Lords of Death Forums Lords of Death Forums LoD General Discussion Concealed Carry Now Legal in California

USA have 4.6 murders per 100k population. Most of europe have 1-2 per 100k, except the countries with ongoing ethnic/religious/etc conflicts. The old soviet block countries are a bit too high but it's understandable, only 25 years since communism imploded and everyone is fighting for their piece.
Canada have 1.6 per, Australia 1.1 per, UK 1 per. All countries with good firearms legislation and law enforcement. Hell, even we have 1.9 and we're not that strict about it.

In exact numbers, if you had our rates that would translate in about 8000-10000 less murders per year. I can only speculate a guess - about 50% of it can be tied to your gun abundancy.

You can check the full list here.

Though you can shrug these numbers off easily, you're net gaining steadily ~2 mil people per year.

The US in land area like I said is about the size of the entire continent of Europe. A lot more territory to cover. About half the population. So add the murder rates of every European country, halve it, then you have comparable numbers to the US. Canada has fewer people than the state of California. Australia even less. UK has a couple states combined.

As you can see the numbers don't really scale well. Most countries you like to use as examples aren't comparable as they don't have near the same type of variables.

I am not going to argue statistic methods with you. The stat is for murders per 100k population. It's their default approach for comparability, no matter the total population or land. I just take it as it is and look for a reason why something is too high or low.

I can go trough every single country in the europe's list and justify the high rate for one or another reason.

Do you realy wanna compare yourself with:
1. Belarus/Moldova/Russia/Estonia/Ukraine/etc, all suffering from the communism/perestroika and the criminal boom? This was specifically said to be the biggest illegal seizure of capitals outside war. No wonder they are killing each other over it.
2. Kosovo/Albania/Montenegro/etc where different ethnics/religions mass murdered each other up till a few years ago.

Same with you, from an outside point of view it's perfectly clear your murder rate is mostly due to the abundance of weapons in circulation. Argue it as much as you want. It's a fact.

You see the good in it for being able to defend yourself and your property. Accept the bad alonside.

Harry, what in the fuck does how many total crimes in the US have to do with gun laws? If there's 10 million total crimes in the US, then that must include everything from shoplifting and vandalism to murder. Please, explain to me how that factors into firearms at all?

I just read on Facebook that Obama's last act in office will be to ban all guns and remove all grandfather clauses of prior purchases. At this point if you don't own a gun for protection, then you not only endanger your family but you endanger your neighbors as well.

When the Jack Boot Thugs(tm) come for your guns how will you respond?

I present to you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country

Lets just compare the USA vs. Canada.

USA - 90 guns per 100, 4.7 homicides per 100k
Canada - 30.8 guns per 100, 0.51 homicides per 100k

So if it's just the sheer number of guns in the USA causing all of the homicides, then why is there nearly 10 times as many deaths PER GUN in the US when compared to Canada? What does the USA have that Canada doesn't?

If ya wanna use the stats, the methods to get to apples to apples comparison are fair game.

Look at where most of those violent crimes come from every day. Most of them are in metropolises' worst neighborhoods which might fit in just fine in second world Euro countries. Not to mention look at the ethnicity of the major offenders. Break down the stats and numbers. You'll find it's not a problem for the vast majority of citizens and areas of the country. I do accept the bad with the good, very much so. Hence my mentality to deal with the bad when it crosses my path. If more people were more proactive then maybe we could make serious changes.

First things first Harry, go read this article written by Forbes (maybe you've heard of them) http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/20...crimes-plummet/

You're bouncing all over the place. I will try to address your various points.

1. Our military spending. Uh yea, no shit? Russia is on a war path if you haven't noticed. They're flexing their muscle left and right and annexing (this is mine now) portions of independent nations. In case you've forgotten, every time a new European bully steps up to conquer their neighbors, you fucks need us, our guns and our soldiers to step in and fight them for you. China is also rapidly growing their economy and their military spending. They JUST demo'd their new fighter jet, the plans for which they hacked into US govt contractor's (Lockeed Martin) computers to get. This is a complex topic and not really relevant to our discussion. Let's just leave it at that the idea that the U.S. learned from WWI and WWII not to sit idly by while trouble is brewing in Europe and let our future enemies get a tactical advantage over us by advancing their weapons stores and weapons technology beyond our own.

2. Yes, you argument is too faulty. You're in here quoting gun statistics like they carry any weight (*hint*, they don't). On top of that, your basic grasp of mathematical comparison seems to be lacking. When there's 300 million guns and 316 million people, yes, the ratio of guns to people most certainly IS about 1:1. That doesn't mean every person has one. I mean no shit Sherlok? There's 70 million children in America, I think it's safe to assume they don't have guns.

But that doesn't matter anyway and actually only strengthens my point. There's still 300 million guns in the U.S. If you take out the 70 million kids, that means on average, every adult in the US has 1.25 guns. So considering that on average, every adult has more than 1 gun, I think 8500 firearm murders and 400k firearm crimes per year in a nation of over 300 million people isn't that big of a deal.

3. Our gun culture. Never gonna change man, sorry. This country was birthed from a war that relied largely on armed militias to fight the Brits. Citizens owning guns has been a part of our culture since we became an independent nation. That's why it's in the Bill of Rights. No sense even arguing this point Harry because it simply will not change in our lifetime and probably not for many generations, if ever.

But beyond all that man, there's 2 important factors you are not considering when you're quoting firearm statistics and talking about gun law.

1. What portion of those firearm crimes were committed by people who legally obtained their firearms? See the Forbes article above. They did a study of prison inmates and 77% of them obtained their guns outside of lawful purchasing methods. 77 fucking percent Harry.

2. Law makers can only do so much in a legislative session. Considering that there over 650k deaths per year in the US due to diseases directly linked to nutrition and 40k suicides every year, it seems to me law makers would be better off spending their time and tax payer money on issues that will save more lives. You know, especially considering that it's a PROVEN FACT that gun controls laws do absolutely NOTHING to curb gun violence. Go find Rolo's post earlier in the thread. He has a very succinct and to the point post with a good article that tells you gun control laws and gun violence rates have very little if any correlation.

Using Blazzen's wikipedia article, if I was to add all the European countries homicide rates it comes to 8
52. Half for population it's 4.26. For the US it is 4.7. Does the US have some shiiiity neighborhoods and cities? Yup. Many states (comparable to European countries) are quite nice. You have to look at scale.

Pretty much this. I wish they'd do a study where they compare the gun crime rates in every city (not just the big ones) in the US with the number of legally purchased, registered firearms in those cities. My guess is in the cities with the highest percentage of residents lawfully owning guns, you'd find the lowest gun crime rates. Pretty much everyone I know owns a gun. Yet nobody I've ever known has been shot to death. Middle class problems, I guess.