Are these stats right?

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Starts with typical BS of the highest order. A handgun is an inanimate object. An inanimate object can't do anything.
"...More people are killed with blunt force than..." Arrest all the hammers and baseball bats!!!!
 
Keep in mind Stats are no more than a set, or multiple sets of number arranged to lead the viewer to a particular conclusion. In other words, just because the actual numbers are correct ( which I would tend to think they are in this case ), the conclusion the publisher is trying to lead you to may not be accurate.
 
JSH1 said:
Let's leave it at an agreement that there are many variables that account for the differences in violent crime in the USA and other developed countries. Most of those variables are off topic for THR.

For the OP, yes those stats are correct. They are old but if you do the current stats you will find similar numbers. If you look at firearm deaths per capita you will find the USA at the top of the statistics. If you look at murders as a whole we still led the pack among developed countries.
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False. we're 13th or 15th, depending on if you just count homicides with a firearm, or count death by firearms in general. we're also 111th in terms of homicides. all per capita.

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
 
JSH1 said:
There are two very different questions there. One can agree with the statistics without jumping on the bandwagon. What should we do?

1. Don't deny statistics that are true. You can point out that raw numbers are meaningless due to greatly different populations. You can look at numbers per capita (which as I pointed out still don't look so good) The simple fact is our homicide rates are higher than most developed countries and the weapon of choice is a gun.

2. Don't throw out fake stats. We are having a very similar discussion on another forum I visit and someone threw out the statement that FBI data shows that more people are killed in the USA by hands and feet than guns. (One minute on the internet to find the FBI database shows that claim is completely false.)

3. Check the statements you get from both sides. The pro-gun side throws out an awful lot of poorly researched statements too. (See above)

4. Don't deny that the large number of guns in the USA is PART of the reason we have the level of violence that we do.

The level of violence in the USA is a complicated issue with many reasons. It can't be broken down into simple pro/anti gun arguments.



Personally I have never felt the need to carry a gun to protect myself. If you chose to carry one for protection that is fine by me.
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1. Don't deny statistics that are true.
I didn't...

2. Don't throw out fake stats.
While I have made some observations based on things I've seen presented as fact, it didn't throw out any actual stats. But you'd be hard pressed to find any evidence that the murders committed in the US are not at least half gang on gang, drug related, or cartels. AKA the stuff that's going to happen anyway.

3. Check the statements you get from both sides. The pro-gun side throws out an awful lot of poorly researched statements too. (See above)

Im from Massachusetts, Trust me my friends provide me with more than enough of the "other side".

4. Don't deny that the large number of guns in the USA is PART of the reason we have the level of violence that we do.

I actually agreed with that in an earlier post "even the amount of firearms in the us would skew the stats"

The level of violence in the USA is a complicated issue with many reasons. It can't be broken down into simple pro/anti gun arguments.

Maybe not, but that's what it inevitably grows into.
 
I said developed countries. The 10 ten developed countries by nominal GDP per capita are: United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, South Korea, Australia and Spain.

Which one of those countries have a higher murder rate than the USA?

Note that is developed countries (highly industrialized and high income per captia) It doesn't included petro states or tiny countries that make money as tax shelters.
 
jimbo555 said:
Get control of the gang problem in this country and you'll see the murder rate go down dramatically.
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Yes we would. To get the gang problem under control you have to deal with our drug problem. Street gangs' financial lifeblood is the illegal drug trade and most of the violence is over drug turf.

@jumbojimbo: My comments were not directed at you as an individual. You asked what we should do. My reply was how I think we (as gun owners) should approach the issue.
 
JSH1 said:
Yes we would. To get the gang problem under control you have to deal with our drug problem. Street gangs' financial lifeblood is the illegal drug trade and most of the violence is over drug turf.

@jumbojimbo: My comments were not directed at you as an individual. You asked what we should do. My reply was how I think we (as gun owners) should approach the issue.
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Oh, Ok, I suppose I get it. Though if you extrapolate the way we should approach the issue in your opinion, the only viable means of change is legislating handguns out of the people's hands.

Dealing with the drug problem is like dealing with gun violence. No amount of legislation is going to take it away. Not so long as criminals are making more money than doctors in some cases. The "problem" that we have with drugs in this country is one that we made ourselves. They're illegal. If they were legal, we could tax them, and gun violence would, speculatively, begin to deteriorate as there would be nothing left to fight for. With all the extra money in the coffers, states could treat addicts instead of paying to jail them. The money would stay right here in America, and there would be nothing left to kill over.
 
xxjumbojimboxx said:
Oh, Ok, I suppose I get it. Though if you extrapolate the way we should approach the issue in your opinion, the only viable means of change is legislating handguns out of the people's hands.

Dealing with the drug problem is like dealing with gun violence. No amount of legislation is going to take it away. Not so long as criminals are making more money than doctors in some cases. The "problem" that we have with drugs in this country is one that we made ourselves. They're illegal. If they were legal, we could tax them, and gun violence would, speculatively, begin to deteriorate as there would be nothing left to fight for. With all the extra money in the coffers, states could treat addicts instead of paying to jail them. The money would stay right here in America, and there would be nothing left to kill over.
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No the only viable means of change isn't banning handguns. The solution does not involve guns at all.

From your second paragraph you already know the solution to our drug problem and the violence that goes along with it. We solve the drug problem the same way we solved the violence created by illegal alcohol sales. If we won't learn from examples in other countries you would think we could learn from our own history.
 
You have to address the root causes of violence to reduce the rate of murders and those are related to socioeconomic factors that aren't easy to correct.
 
JSH1 said:
No the only viable means of change isn't banning handguns. The solution does not involve guns at all.

From your second paragraph you already know the solution to our drug problem and the violence that goes along with it. We solve the drug problem the same way we solved the violence created by illegal alcohol sales. If we won't learn from examples in other countries you would think we could learn from our own history.
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It appears we are on the same page after all JSH1.
 
DaisyCutter said:
America still does good considering the racial diversity we've embraced.

Europe doesn't have the Mexican Mafia, Bloods or Crips.

When you look at the day room in any prison, and see 80% of the inmates aren't of European descent, why bother comparing the USA to Europe. Any argument that guns are the source of the violence will be short lived if someone were to reclassify the stats by race. Race is as big a variable as the firearms.

Send 12 million illegal aliens to the UK and see how their crime rate changes.

Isn't it like a whole 120 mile drive across the entirety of England? I can cross their territory TWICE on a tank of gas. The number of gun murders isn't directly comparable.
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Don't kid yourself. You can't afford a tank of gas in England!
 
JSH1 said:
2. Don't throw out fake stats. We are having a very similar discussion on another forum I visit and someone threw out the statement that FBI data shows that more people are killed in the USA by hands and feet than guns. (One minute on the internet to find the FBI database shows that claim is completely false.)
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I don't know what forum and therefore haven't seen the way the statement was worded but its not completely false.

I'm not directing this to you in general, but to add clarity to the statistic:

The FBI stat is:

Murder Circumstances
by Weapon, 2011

Total Murder = 12,664

Total of murders by Firearms = 8583

By Handguns = 6,220

By Rifles = 323
By Shotgun = 356
All other types not listed (ex: derringers, zip guns, etc) = 1,684

Knives or cutting instruments = 1,694

Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.) = 496

Personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.) = 726


Knives and cutting instruments alone eclipse Rifles and Shotguns combined.

Hands, Feet, Fists is more than Rifles and Shotguns combined.

Blunt objects is more than either Rifles or Shotguns.


Adding Rifles, Shotguns and the misc firearms (not including handguns) the total is 2,363

Adding Knives & cutting instruments, Blunt objects, and Hands, Fists, and Feet, the total is 2,916 (that's more than all firearms combined except handguns)


Clearly, attacking 'assault rifles', which is included in the 'Rifles' stats, is misguided.


Handguns are the 'death by firearm' leader by far.

SCOTUS has ruled you cant ban 'handguns'.


I agree with your statement of:

Originally Posted by JSH1

No the only viable means of change isn't banning handguns. The solution does not involve guns at all.
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The statement: "The FBI stats say more murders are committed by fist and kicking than with anything else"

It is completely false. This is not the first time I've heard this statement, it has been around for a while.
 
Grayrock said:
Someone sent this to me the other day and I was unable to counter with any figures debunking it- can someone tell me where I can find a counter to this?
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Start by asking:
  • Where did those numbers come from?
  • How did that organization come to those numbers?
An answer will often present itself at that point. The proponent of the numbers may say, "I don't know," so they don't really know if the numbers are accurate. If they do know, and you can get ahold of the study or website from which it came, you'll often find that in appropriate incidents have been counted. For example, even if that 10K number for the U.S. is true, how many were justified police shootings? How many were justifiable defensive gun uses?
 
the USA still does horrible among developed countries
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I strongly disagree. This is a lie that a lot of people have bought into, around the world. Over lunch with friends in Sweden I made the statement that the US is not a particularly dangerous place, and all their mouths dropped open. They get that impression from watching US movies and TV. The truth is that if you rank all the countries that report their homicide numbers, the US is in the middle of the pack. We could, and should, do better. But we could do a lot worse, too.

I don't know what relevance limiting the discussion to developed countries has, except that Japan and most of Europe do have exceptionally good numbers, and that allows certain propagandists to stack the deck with numbers that make their argument sound right. Still, if you want to do that, Russia is a developed country with a homicide rate far above ours. Latvia and Lithuania are nice western European countries with homicide rates equal to or worse than ours. We are far from the worst in the Western Hemisphere, or in the Americas and surrounding islands if you want to look at a cohort of "countries like us". Close to home, we have examples of countries with 5X our homicide rate, and more.

You also have to take into account that the available data set comes pre-stacked. The really poor, and usually violent, countries don't have the resources to compile and report homicides.

Anti-gunners promote one other fallacy that they rarely get called on: If guns went away, the homicides committed with guns would go away. I don't see any evidence that supports that notion, yet it is woven into the anti-gun rhetoric. My belief is that if guns went away, people bent on homicide would find other methods. As an example, take a look at the Japanese suicide rate, which, IIRC, is about twice ours. Yet there is practically no private firearm ownership there. Lack of firearms does not seem to be reducing their suicide rate.

Finally, if you're the party in power, and if your social programs have produced disastrous social results in Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, and Camden, you'd much rather talk about the so-called gun problem as the source of violence rather than the real underlying social problems. It's really no different from the reporter in China who recently publicly confessed to spreading false information that destabilized their stock market. The reporter didn't destabilize the market. Foolish investors did that. But if you've got to have a scapegoat, a news reporter or a revolver will do.
 
You also need to understand that different countries use different ways of counting. In the US we count HOMICIDES. We find a dead body with a knife in his back, we count him.

Britain, they count MURDERS -- and it isn't a murder until someone is convicted. They find a dead body with a knife in his back, they don't count him until someone is convicted.

In Japan, where family annihilation suicide is common, ALL members of the family -- even though all but one were murdered -- are counted as "suicides."
 
denton said:
I strongly disagree. This is a lie that a lot of people have bought into, around the world. Over lunch with friends in Sweden I made the statement that the US is not a particularly dangerous place, and all their mouths dropped open. They get that impression from watching US movies and TV. The truth is that if you rank all the countries that report their homicide numbers, the US is in the middle of the pack. We could, and should, do better. But we could do a lot worse, too.
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Sorry, it isn't a lie. Your friends in Sweden have a very valid point, Europe has a lot lower homicide rates than the USA. In Sweden you are almost 7 times less likely to be murdered than in the USA. (0.7 vs 4.7). Being middle of the pack globally is a very poor showing considering that we are one of the wealthiest nations in the world with huge resources available to deal with our problems.

I agree things are nearly as bad as most people believe. Risk in the USA varies greatly based on region and demographics.

denton said:
I don't know what relevance limiting the discussion to developed countries has, except that Japan and most of Europe do have exceptionally good numbers, and that allows certain propagandists to stack the deck with numbers that make their argument sound right. Still, if you want to do that, Russia is a developed country with a homicide rate far above ours. Latvia and Lithuania are nice western European countries with homicide rates equal to or worse than ours. We are far from the worst in the Western Hemisphere, or in the Americas and surrounding islands if you want to look at a cohort of "countries like us". Close to home, we have examples of countries with 5X our homicide rate, and more.
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The reason we compare developed countries to developed countries is because they have similar levels of resources and, in general, similar social problems. Comparing the USA to Sudan or El Salvador doesn't give much useful information.

Latvia and Lithuania are not western European Countries. They are in the northeast corner of Europe and were part of the Soviet eastern bloc. Sharing that history with Russia they have some similar issues. Russia is not a developed country, at least not by GDP per Capita. They are ranked in the high 50's globally and have a GDP per Capita just a bit above the global average. (The USA has 4X the wealth that Russia has)

I've included a graphic from the UN report on homicides rates in Europe. As you can see there is a huge East / West divide.

denton said:
You also have to take into account that the available data set comes pre-stacked. The really poor, and usually violent, countries don't have the resources to compile and report homicides.
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Countries that offer a useful comparison to the USA have the resources to compile and report homicides. Do doubt Europe has better information because they have a higher homicide clearance rate than the USA. (They clear about 80% of murders)

denton said:
Anti-gunners promote one other fallacy that they rarely get called on: If guns went away, the homicides committed with guns would go away. I don't see any evidence that supports that notion, yet it is woven into the anti-gun rhetoric. My belief is that if guns went away, people bent on homicide would find other methods. As an example, take a look at the Japanese suicide rate, which, IIRC, is about twice ours. Yet there is practically no private firearm ownership there. Lack of firearms does not seem to be reducing their suicide rate.
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The UN report that Wikipedia gets their numbers from does not make that claim. The reports doesn't make any claim that the number of firearms in a society drives the number of homicides. They say it is a subject of debate and there is no scientific studies that proves one side the other. That report is here: http://www.unodc.org/documents/gsh/pdfs/2014_GLOBAL_HOMICIDE_BOOK_web.pdf

It is an interesting read (I haven't read it all in detail) It is interesting to see how different homicide can be from one region to another. Homicides in the Americas is mostly driven by organized crime, while in Europe it is domestic disputes. Other things are pretty consistent the world over: Homicide is almost exclusively carried out by males (above 90% regardless of region)
 

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he reason we compare developed countries to developed countries is because they have similar levels of resources and, in general, similar social problems. Comparing the USA to Sudan or El Salvador doesn't give much useful information
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Are you saying that Sweden has similar "social problems to the USA". Not even in the same universe.
The US has a gang problem that is unparalleled in "developed" countries and is much more similar to undeveloped countries. Our inner cities are not in the least bit "civilized". All countries have minorities, ghettos, inner cities, etc but the ones we always list as developed countries can't really be accurately compared to the USA. Our rural murder and violent crime stats are on par with these other countries but the vast violence of the inner cities skews the stats.

For those who advocate legalizing drugs to solve our problems I can only say that you truly have a shallow understanding of human nature. Let's assume you only expect the "mild" drugs like marijuana to be legal. Take that profit of selling marijuana out and the criminals that make their living selling marijuana will sell something else. I spent Sunday afternoon at a rehab house for girls aged 14-17. It was completely full and every girl there started with pot and had moved to meth, then cocaine and a couple on to crack. 14 white girls and 2 black. Three were there by court order and the rest were there because their parents wanted them there. 8 of the girls had had at least one abortion. 11 of them had, or had been treated for, an STD.

Legalizing marijuana is a "feel good" for people that think marijuana is a recreational drug which, for many adults, it certainly is. One problem is that it ALWAYS will wind up in the hands of minors that normally can't control usage like an adult. All but one of these girls had been kicked out of at least one school. The other one spent an hour of her private time with her parents going over literature and math textbooks.

If we remove a source of income from drug dealers then I really don't see them throwing up their hands and getting a job at Sears instead of dealing drugs. I see them pushing meth, then crack, then heroin to their young customers. I hear the 16 year old girl telling me about the money she stole from her mother and the coins she stole from her grandmother to buy cocaine. I don't see the adults sitting at home watching the game and enjoying a joint instead of a beer.

Where there is money to be made there will be violence. In the inner cities of America that violence is normally expressed with handguns. On Wall street that violence is expressed in other ways but believe me, it's there.

The statement about alcohol also hits me pretty hard. I don't care whose numbers you look at you will see that more deaths are caused by alcohol in the USA than guns. Banning alcohol would save far more lives, like 8x as many, as banning handguns. Of course Glock would have to start advertising more heavily to pick up for Budweiser at the Super Bowl.

BTW I am NOT anti alcohol or even necessarily anti marijuana. Like guns they can be abused and misused and ultimately it comes down to personal responsibility.
 
The reason we compare developed countries to developed countries is because they have similar levels of resources and, in general, similar social problems
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This is an assumption.

Assumptions are simplifications we make.

Assumptions do not add information. If your assumptions are good, they will not degrade the information content extracted from the data.

I know of no logical reason to assume that the US is more like Europe and Japan than it is like Western Hemisphere countries.

However, it is glaringly obvious that if you do make this assumption, you can make the US look bad by comparison. So it is a convenient assumption for certain propagandists. If you make other assumptions, you get a different result.
 
Japan leads the world in deaths by Samarai sword.



Considering that its been about 25 years since a place called "West Germany" actually existed, I'm going to go out on a limb, and say that the data is a little old, and our crime rates have dropped to about half during that time, and the number of casually armed citizens has at least doubled.
 
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jrdolall said:
Are you saying that Sweden has similar "social problems to the USA". Not even in the same universe.
The US has a gang problem that is unparalleled in "developed" countries and is much more similar to undeveloped countries. Our inner cities are not in the least bit "civilized". All countries have minorities, ghettos, inner cities, etc but the ones we always list as developed countries can't really be accurately compared to the USA. Our rural murder and violent crime stats are on par with these other countries but the vast violence of the inner cities skews the stats.
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The inner cities and poor populations skew the stats all over the world.

Sweden has plenty of drug use but not the high level of violence the USA does. Why? Could it be that they treat drug addiction as a health problem not a criminal problem?
 
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