Totally. It’s all Cowboys an’ Indians in Detroit. Like Oregon Trail Meets GTA, with less dysentery.
If a person has a gun and kills someone they are generally considered a criminal… So what you basically said is “people who kill people are criminals.” Congrats on that astounding hypothesis!
I wasn’t aware that Canada’s populace was “armed to the teeth”. Must be all those hunters in the less-urban areas, skewing our numbers. Certainly handgun ownership is extremely rare here.
Also, @beschizza - what is your definition of “the developed world”?
1 Like
I am saying people who shoot other people, and people who get shot by other people typically were involved in illegal activities before things escalated. I really need to make a website that layout all the statistics with sources so I can keep it all straight in my heat (I am actually horrible about remembering numbers for some reason, but have an excellent memory over all.)
Anyway, below is a great analysis of gun crime in Milwaukee in 2011. They have a much higher murder rate than the national average. Now of course this can’t be completely extrapolated across the whole of the US, but for your average large city with a crime problem, I think it shows some good indicators of the violence.
Just a few highlights, 77% of the victims and 90% of the suspects had arrest records. Average number of arrests of suspects - seven. And over half the time the victim and suspect knew each other.
So I know some of us worry about your neighbor who has a gun just getting mad and shooting some one, or we get some crazy person like Newtown. But the bulk of the actual violence and crime are people who didn’t just wake up one day and decide to kill someone. There were involved in the crime and violence for awhile and things escalated.
Nice ad hominem. What does the data say about how many of those arrests resulted in convictions? So many people have “arrest records” that it says much more about the person trying to denigrate them on that basis.
Canada requires licensing across the whole country. The US does not. Even local laws are easily circumvented by driving to the next state.
3 Likes
Yes, and we make it easy for that 90% people to arm themselves. Seems like 23% of the victims did not have arrest records. Were they just really good at hiding it and deserved to get shot anyway because they knew the suspect?
3 Likes
I don’t understand why someone having a prior arrest record means it’s OK that they were shot and killed. Especially since most arrests are for non-violent offenses.
2 Likes
You say this as though knowing who lives in your neighborhood is a bad thing. Also, “knew each other” doesn’t necessarily equate to “were friends” or “were in same social circle.”
Yeah, I think the main concern of widespread gun ownership is the kids shooting themselves or family members otherwise discovering the “fun” of easily lethal weapons that aren’t stowed and locked and secured properly.
Me, I want to keep a portable nuke at home. But only if properly secured, of course. For my family’s safety.
2 Likes
I wonder if the stats include officially sanctioned murder such as executions. cops killing, ‘war’ deaths, ‘terrorist’ deaths etc…
It by no means makes it “ok”. But some people want to blame guns, when I think you look at WHO is doing the crime, there is a small segment of the population that would be up to no good whether they had access to guns or not. Page 24 of the report actually breaks down the arrest types of victims and suspects, and while there is some non-violent crime, there is a lot of other violent crime as well. And let’s be honest, if you are involved with drugs or thieving, you are more likely to be involved in other dangerous things.
While a completely valid and important topic, it has nothing to do with the original post which tracked homicides. Of course it tracks all homicides, not just guns, but Rob had to flavor it with some snark.
True, but it shows it’s not just random violence and that it is focused on certain communities. I mean you would have to look at each case to figure out motive, which they do to a degree with a chart of circumstance on page 28. Fights, Robberies, and drugs are the 3 biggest factors.
Another clear marker is how overwhelming the victims and suspects are all poor.
Just tape some 'splosives around this and most people will think that’s what you have - as long as you leave the label legible.
Citation please. Thieving I’d potentially agree with, but drugs? lol.
I feel like I must be missing something on that page for there to be this much discussion about how horrible the US is. The data for the US actually looks pretty encouraging to me, considering the situation. Generally compared to the world, 4.7 homicides per 100,000 citizens seems not terrible, and on the color scale, the US ranks in the second lowest color gradation of the seven used in the map.
Those bands of death are:
0 - 3.13 (spans 3.13)
3.13 - 5.25 (2.12)
5.25 - 12.5 (7.25)
12.5 - 25 (12.5)
25 - 50 (25)
50 - 100 (50)
100+ (???)
Not sure why the band the US falls into is so narrow compared to the others.
There seem to be about 65-70 countries with higher homicide rates than the US.
Granted, the US is pretty far down the list of the first two bands as a whole, but…
The US is not the worst in that color band. At least Yemen, Belarus, Niger, Mauritania, Suriname, Argentina and North Korea have higher rates.
The US is better than the world average of 6.2.
Despite the high rate of gun ownership in the US, the number is still dropping. There is obviously room for improvement, but the polarized nature of pro-gun vs. anti-gun people in the US and the passion with which pro-gun people are willing to fight, makes me unsure the US solution is an outright ban. The ‘no new guns’ plan could work, but good luck enacting it.
Also, I bring you this:
1 Like
When these are your neighbours on any ranking, you need to worry.
1 Like
Sure, but knives don’t usually accidentally kill someone when you clean them. Drive-by knifings aren’t really a thing. No deranged lunatics are really trying to take down schools with automatic knives. Etc.
With a knife, you can focus on doing the actual murder and not worry so much about the accidental killings and collateral damage. So, there’s that. 
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
