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I have a feeling America will be pretty high up the Violent crimes league as well. A good point though, its all about perception and fears. Its a vicious cycle, you fear guns so you arm yourself, and the next man arms himself because he fears you, and so on.
I think the massacres are significant because the victims are always random and innocent, They demonstrate that no one is safe.
Do you not find it strange that when the strict gun laws were added, violent crime rose in general? That's because an unarmed target is an easy target, and criminals have very little to fear.
You make the statement as if in response to gun control, violent crime has risen which is incorrect and has no foundation. Googling the rising statistics of violent crime doesn't prove a correlation between the two, it only serves to reinforce your belief that society would be safer with guns.
So, you respond by claiming he is incorrect even though your statement has no foundation and you provide no evidence to support it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Delta40
That said, in the US at least, there is a strong correlation between strict gun control laws and high crime. On the other hand, allowing civilian concealed carry has been shown to lower crime rates precisely because criminals are scared of targets that can defend themselves. And yes, in many countries (England as an example) violent crimes of all kinds have been on the rise ever since gun control laws were put into place and criminals make it quite clear when captured that they're taking advantage of people who are unable to defend themselves. Come to think of it, criminals in the US do the same when they've just shot up a gun-free zone.
Googling any statistics proves nothing except what the googler wants them to prove. However, while I don't think society would be safer with guns, I certainly would. In fact I have an air pistol that I bought to scare pigeons from the garden; it's within legal limits but it would do significant damage to an intruder if fired at close range to the head. That's why I keep it handy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Delta40
So now the solution is to relax those laws we implemented after Port Arthur and we will see a sharp decline in general crime and less violence?
Great logic.
Careful with stats. I was caught out by "shootings" rather than "killings" this morning. However according to three different sites, violent crime is down by about 9% in Britain , but the perception is that it is up.
That sounds like the kind of *BS* the NRA puts out. Gun control of some form or other has existed in the UK since 1870. Has there been an increase in violent crime in UK during that period? I don't have access to crime statistics that go that far back but more recent statistics suggest that violent crime is decreasing (there was a peak period in 1995). See the BCS report here: http://www.usak.org.tr/istanbul/files/bcs25.pdf and the Home Office report here: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publica...11?view=BinaryQuote:
Originally Posted by Dark Star
Notable extracts:
Also, when you're referring to 'violent crime' what exactly do you include in that spectrum? The BCS statistics referred to include 'pushing and shoving' as a 'violent crime' and will include crimes which do not result in an injury to the person. For example, assault in the law of England & Wales is a 'violent crime' and would be recorded as such, but for a person to be assaulted they only need to be put in fear, they do not need to have been physically touched. Around half of violent crime resulted in injury (so around half didn't). From the report:Quote:
The BCS shows that the number of violent incidents increased gradually through the 1980s and then increased sharply after 1991 to reach a peak in the mid 1990s. The number of incidents then showed steep decreases in the late 1990s. Since then, despite non-statistically significant year-on year changes, there has been an overall decline. Comparing 2010/11 with 1995, the number of violent incidents has fallen by around one half (47%) and is at a similar level to 1981. In the 2010/11 BCS, there were nearly two million fewer incidents and around 750,000 fewer victims compared with the 1995 BCS (Figure 3.1 and Table 2.01).
On the subject of firearms:Quote:
According to the 2010/11 BCS, there were an estimated 1,211,000 incidents of violence with injury, accounting for just over one half (55%) of all violent incidents. There have been no statistically significant changes in levels of violence with injury estimated by the BCS in recent years (Table 2.01). Within this category, there was a 38 per cent increase in assault with minor injury, though this was preceded by small fluctuations in recent years with levels of these offences returning to those seen in 2006/07 (Figure 3.2).5 This seems to go against the general downward trend seen since levels of these offences peaked in 1995, and the current trend is uncertain.
Offences with injury accounted for nearly one half (45%) of all police recorded violence against the person offences in 2010/11.6 The police recorded 368,647 violence against the
person offences that involved injury in 2010/11, eight per cent less than in 2009/10, and the lowest figure since the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS)7 in April 2002 (Table 2.04).
The last gun control law passed in UK banned private ownership of handguns, following the tragedy of the Dunblane massacre. This law was passed in 1997. From both sources of crime data (BCS & Home Office) there are no indications that following the implementation of this particular gun control measure there has been an increase in other forms of violent crime. In fact the opposite appears to be true. And I think that trying to correlate other types of violent crime to gun control is a bit flawed in any event as the picture is always more complex than that (for example economics can play a large factor). Measuring the effect that gun control has had on gun related crime is probably as far as you can really take it.Quote:
Provisional statistics for 2010/11 are available for police recorded crimes involving the use of firearms other than air weapons (referred to as ‘firearm offences’ in the remainder of this section). Firearms are taken to be involved in an incident if they are fired, used as a blunt instrument against a person, or used in a threat. Finalised figures are planned for publication in January 2012.
Provisional figures show that 7,006 firearm offences were recorded in England and Wales in 2010/11, a 13 per cent decrease from 2009/10 (8,052). Of the firearm offences recorded in 2010/11, 55 resulted in fatal injury, compared with 40 recorded in 2009/10. The 55 fatal injuries recorded in 2010/11 includes the 12 people killed by Derrick Bird in June 2010 (Table 3.05).
Following the introduction of the NCRS in April 2002, there were small increases in the number of firearm offences recorded by the police until they peaked at 11,088 in 2005/06. Since the peak, there has been a 37 per cent decrease (Figure 3.3 and Tables 3.05 and 3.06). This mirrors the trend in overall police recorded violence against the person.
Delta as odd as it may seem to you, yes it could.
The stricter gun laws were a knee-jerk reaction in response to the shooting, and as a result violent crime has on the whole increased - there is more rape, assault and robbery. Murder rates have gone down by 31.9% though, that proves the gun ban worked, right? Well, murder rates have also gone down by 31.7% in the USA, so stricter gun laws can't be the reason for this (well, I admit they could, but it proves it is also possible without a gun ban).
Main Source: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=17847
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Originally Posted by prendrelemick
Quote:
Originally Posted by Volya
Agreed to both^
Suffice it to say, we are a species capable of great violence by any means.
A few random recent examples:
Fertilizer bomb in Oklahoma 1994 168 killed
Vehicle in China 2010 17 killed
Guns in Britain 2010 12 killed
Guns and bomb in Switzerland 2001 14 killed
Bombs and guns in Norway 2011 77 killed
Guns in Germany 2009 15 killed
Knives in Japan 2001 8 killed
Gas on train in Japan 1995 13 killed
Setting fire to a train in Korea 2003 198 killed
Etc., etc., …
This helps put the bigger picture in perspective - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way”
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Delta40
Or feral hogs down here.Quote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
http://www.outdooralabama.com/oaonline/feralhogs09.cfm
The feral hogs have wreaked much havoc on the agricultural industry and therefore have become a popular game for hunters and they do make a decent sausage. I haven’t hunted them myself, but I do have a standing invitation at my sister’s place to help out if I care to. I understand they are tough brutes requiring a higher caliber with more punch.
I have my doubts that a .22 will do much other than make them angry, but a 1943 Smith Corona 03-A3 will do the trick.
.
As the last few posts on this subject has shown, different sets of statistics show opposite results. One of the main, but not the only, reasons that statistics cannot be relied upon is that they obviously only record reported crimes. Therefore it cannot be known, at any given time, how many people have been the subject of a criminal act. It is a known fact that many crimes go unreported as witness this extract from a BBC report on the subject dated 2006:
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.
The reason for the public 'perception' of criminality that contradicts the official version is clearly illustrated in this observation from the review:
Review chairman Professor Adrian Smith said: "It's very important that the public trusts crime statistics."
He said if you had statistics the public perceived to be in conflict with their experiences or that left out whole areas of criminal activity, then their confidence and trust were undermined.
"I have my doubts that a .22 will do much other than make them angry, but a 1943 Smith Corona 03-A3 will do the trick."
What? I know those typewriters are heavy, but..
haha- No; throwing a typewriter wouldn't do much good either.Quote:
Originally Posted by prendrelemick
Out of respect for this thread, I'll swing by the Dreary Beery and share a couple of pics.
Nice way to back peddle... Perhaps next time instead of attacking someone's grammar, which is clearly a form of insecurity, you should stick to the topic at hand.Quote:
Originally Posted by E.A Rumfield
How 'bout metal detectors, coded gates, video surveillance and guards at schools? AND tighter gun control. The people fighting so hard against better tests, licensing regulations and fees are the most terrifying to me. If you want easy access guns at all times, and if you want psychos to be able to access guns just as easily, there might be something severely wrong with you.
Now there is something I do agree with Varenne. Better tests, more security, that I would support. But not the outright ban of certain weapons.