistics on lots of people being killed by hands and feet. Why are you still quoting "gun crime" statistics at me?
Yes, the US has a larger homicide rate than other developed countries. In order to show that the homicide rate would go down with a gun ban, you'd need some figures to back that up (not that I'd be all for it even if you did have those figures, just helping you with your argument here). It doesn't help your case that the US homicide rate has roughly tracked other developed nations since those nations have banned guns. Dropping roughly on par with Australia and faster than the UK.
Even if you removed all guns from the US (including homemade), and so it was impossible to kill someone with a firearm, and for the sake of argument, supposing that NOBODY who would have been killed by a gun got murdered any other way, and supposing nobody got killed due to a lack of being able to defend themselves, our homicide rate would still be 2 times the UK homicide rate (rate... meaning population adjusted). Tell me yet again how guns are the difference. Tell me yet again that it is the weapon to blame and not anything else.
By the way, higher petty crime rates can easily be explained due to petty crime perpetrators not having to worry about the victim being armed.
I don't know. The drug cartels in Mexico certainly don't help. The war on drugs in general certainly doesn't help. But I don't know why it's a US-only problem. See above as to why guns are not the culprit.
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- 20,681
- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
You know very well that it's a little more nuanced than that - guns facilitate impulsive violence in an extreme way that other weapons don't. If I want to stab you then I have to get in close with a knife and have a pretty visceral experience, if I want to strangle/garotte you then I have to hold you till I feel you die, if I want to beat you to death with one of our new kitchen chairs then I have to repeat the action while I look at you until I know you've karked.
If I want to shoot you then I can close my eyes for the critical moment and turn away afterwards saying "God dammit Danoff, y'all shouldn't never have gone to that bar with him". Guns offer a one-button solution to the awful thing that is (and always will be) impulsive human anger.
- 31,544
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- Dennisch
How long have you guys been bumping uglies?
Danoff
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To support this line of thinking we'd need to see that most homicides are impulsive actions that are regretted shortly thereafter, and not, for example, the work of a repeat offender. You'd expect to see a lot of homicides (especially gun homicides) from sources other than gangs, drug dealers, or people with long-established criminal histories.
Here's one article that links gangs to 80% of all crime in the US: http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/FedCrimes/story?id=6773423&page=1
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- 20,681
- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
How about the academic research that shows that 45% of all shootings are by an intimate partner, that most mass shootings in the US are linked to domestic violence or that the presence of a gun in the home makes it five times more likely that a woman will be killed? All sources within.
Most, or many? We can surely demonstrate 'many' from the available data.
I don't think we can sensibly compare gang violence with domestic violence and I think we'd probably agree that premeditation and motive differs greatly across the two spheres... but would you also agree that an impulsive action like raising a hand is so much more deadly if you can put a gun in that hand?
Your command of colloquial English remains as impressive as ever!
Danoff
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Ok, so this thread is about gun homicide that is related to domestic violence. Do we think that it was impulsive? I didn't find your 45% number. I found a 54% number that wasn't quite what you said.
I'd argue that women in an ongoing abusive relationship that are ultimately shot to death were not killed impulsively, and their spouses were probably going to try to kill them one way or another at some point. I'm not sure those women would take being beaten to death over being shot.
- 7,598
- Exorcet
- OE Exorcet
I can agree, but the gun is still not going to enable you to harm someone instantly. If two people are 50 feet apart and suddenly become hostile, what you're saying applies. Or maybe a more realistic situation would be a drive by shooting where the target appears by chance. If instead, someone becomes angry with a person next door, they will still have to travel and find the other person.
- 9,401
- Western Sydney
- mustafur
When you add a serious weapon into the mix your much more likely to kill if you have intent.
I don't know the statistics but survival rate of persons being attacked by a non firearm is quite high compared to a low rate for fire arms.
That alone could explain a big difference in the murder rates before getting into the criminal culture of the country compared to others.
Facts are facts, for example no one with a knife sword or even chainsaw would kill as much as the las vegas shooter they might get a few people but those are weapons your more likely to have people fight back on and will likely get shot at by police before it goes too long.
Me personally I'm not really a supporter of massive gun control but the facts are clear in terms of lives saved.
I don't know the statistics but survival rate of persons being attacked by a non firearm is quite high compared to a low rate for fire arms.
That alone could explain a big difference in the murder rates before getting into the criminal culture of the country compared to others.
Facts are facts, for example no one with a knife sword or even chainsaw would kill as much as the las vegas shooter they might get a few people but those are weapons your more likely to have people fight back on and will likely get shot at by police before it goes too long.
Me personally I'm not really a supporter of massive gun control but the facts are clear in terms of lives saved.
- 86,656
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
Except nobody's quite sure how many lives guns save - other than probably a ****ton.
Without that number, the facts in terms of lives saved are anything but clear.
- 20,681
- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
It was an interesting study that raised a lot of questions. About half of the Kleck & Gertz figures showed that crimes where the "defender" pulled a gun (or verbally referred to one) were against entirely unarmed individuals. Perhaps more shockingly about 10% of "defensive" gun references were against a family member.
- 86,656
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
As it doesn't take much imagination to come up with a scenario where someone is physically outmatched by an unarmed aggressor, I'm fine with that as a potentially valid use of a firearm (or any other weapon) for self-defence.
Like... a teenage girl using a firearm to defend herself from her rapey, 250lb uncle? Yeah, I'm fine with that as a potentially valid use too.
Of course both may also encompass situations where it's an unnecessary step, or escalation, so there's not much to be read into either.
