The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

[broncofan]

You have provided a lot of data and it's commendable. But you can run into the same problems with time series data that you do comparing different cultures. The only way to be sure you are isolating the effects of gun legislation would be a more sophisticated analysis, perhaps using regression analysis to find out exactly how much each variable contributes to homicide rates. With time series data, you still have changes in law enforcement effort, social changes, economic changes, demographic changes such as average age of the population. These can also contribute to changes in murder rates over time.

[paulclifford]

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

Wow! I'm not sure I can explain this any more clearly than I have already done. Once more, and that's it:

>>>The argument that they are less prone to violence . .

Less prone to violence than whom??? Answer: Less prone to violence than the US? Possibly true. This first sentence of yours compares the UK to the US.

>>>they have more violent crime. . .

More violent crime than whom? Answer: More violent crime THAN THEY, THE UK, HAD BEFORE THEIR GUN BAN. This second sentence of yours is no longer comparing the UK to the US, but is comparing the UK to the UK at two different points in time.

[broncofan]

"they again found that the UK has over twice the rate of violent crime per 100,000 citizens as does the US: 775 per 100K vs 383 per 100K."

No, I took this from the article you posted on page 57. It says UK has more violent crime per capita than US

[broncofan]

"For England and Wales, we added together three crime categories: "violence against the person, with injury," "most serious sexual crime," and "robbery." This produced a rate of 775 violent crimes per 100,000 people.
For the United States, we used the FBI’s four standard categories for violent crime that Bier cited. We came up with a rate of 383 violent crimes per 100,000 people"

This was comparing similar violent crimes in the U.S and U.K. The discrepancy was wider but apparently the crimes were not the same so they adjusted the data. Did you read the article you posted?

[broncofan]

"More violent crime THAN THEY, THE UK, HAD BEFORE THEIR GUN BAN. This second sentence of yours is no longer comparing the UK to the US, but is comparing the UK to the UK at two different points in time"

The only thing that matters are rates. So throw out the stuff about absolute numbers on the last page, because quite frankly, we should only be discussing violent crime rate if we are discussing proneness towards violence. My second sentence was saying that the UK is no less violent than the U.S, as they have a higher VIOLENT CRIME RATE.

[broncofan]

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

I see what threw you. Since I was only talking about comparisons between the U.S and the U.K and why they are more apt than you think, I was only ever discussing rates. I did say more violent crime, but I assumed that you would understand this to mean more violent crime per capita, since I was comparing two countries of very different sizes.

So again, to summarize:
U.S has higher homicide rate. U.S has higher rate of gun deaths. But U.K has higher rate of violent crime.

[trish]

...So again, to summarize:
U.S has higher homicide rate. U.S has higher rate of gun deaths. But U.K has higher rate of violent crime.

Good set of posts, bronofan. Summary: If you value your life, it's much better to live in the U.K. Less chance of being killed plus a civilized heath care system. Guns may not be the cause of crime, but they do increase the chance of death or injury during the commission of a crime, whether you're the perp, the victim or a bystander. If you or others around you are carrying guns, your risk of death and injury is increased. If there is a gun in your home the risk of accidental death, injury and suicide are increased.

[broncofan]

the risk of accidental death, injury and suicide are increased.

This is another dimension I didn't even address (thankfully you have), but every bit as significant. Anyone who has ever known someone who has committed suicide knows it can be an impulsive act; not always but can be. Unimaginably tragic in all scenarios.

[Stavros]

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.

For someone who deals in 'facts' it is a pity you don't check them before exposing yourself to ridicule, eg:
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 Vagrancy Act 1824 -brought in as a consequence of men who had returned from the European (Napoleonic) Wars with weapons gave the police to power to arrest any person with any gun, pistol, hanger [dagger], cutlass, bludgeon or other offensive weapon ... with intent to commit a felonious act.
--The Night Poaching Act of 1828, again in 1844 and the Game Act of 1862 were all designed to prevent the use of firearms in illegal hunting, ie hunting without a licence.
---The Gun Licence Act 1870 was introduced to prevent people from carrying firearms outside their homes without a licence.

A survey of crime statistics in Europe from the 13th Century to the 20th century establishes an ever decreasing record of homicide; it has nothing to do with gun control being present or absent, and everything to do with the changes that have taken place to society -the drift from rural to urban life, the changing nature of work; above all, the increasing powers of the state and its control of the means of violence. You can throw in to the mix a general decline in the consumption of alcohol, superior surveillance in public places -and believe it or not, welfare, which by providing a safety net for some people removes an incentive to crime.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/h...lent-crime.pdf

Thus:
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
Is not based on reliable evidence, which shows that violent crime is at its lowest level for 30 years -and this is from the Daily Mail which one would expect to take a more hysterical approach to the subject:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...rn-Europe.html

[broncofan]

Thank you Stavros for doing the fact-checking. The lesson is that anything PaulClifford says that is counter to intuition and un-cited is likely to be false.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/data...exual-offences

Here is a link to a Guardian article that has information that correlates with the Daily Mail link. I think it's based on the same report.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

This is an article listed by the CDC on the number of homicides in the U.S and the method of killing. Over 11,000 out of approximately 16,000 murders per year are committed with guns in the United States. In the U.K, deaths caused by firearms are something like the 5th or 6th most common method of committing homicide. The other causes of death are strangulation, kicking and hitting, sharp objects, blunt objects etc.

It didn't occur to me how inefficient all these other methods of killing are until you actually see the other options spelled out. Would all 11,000 people who were killed by guns in the United States have been killed with one of these other methods if not by firearm? What about the individuals who were killed at some range?

And if a lower availability of firearms is not the cause of the U.K having a significantly smaller proportion of homicides committed with firearms, what is? Are Brits much better at strangulation? One would have to be a fool to look at these statistics, and not attribute the lower homicide rate in the U.K to the lower availability of firearms. According to a rough calculation firearm deaths are the cause of over 68% of U.S homicides. Are we to assume that if you lower this number, it just re-distributes homicides by method with no net change in total number? It stretches credulity.