Monday, April 9, 2012
Intentional Homicide Rate - Who's Worse the UK or the US?
Year 2010, per 100,000
United States 4.8
Unted Kingdom 1.23
I think we've heard just about enough UK comparisons. The pro-gun crowd cannot control themselves from repeating over and over again what they think supports their argument.
There would be many factors to account for this tremendous difference, but for my money, gun availability is one of them.
What do you think? Please leave a comment.
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This you call a tremendous difference? Yes, the U.S. rate is roughly four times that of the U.K., but both numbers are small, so minor differences can be made to look huge. The American rate is just 3.6 more per hundred thousand than the British rate. Neither country is in double digits. What your source shows is that both countries are relatively safe and peaceful.
ReplyDeleteBy contrast, consider South Africa. The gun laws there are similar to the U.K., but their murder rate is thirty-two per hundred thousand. Or look at the Czech Republic, a nation whose gun laws closely resemble ours. It's murder rate is 1.67 per hundred thousand. Gun laws apparently make no difference, while other factors are hugely important.
The point is not that the UK is safer than we are, but that you and your gun friends are always saying the oppisite. I wish I had a Euro for every time I heard how the UK is more violent than the US.
DeleteOverall violence cannot just be attributed to murder rate. (The UK has more break-ins than the US)
DeleteWe're not talking about overall violence. With an intentional-homicide-rate difference like this, I can see why you would want to.
DeleteAh, it's so much better to live in a violent society, so long as no one dies. Especially not thugs. We wouldn't want them to get killed. . .
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteCountries like Russia and South Africa have murder rates that dwarf ours, with a tiny fraction of the gun ownership. Countries that have relatively high levels of gun ownership, like Switzerland, Italy, Canada and Norway, also have very low homicide rates. The UK's low murder rate stems from the fact that it's almost a police state. In addition, other than murder and rape (which is more lax in the UK. Rape requires penetration, and Statutory rape is only if they're under 13. sex with someone 14-15 is illegal but not rape. so it's hard to say who has more rapes if the laws were the same) They have higher violent crime rates, and, while the murder rate in the us has dropped by 1.5 over the last 50 years the UK has doubled what it had 50 years ago.
DeleteConsidering that the rate of gun ownership in the US is 88.8 per 100k and England is 6.2, that means that we are not only far safer with our guns but we have far fewer homicides per gun than in England.
ReplyDeleteSo our homicide rate is 4:1 compared to England and our gun ownership rate is 14:1. If gun availability did have anything to do with the homicide rate, we are statistically superior to any other nation.
The Spin Crown goes to FWM.
DeleteAnd the "Trapped in his own reality" crown goes to mikeb302000.
DeleteLet's also note from farther down the page that Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia have more than twenty murders per hundred thousand, while Louisiana has 11.8, and everywhere else is under ten. Now the murders in D.C. could all be caused by guns out of Virginia (yeah, right, but pretend), but how can we explain the high rate on an island with strict gun control? Also, California and Arizona have just about the same rates (5.3 compared to 5.4), but their gun laws are significantly different.
ReplyDeleteWhen are the gun grabbers going to admit that gun control doesn't do any good?
When are you going to admit that the pro-gun crowd has been repeating lies that the UK is more violent than the US?
Deletewhen the UK violent crime rate drops below the US.
Deletehttp://mikeb302000.blogspot.it/2013/02/the-definitive-comparison-between-uk.html
DeleteI agree with all of the comments so far. The only thing I can think to add is the realization of "Do you really think a criminal with full intent of causing bodily harm has give two bits about any kind of gun law?" Law abiding citizens as well as criminals will carry and use the most powerful weapon availible to them at the time. 2000 years ago that weapon was a sword or dagger. Even the diciples carried swords to protect themselves. Today that weapon is a gun. 100 years from now there is no telling what that weapon might be. But I promise you I won't bring a knife to a gun fight.
ReplyDeleteYou're right about criminals with "full intent." Many criminal acts are not done with any such thing. There are the heat-of-the-moment crimes which gun availability makes more deadly.
DeleteThe point it when you have strict gun control and remove the gun availability you have fewer murders. This is exactly the opposite of what the lying gun-rights activists often say.
Mikeb, we just showed you that your statement is false. Look at South Africa: strict gun control with a much higher murder rate. Look at Puerto Rico: strict gun control with a much higher murder rate than everywhere else in the United States, except for D.C. Look at the Czech Republic: low murder rate with lax gun laws, according to your side's standards. These facts make your claim that onerous gun control reduces crime. But look again at the murder rate by state in the United States. There's no correlation between gun laws and murder. How can Arizona and California have effectively the same rate if that's not so?
DeleteAs for the United Kingdom, the point that I've always seen is that the violent crime rate is higher--home invasions, beatings, rape, that kind of thing. I know that the British police were in a scandal a while back about how they played with the numbers to make themselves look better, but I don't have figures on the true rates there. Perhaps our side watches too many British mystery programs. Colin Dexter alone is responsible for over eighty fictional Thames Valley murders, for example.
But Mikeb, you've got hard facts right in front of you. Are you going to admit that gun control doesn't do what you want it to do? Are you going to admit that gun control is about disarming private citizens, not about stopping death?
"Mikeb, we just showed you that your statement is false"
DeleteWaht the hell are you talking about? You showed me nothing of the kind. My point is that the US is a cesspool of violence compared to the UK. Intentional homicide rates is the thing that proves that. Compared to killing people intentionally, slight differences in the other crime categories don't make up for this tremendous difference.
Mikeb, you're being histrionic. Four times one is four. Those are the numbers per hundred thousand in the two countries. Four times twenty would be a huge difference. But as I've told you before, when the numbers are tiny, small changes constitute a large percentage, but that's just an artifact of small numbers.
DeleteLook at another claim that you're making, though. You excuse violent crime because it's not murder. In other words, you're happy with a disarmed public that is defenseless against attackers, so long as no one gets killed. That's not a solution that my side is willing to accept.
You're also ignoring my analysis of the numbers. Why is it that gun control doesn't work? Countries and regions with strict gun laws have huge variations in murder rates--South Africa and Puerto Rico compared with Japan, for example--and some countries and regions with good gun laws--Vermont and the Czech Republic, for example--have low rates. If you could demonstrate a strong correlation between the strictness of gun laws and the rates of murder and other violent crimes, showing that gun control prevents crime, you'd have at least one solid argument. But you can't, and you don't.
Oh, sick burn!
DeleteGreg, you're fighting a hopeless battle. Miked is just gonna stick his fingers in his ears and yell "lalalalala not listening" when confronted with the truth. He's just pissed cause he put this on here hoping to get other people to complain about the evil guns that the government has to save us from with him, and instead everyone's telling him what a moron he is. I'd mention how the armed crime rate in the UK went up 10% the year after the ban, or maybe how British Detective Superintendent Keith Hudson said after the ban "There is a move from the pistol and the shotgun to automatic weapons," since after all, when all guns are banned, you might as well get a machine gun. but I'm sure he'd just claim I was making it up, like he has with all the other irrefutable facts that have been laid at his feet.
Delete1987, Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree in his small town of Hungerford, England, killing 16 people (including his mother) and wounding another 14 before shooting himself. Since the public was unarmed—as were the police—Ryan wandered the streets for eight hours with two semiautomatic rifles and a handgun before anyone with a firearm was able to come to the rescue.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Sunday Times of London, "up to 3 million illegal guns are in circulation in Britain, leading to a rise in drive-by shootings and gangland-style executions.", "a third of young criminals, [ages 15 to 25 with prior convictions], own or have access to guns ranging from Beretta sub-machineguns to Luger pistols, which can be bought from underworld dealers for as little as £200." ($320 U.S.) the guns get there because "Criminals have maintained a steady flow of smuggled guns from eastern Europe, exhibition weapons reactivated in illegal "factories" run by underworld dealers, and guns stolen from private collections." And if for some unfathomable reason you think the US will be better at keeping them out, drugs are illegal, how hard is it to get them? Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Prior to the ban, police in Britain didn't carry guns, the proliferation of illegal guns since the ban has caused them to start carrying.
Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens who have come into the possession of a firearm, even accidentally, have been harshly treated. In 2009 a former soldier, Paul Clarke, found a bag in his garden containing a shotgun. He brought it to the police station and was immediately handcuffed and charged with possession of the gun. At his trial the judge noted: "In law there is no dispute that Mr. Clarke has no defence to this charge. The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant." Mr. Clarke was sentenced to five years in prison.
In November of last year, Danny Nightingale, member of a British special forces unit in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to 18 months in military prison for possession of a pistol and ammunition. Sgt. Nightingale was given the Glock pistol as a gift by Iraqi forces he had been training. It was packed up with his possessions and returned to him by colleagues in Iraq after he left the country to organize a funeral for two close friends killed in action. Mr. Nightingale pleaded guilty to avoid a five-year sentence and was in prison until an appeal and public outcry freed him on Nov. 29.
The British example shows how the ultimate "gun control" will likely work in America. Criminals will get rich selling illegal weapons to other criminals, and ordinary citizens will suffer a violent crime wave.
Prior to the UK guns ban, the murder rate was 1.12. It actually went up 0.1 since then. The murder rate in the US at the time was 8.4, so, that' decreased by 4 over that period
ReplyDeleteThe point of this post, in case you missed it, is that the lying liars on the gun-rights side of the argument are lying when they say the UK is more violent than the US.
DeleteSo your point is that everyone who doesn't agree with you its a lair. And all facts that don't support you're world view should be thrown out as false. That's real mature.
DeleteNot everyone, just the ones who keep repeating the falsity that England is more violent than the US.
Delete