The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

[broncofan]

Let's combine PaulClifford's post on the last page and the statistics we have here. He said that the UK has a very high violent crime rate. Trish's article shows the UK has relatively few gun deaths per capita. I showed, they also have about one quarter the homicide rate of the U.S.

So if we accept PaulClifford's statistics then maybe the message is this.

In a country where a lot of violent crime is committed, the relative dearth of available weapons means that fewer of those violent acts will result in a homicide.

Edit: PC's post is now two pages back, and Trish's one.

[broncofan]

So, again PaulClifford. A higher violent crime rate than the U.S and yet the U.S has a homicide rate four times greater? How do you interpret that?

Edit: If you disagree with the inference in my last post, let me know. Violent crime committed without guns are less likely to lead to homicide.

[trish]

Note the proximity of Chicago to Wisconsin and Indiana. Even Iowa's only a 120 minute drive. Most definitely the gun laws in Chicago are a reaction to violent gun crime, not the cause. This is not to say that guns are the cause of Chicago's violent crime (we can blame a whole range of social factors for that), but firearms do contribute to making crime more deadly. They also contribute to accidental deaths and increased suicides. Again, suicides aren't caused by firearms, but a readily available firearm increases the risk of suicide.

[95racer]

"Edit: If you disagree with the inference in my last post, let me know. Violent crime committed without guns are less likely to lead to homicide"


Oh, I get it. It's a much nicer type of violent crim. WTF?!?!

[95racer]

My new favorite sign at a gun show:

[trish]

The conservative republicans for decades have built up the U.S. military, refused to cut its budget one iota, forced it to accept planes and ships it doesn't even want and then says that civilians need the right to carry weapons without restraint or regulation of any kind, 'cause we might have to fight our own military to maintain our liberty (presumably to carry lethal weapons into playgrounds and bars). Firearms manufacturers are playing you for the idiots you are. Talk about stupid!

[broncofan]

"Edit: If you disagree with the inference in my last post, let me know. Violent crime committed without guns are less likely to lead to homicide"


Oh, I get it. It's a much nicer type of violent crim. WTF?!?!

I don't know how much clearer it could be. If they don't have guns at their disposal but they still commit a violent crime, including forcible rape, burglary, assault, it is less likely to result in a death.

The criminals are absolutely not nicer. The crimes are less likely to result in someone dying.

[paulclifford]

>>>Trish's statistics show that the United Kingdom has a much lower death rate with guns.

Which by itself proves nothing.

Let's see: The UK has a lower gun homicide rate than does the US; the UK also has more fog than the US; and in the UK they drive on the left side of the road, not the right. THEREFORE, we conclude, that the reason the UK has a lower gun homicide rate than does the US is because 1) it has more fog, and 2) its drivers drive on the left, not the right.

Prove me wrong.

This is what happens when you simply cite "raw" data.

The actual facts are these:

Even in the 19th century (when crime statistics were first starting to be compiled by many countries), when neither the UK nor the US had any constraints on gun acquisition and ownership, the UK still had a lower rate of gun homicide (as well as a lower rate of all homicides) than the US. The reason? Because cultures and peoples differ, and English culture was simply never as violent as American culture. Period. Therefore, to claim that the UK has strict gun control and that it also has a lower rate of gun-related homicides than does the US, is irrelevant: the UK always had a lower rate of gun-related homicides — indeed, it always had a lower rate of all homicides — than the US, with or without gun controls and handgun bans. Since this was always the case, it cannot be attributed to some recent bit of legislation. The reasons are cultural, historical, and demographic.

The relevant question is not whether gun controls and handgun bans in the UK make it a less violent place than the US (because, as just explained, even in the absence of all controls and bans, the UK was always less violent than the US). The relevant question is whether or not gun controls and handgun bans in the UK, instituted in 1996, have made the UK safer for its own inhabitants than it was before the 1996 ban.

And the answer is "no". The UK is, in fact, more violent and more dangerous — including gun homicides — after 1996 than it was before 1996. In fact, there has been about a 40% rise in violent crime overall in the UK, including a rise in gun-related crimes.

See:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...446855466.html

December 26, 2012

Joyce Lee Malcolm: Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control

After a school massacre, the U.K. banned handguns in 1998. A decade later, handgun crime had doubled.

"Within a decade of the handgun ban [NB: in 1998, as a response to a 1996 school massacre in Dunblane, Scotland] and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself."

Joyce Lee Malcolm
author of "Guns and Violence: The English Experience"
Harvard University Press

See:

Guns and Violence: The English Experience: Joyce Lee Malcolm: 9780674016088: Amazon.com: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41bkFf4BXFL.@@AMEPARAM@@41bkFf4BXFL

One reader review of the above-listed book from 2002:

"Americans I know tend to think of Britain as a peaceful, crimefree place. My British friends tend to think of America as a crime-ridden Hell. Statistical data published in the last couple of years, amusingly, reveals that they're both one hundred eighty degrees wrong. This book explores what happened on the British side of the pond.

Historically, of course, Britain has had low crime rates. One aspect of the story that Malcolm traces is the evolution of gun ownership (stimulated by invention and ever cheaper gun prices and restricted, over the course of the 20th century, by ever harsher government regulation)and the relationship of gun ownership to crime. The skinny is this: Britain had low crime rates as long as it had high levels of private gun ownership. As the state has made private ownership illegal, crime has skyrocketed.

Another strand Malcolm illuminates is the changing nature of British law enforcement. Britain only acquired policemen in the modern sense in the middle of the nineteenth century, under the leadership of Sir Robert Peel (hence the nickname "Bobbies"). Prior to that time, the general public was expected to -- and did -- assist in the apprehension of lawbreakers. The general public was, of course, armed to the teeth. And (see above) Britain had low crime rates.

But since the introduction of professional police, the British government has increasingly tried to grant itself a complete monopoly on the use of force. Not only has it progressively made private gun ownership illegal (no one here can own pistols anymore, and it's pretty difficult to get a permit to own a rifle, even for sport), it has also eroded, almost into nonexistence, the traditional British right to self-defense."

However, there's something else, probably more disturbing, since it touches on the very essence of Big Government, whether in the UK or the US:

I mentioned in a previous post on Britain's NHS, that the UK health bureaucracy regularly lies in its published statistics regarding things like waiting times for medical care; recent newspaper articles mention that this had been going on for some time in Scotland, in order to make things less embarrassing for the government, which could brag that it was "improving" the NHS (in fact, patients on waiting lists simply disappeared! They were redefined as "unavailable for appointments", and voila! there are suddenly fewer people waiting for medical care). Guess what? Same thing has been going on for some time with UK police departments and their reporting of crime statistics. Below are some links you can look at, but the essence is this: for a long time, UK police (and the bureaucracies above them) have been seriously under-reporting crime — including violent crime with various kinds of weapons including guns — for the purpose of making it seem that "the police are doing a fine job of controlling crime!" Additionally — shockingly and sadly — many people in the UK are actually afraid to report a violent crime to the police for fear of reprisal by criminals; something which, again, would contribute to serious under-reporting of the actual crime rate.

See:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...e-figures.html

Police force 'tricks' to 'fiddle' crime figures

Police forces are using a series of tricks to manipulate crime figures to give a false picture of their performance, a former senior detective has revealed.

The techniques – dubbed "gaming" – are used to create the illusion that fewer crimes are being committed and that a bigger proportion are being solved.

Rodger Patrick, a retired Detective Chief Inspector, claimed that the methods are tacitly approved of by senior officers, police watchdogs and the Home Office.

The claims will reignite the debate about the validity of crime statistics after recent figures suggested that crime fell four per cent in the second quarter of this year, and following the admission by a police watchdog that some forces are failing to record violent crime properly.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...es-710742.html

Police fail to report 1.4m crimes

TUESDAY 01 AUGUST 2000

An estimated 1.4m crimes are going unrecorded by the police every year partly because officers bend the rules to exaggerate their success, government inspectors have discovered.

Police officers have been found grossly to misrepresent and massage crime statistics to improve their detection rates while downplaying the number of offences committed.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...l-figures.html

Gun crime 60pc higher than official figures

The true level of gun crime is far higher than the Government admits in official statistics, it can be revealed.

By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent 11:58AM BST 18 Oct 2008

Figures to be published by the Home Office this week will massively understate the scale of the problem.

Data provided to The Sunday Telegraph by nearly every police force in England and Wales, under freedom of information laws, show that the number of firearms incidents dealt with by officers annually is 60 per cent higher than figures stated by the Home Office.

Last year 5,600 firearms offences were excluded from the official figures. It means that, whereas the Home Office said there were only 9,800 offences in 2007/8, the real total was around 15,400. The latest quarterly figures, due to be released on Thursday, will again exclude a significant number of incidents.
The explanation for the gulf is that the Government figures only include cases where guns are fired, used to "pistol whip" victims, or brandished as a threat.

Thousands of offences including gun-smuggling and illegal possession of a firearm - which normally carries a minimum five-year jail sentence - are omitted from the Home Office's headline count, raising questions about the reliability of Government crime data.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: "These alarming new figures not only highlight the appalling state of gun crime in this country, but also remind us just how poor the Government's statistics actually are.
"Crime statistics must also be compiled and published independent of the Home Office, and crime mapping rolled out so that people can have confidence in what they are being told about the state of crime in this country."

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http://web.archive.org/web/200807061...cle2710596.ece

Government figures 'missing' two million violent crimes

By David Barrett, PA Home Affairs Correspondent
Tuesday, 26 June 2007

An extra two million violent crimes a year are committed in Britain than previously thought because of a bizarre distortion in the Government's flagship crime figures, it was claimed yesterday.

A former Home Office research expert said that across all types of crime, three million offences a year are excluded from the British Crime Survey (BCS).

The poll caps the number of times a victim can be targeted by an offender at five incidents a year.

If anyone interviewed for the survey says they have been targeted more than five times a year, the sixth incident and beyond are not included in the BCS.

The authors of a report by think-tank Civitas said the five-crimes limit is "truly bizarre" and "misleading".

Professor Graham Farrell of Loughborough University and the former acting head of the Home Office's Police Research Group, Professor Ken Pease, calculated that if the cap is ignored, the overall number of BCS crimes is more than 14 million rather than the current 11 million a year estimate.

Violent crime is 82 per cent higher at 4.4 million offences compared with 2.4 million in the BCS, the survey claims, including a 156 per cent rise in "acquaintance violence" from 817,000 incidents to 2.1 million.

Domestic violence is 140 per cent higher, up from 357,000 incidents a year to 857,000, the authors said, while there are nearly three million common assaults a year rather than the 1.5 million estimated by the BCS, a rise of 98 per cent.

Burglary is 20 per cent higher than currently estimated, at 877,000 a year, and vandalism is 24 per cent higher, the report calculated.

Robbery is 7 per cent up on the official estimates, or an extra 22,000 crimes bringing the yearly total to 333,000.

"If the people who say they suffered 10 incidents really did, it is capping the series at five that distorts the rate," the authors said.

"It is truly bizarre that the victimisation survey, based as it is on the assumption that people will by and large tell the truth about what happened to them, ... suddenly withdraws its trust in their honesty when what they are told does not chime with their own experience.

"Yet the reality is that some people are very frequently victimised, and that frequent victimisation is what they suffer rather than being an invention or exaggeration."

The cap of five crimes for repeat victims has operated ever since the inception of the BCS in 1981.

Ministers claim the survey - which now polls 40,000 people a year about their experiences of crime, is the most reliable indicator of crime levels,

The authors said: "The unwillingness to believe the facts of chronic victimisation means that crime control, police training and criminal justice action are now substantially misdirected."

In particular, the system means that the most vulnerable people in society may not be getting the police protection they require from repeat offenders, the report said.

* * * * * * * * * *

http://www.civitas.org.uk/press/prCivRevJun07.php

British Crime Survey omits three million crimes

Violent crime increases by 82% when all crimes are counted

The public are being misled about the true volume of crime by the British Crime Survey which omits three million crimes, according to a report published today by independent think-tank Civitas.

The report, ‘Crime in England and Wales: More Violence and More Chronic Victims’, is written by Graham Farrell, professor of criminology at Loughborough University, and Ken Pease, visiting professor at Loughborough and former acting head of the Police Research Group at the Home Office.

It reveals that, ever since its inception in 1981, the British Crime Survey (BCS) has omitted many crimes committed against people who have been repeat victims. If people are victimised in the same way by the same perpetrators more than five times in a year, the number of crimes is put down as five. The justification for this was ‘to avoid extreme cases distorting the rates’, but, as Farrell and Pease point out, ‘if the people who say they suffered ten incidents really did, it is capping the series at five that distorts the rate’.

By recalculating the figures without the arbitrary cap of five crimes, Farrell and Pease have revealed that there are over three million crimes omitted from the BCS:

In its most recent published sweep, BCS estimated an annual total of some 6.8 million ‘household’ crimes (covering burglary; theft in a dwelling; other household theft; thefts of and from vehicles; bicycle theft; and vandalism to household property and vehicles). It estimated some 4.1 million ‘personal’ crimes (which covers assault, sexual offences, robbery, theft from the person, and other personal theft). Our re-analysis reveals that, if we believe what the respondents tell us, there would be 7.8 million household offences and 6.3 million personal crimes. Thus, removing the arbitrary five offence limit, over three million extra offences come to light… Household crime is increased by 15% and personal crime by a staggering 52%. As the sum of personal and household crimes, total crime would have been understated by 29%.

The increase in the number of crimes is not evenly spread across all types of crime. For example, theft of vehicles is not increased at all, but levels of vandalism are almost a quarter more than reported, and there are 20 per cent more burglaries. Violent crime of all types increases by 83 per cent. Violence perpetrated by an acquaintance increases by 156 per cent and domestic violence by 140 per cent. As Farrell and Pease say, ‘these are not minor differences’.

Not just a quibble about numbers – the police have been encouraged to neglect the protection of repeat victims

Farrell and Pease believe that ‘crime control, police training and criminal justice action are now substantially misdirected’. In particular police attention has been diverted from protection of some of the most vulnerable people in society. Separate incidents may be dismissed as trivial but if each one is an episode in a long-running feud or vendetta the consequences have sometimes been fatal. For example, on 12 January 2006, a house in Wythenshawe, Manchester, had petrol poured through its letterbox and ignited. The two adults in the home, Mr and Mrs Cochrane, died, and their daughter Lucy was burned. It emerged that a hostile family, the Connors, were responsible:

‘The 18-month feud began after schoolgirl Natalie Connor developed an obsessive hatred of her classmate because of an apparent slight. The dispute between the two families, in which Natalie falsely claimed she had been bullied by Lucy, came to a head when Michael bought two litres of petrol and poured it through the Cochranes' letterbox. A heavy drinker, he was goaded by his wife, who plied him with alcohol before the attack early on January 12 this year. Five days earlier, Mrs Cochrane discovered what appeared to be a flammable liquid on her front door and found that someone had tried to uproot a tree from the garden. She called the police but no sample of the liquid was taken. Connor and his wife were convicted last week on two counts of murder. Their daughter was found guilty of manslaughter and attempting to cause grievous bodily harm to Lucy. Alistair Webster QC, prosecuting, had told the jury during the six-week trial that Natalie had developed an obsessive enmity towards her classmate that eventually led to her and her mother inciting Connor to start the fire.’ (Guardian, 21 December 2006)

They could have mentioned the case of Peter Woodhams, the young father from East London who was shot dead despite pleading for police protection from a gang of youths who had already slashed his face after he complained about them throwing stones at his car. In May this year, the Independent Police Complaints Commission found that the police had failed him.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6157944.stm
Last Updated: Friday, 17 November 2006, 17:55 GMT

Crime statistics 'need overhaul'

Former home secretary Charles Clarke commissioned the report

The way crime statistics are produced needs a "radical overhaul", a Home Office review has concluded.

The report says the current system misses out significant groups of victims and some definitions of crime are "confusing and misleading".

It urges a "shift in emphasis" in the way figures for England and Wales are presented with greater focus given to local rather than national statistics.

The figures come from the British Crime Survey and recorded crime data.

The independent review, commissioned by former home secretary Charles Clarke, says recorded crime data - police crime figures - ignore the 60% of offences that go unreported.

Yet the British Crime Survey, which sets out to measure the extent and nature of crimes the public have experienced in the last year by surveying 50,000 adults, also misses some offences.

[broncofan]

Just two pages back, you posted an article that said that Britain has a higher rate of violent crime than the U.S. Now you are saying they are inherently less violent.

More violent crime

Lower homicide rate

Lower gun death rate

The argument that they are less prone to violence seems somewhat foreclosed by the fact that they have more violent crime.

What you are referring to is the fact that correlation does not equal causation, which you might have mentioned in some of your previous posts when it was inconvenient for you.

[paulclifford]

>>>Just two pages back, you posted an article that said that Britain has a higher rate of violent crime than the U.S. Now you are saying they are inherently less violent.

You can have a higher *rate* than the US, but lower total numbers in absolute terms; it depends on how you want to look at the data. If you adjust for population size (US is more than 5x larger), and adjust for differences in definition of crime categories, it certainly is true that the UK has a higher crime rate than that of the US. My point is: so what. The important point you're trying to make, but have not proven, is that gun bans and gun control are responsible for making the UK "less violent" than the US. Wrong. The UK was already "less violent" than the US with or without gun bans and gun control, even going as far back as the 19th century. That's apples and oranges. You have to compare crime rates *within the UK* before the gan ban, to crime rates *within the UK* after the gun ban. Now you're comparing apples to apples. That will show whether or not gun bans and gun control made people safer in the UK.

I've provided lots of data indicating that guns bans in the UK have had the opposite effect of the one intended: they have increased crime rates (including violent crime with guns) in the UK, not reduced them.