Comparing the US and the UK murder rates
For years, anti-gun activists have pointed to the UK as an example of what gun control laws can do. They are being proven right every day; the gun laws do seem to be producing a notable change in the rate of crime, but not in the way the anti-gunners intended.
For years, Britain has had a very low rate of murder. For just as many years, the US has had a much higher rate of murder. Indeed, even now, if you look at the murder rate for the US as a whole (5.5 per 100,000) and the rate for the UK as a whole (1.4 per 100,000), you can see that the UK's rate is much lower as a whole. However, the total murder rate is far from being the final word.
In the US and in the UK, crime rates (and murder rates) vary wildly from place to place. In the US, the murder rate in Washington, DC is about 80 per 100,000 population; in Arlington, Virginia, just across the half-mile wide Potomac river, it's 1.6 per 100,000. Does the overall US murder rate of 5.5 per 100,000 tell you anything about whether you would be safe in Arlington, VA or Washington, DC?
The same disparity can be seen in the UK. While the country as a whole has a low rate of murder, there are areas where the murder rate is high. In Glasgow, Scotland, the murder rate is 5.9 per 100,000 (cite). In London, by contrast, it's 2.1 per 100,000 (cite). In the Manchester metro area, it's 10 per 100,000. And in the Manchester neighborhoods of Moss Side and Longsight, and in the Manchester suburb of Hulme, the murder rate is a monstrous 140 per 100,000 (cite)-- which is considerably worse than Washington, DC, America's most murderous city.
If you're thinking that the claims that America's murder rate is a function of its liberal gun laws are beginning to look fishy, you're right.
Washington, DC has a UK-like ban on handguns, and it has the highest murder rate in the US, by far. Right across the river, Arlington, Virginia, has a murder rate lower than that in London. Virginia has no handgun ban, and allows any lawful citizen that passes a training course to carry a concealed handgun in public. Now, you tell me-- does gun control really reduce crime?
Some people say that the effectiveness of the DC gun ban is thwarted by the easy access to guns in other states (such as Virginia), which can then be imported into DC by criminals. This, of course, begs the question: If this easy access to guns causes gun crime, why doesn't it affect Arlington and other Virginia cities where such loose laws are in effect?
The idea that gun control can be thwarted by criminals importing guns from another part of the country is obviously bunk. Look at the UK, which passed a comprehensive ban on handguns in 1997. There are no areas of the UK where handguns are available; it is a national ban, the same type that the architects of DC's high crime rate (the gun banners) want to bring to the whole US. And even with that in mind, the UK's murder rate is soaring, with some UK cities being considerably more dangerous than many US cities where handguns are legal.
If gun control was going to work anywhere, it would be in the UK. It's a small island country, with relatively little coastline to protect, and the only international border is a short one between Northern Ireland and Ireland. But even under these ideal circumstances, the UK is suffering a terrible rise in gun crimes (including gun murders), while ours in the US falls (not coincidentally, following the legalization of carrying concealed guns in the majority of US states).
Like in the US, the majority of the murders in the UK are being committed by gang members, mostly against other gang members. This is true whether one speaks of murders with or without guns. The murders are not distributed evenly across either country; they are localized in rather compact "hot spots" which bring up the murder rate for the whole country. And even though the UK has a total handgun ban, its hot spots of murder are just as bad as those in the US, and they are getting worse.
There are a lot of reasons why the US has long had a murder rate that exceeds that in the UK. The easy legal availability of handguns, though, is not among them. If liberal gun laws caused murder, we would expect to see more crime in the US following the passing of laws allowing lawful citizens to carry concealed handguns, but we're not. Our murder rate is the lowest in 20 years here in the US.
If handgun bans prevented murder, we would expect to see low murder rates in the cities where handguns are banned, like Washington, DC, Chicago, and New York City. We don't... those three cities have crime rates far above the national average. We'd expect to see high murder rates in states that allow concealed carry and otherwise have loose gun control laws, but we don't.
If gun bans prevented murder, we would expect the murder rate in the UK to have been trending downward since 1997, if not before then (in the decade preceding the 1997 total ban on handguns, the UK government passed a series of laws and regulations making it harder and harder to get guns). We don't... we see a country where the rate of murder is increasing, where there are some areas that are more dangerous than America's most dangerous city, and where criminals have all the guns they need. When we look at the UK, we see a country where the violent crime rate is 2.5 times higher than that of the US.
British criminals prove that when criminals want guns, they will get guns. It is folly to think that a piece of paper called "a law" is going to stop criminals from getting anything they want. Our ban on alcohol failed; our ban on drugs failed. Britain's ban on guns failed, as have the bans on guns in every city in the US where they have been enacted.
How much more will it take for the gun-haters to recognize that crime is a function of people's choices to disregard laws and harm others, not of the availability of guns? Haven't the anti-gunners noticed that their laws have failed to reduce crime every single time they were tried, and that expanding self-defense rights has reduced crime? Will they ever?
For years, Britain has had a very low rate of murder. For just as many years, the US has had a much higher rate of murder. Indeed, even now, if you look at the murder rate for the US as a whole (5.5 per 100,000) and the rate for the UK as a whole (1.4 per 100,000), you can see that the UK's rate is much lower as a whole. However, the total murder rate is far from being the final word.
In the US and in the UK, crime rates (and murder rates) vary wildly from place to place. In the US, the murder rate in Washington, DC is about 80 per 100,000 population; in Arlington, Virginia, just across the half-mile wide Potomac river, it's 1.6 per 100,000. Does the overall US murder rate of 5.5 per 100,000 tell you anything about whether you would be safe in Arlington, VA or Washington, DC?
The same disparity can be seen in the UK. While the country as a whole has a low rate of murder, there are areas where the murder rate is high. In Glasgow, Scotland, the murder rate is 5.9 per 100,000 (cite). In London, by contrast, it's 2.1 per 100,000 (cite). In the Manchester metro area, it's 10 per 100,000. And in the Manchester neighborhoods of Moss Side and Longsight, and in the Manchester suburb of Hulme, the murder rate is a monstrous 140 per 100,000 (cite)-- which is considerably worse than Washington, DC, America's most murderous city.
If you're thinking that the claims that America's murder rate is a function of its liberal gun laws are beginning to look fishy, you're right.
Washington, DC has a UK-like ban on handguns, and it has the highest murder rate in the US, by far. Right across the river, Arlington, Virginia, has a murder rate lower than that in London. Virginia has no handgun ban, and allows any lawful citizen that passes a training course to carry a concealed handgun in public. Now, you tell me-- does gun control really reduce crime?
Some people say that the effectiveness of the DC gun ban is thwarted by the easy access to guns in other states (such as Virginia), which can then be imported into DC by criminals. This, of course, begs the question: If this easy access to guns causes gun crime, why doesn't it affect Arlington and other Virginia cities where such loose laws are in effect?
The idea that gun control can be thwarted by criminals importing guns from another part of the country is obviously bunk. Look at the UK, which passed a comprehensive ban on handguns in 1997. There are no areas of the UK where handguns are available; it is a national ban, the same type that the architects of DC's high crime rate (the gun banners) want to bring to the whole US. And even with that in mind, the UK's murder rate is soaring, with some UK cities being considerably more dangerous than many US cities where handguns are legal.
If gun control was going to work anywhere, it would be in the UK. It's a small island country, with relatively little coastline to protect, and the only international border is a short one between Northern Ireland and Ireland. But even under these ideal circumstances, the UK is suffering a terrible rise in gun crimes (including gun murders), while ours in the US falls (not coincidentally, following the legalization of carrying concealed guns in the majority of US states).
Like in the US, the majority of the murders in the UK are being committed by gang members, mostly against other gang members. This is true whether one speaks of murders with or without guns. The murders are not distributed evenly across either country; they are localized in rather compact "hot spots" which bring up the murder rate for the whole country. And even though the UK has a total handgun ban, its hot spots of murder are just as bad as those in the US, and they are getting worse.
There are a lot of reasons why the US has long had a murder rate that exceeds that in the UK. The easy legal availability of handguns, though, is not among them. If liberal gun laws caused murder, we would expect to see more crime in the US following the passing of laws allowing lawful citizens to carry concealed handguns, but we're not. Our murder rate is the lowest in 20 years here in the US.
If handgun bans prevented murder, we would expect to see low murder rates in the cities where handguns are banned, like Washington, DC, Chicago, and New York City. We don't... those three cities have crime rates far above the national average. We'd expect to see high murder rates in states that allow concealed carry and otherwise have loose gun control laws, but we don't.
If gun bans prevented murder, we would expect the murder rate in the UK to have been trending downward since 1997, if not before then (in the decade preceding the 1997 total ban on handguns, the UK government passed a series of laws and regulations making it harder and harder to get guns). We don't... we see a country where the rate of murder is increasing, where there are some areas that are more dangerous than America's most dangerous city, and where criminals have all the guns they need. When we look at the UK, we see a country where the violent crime rate is 2.5 times higher than that of the US.
British criminals prove that when criminals want guns, they will get guns. It is folly to think that a piece of paper called "a law" is going to stop criminals from getting anything they want. Our ban on alcohol failed; our ban on drugs failed. Britain's ban on guns failed, as have the bans on guns in every city in the US where they have been enacted.
How much more will it take for the gun-haters to recognize that crime is a function of people's choices to disregard laws and harm others, not of the availability of guns? Haven't the anti-gunners noticed that their laws have failed to reduce crime every single time they were tried, and that expanding self-defense rights has reduced crime? Will they ever?
posted by Porcupine Nine at 9:48 PM
57 Comments:
Criminals, by definition, ignore whatever law is enacted. Predators do not understand "legal," they understand "lethal." He with the biggest stick, wielded best, wins.
Taking the sticks out of the law-abiding citizens' hands will only embolden the predators, as the data supports.
Good post - good reading.
Good piece. I just stumbled across your site through a link. Nice to see another Tucson blogger, AND one who is fighting gun "control."
Living in the Boston metro area and not being able to protect myself with a firearm I understand your point completly. Down with the Libs ther're stciking up the place!
I disagree with the way you have done your analysis. To take a UK average and then split it up into smaller and smaller parts, picking on a small area of high crime / gun crime (mossside) and then use the figures for that area as justification for gun controls not lowering gun crime doesn't make sense. To take it only slightly further you could say that fiction house, dream drive which had a shooting yesterday has a murder rate of 10,000 per 100,000. Unlike the US, the UK's gun control laws don't differ across the country. So to take one small section isn't a valid argument. Yes there are some small areas with specific gang/drug/poverty problems that have high murder / gun crime rates, but those aren't shown across the UK as a whole.
Gun controls in the UK mean that gun crime and murder rates are far lower than in the US. Burglary rates on the other hand are far higher (it's a lot less risky I suppose). There are upsides and downsides to all legislation, it depends on how you see the balance.
Britain has historically had a murder rate much lower than that of the US. Simon, are you suggesting that the low murder rate in the UK was an effect of gun control that had not even been dreamt up yet?
The overall violent crime rate in the UK is significantly higher than that in the US, and the murder rate (including the gun murder rate) is increasing.
There are a lot of factors why people kill each other, and access to guns just is not one of them. People who want to kill someone else are not going to go home and be lawful citizens if they can't easily get a gun.
This is an unfair analasis gun crime is rising due to the amount of laws and restrictions being made on guns, the murder rate with guns however has fallen, the inner city gangs are much lower now then they used to be. tell me another country that puts in immatation weapon offences with there gun crime statistics, the amount of people being killed by them in the UK though has fallen alot, and england and wales(seperate law system from scotland and northern ireland) have the lowest rate for gun homicides in europe and the western world.
Your figures just don't add up. How can you compare the whole of Washington DC with a few dodgy streets (ie the notorious Moss Side Estate!) in Manchester? I bet if you chose the worst street in the whole of Washington DC, you would find murder rates reaching the stratosphere. You are more likely to be murdered in the US than the UK, fact. And its not because the British are a more friendly bunch of people - gun control works. The only problem in the UK now is that the removal of border controls and the joining of the Eastern European states into the EU has meant a flood of illegal guns in the country. So gun control is getting more and more difficult to enforce, particularly as the police are not armed.
Gun crime in the UK has doubled since 1997, and the rate of murder has been increasing ever since (not decreasing). That is, in fact, HOW gun control works.
The UK has about twice the violent crime rate of the US excluding murder. At the current rate of increase (while that of the US falls over time), the UK's rate of murder will pass that of the US eventually. Is that what it will take for you to realize that this is what gun control does?
This might be interesting to you:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html
The UK has had a total ban on private handguns for ten years, and severe restrictions on them in the years prior. And yet they are readily available to any criminal who wants them:
http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2317307.ece
The US had higher murder rates than the UK when there was virtually no gun control in either country. How can you credit that to gun control when there was none at the time?
The murder rate in the US has been falling during the same period of time where most states have made it legal for any lawful person to obtain a permit to carry a concealed handgun just about wherever they go. Fascinating, isn't it, if "gun control" works?
Like in the UK, most of our violence (murder included) in the US is committed by a small section of the population. That section makes up a bigger percentage of the US population than it does in the UK. As a country formed of immigrants, and with a dark history of slavery, the US has always had a greater degree of racial tension and violence as a result.
If the UK was as "diverse" as the US, the murder rate there would be even higher than ours, since the UK has a culture of helpless passivity, "walk on by," prosecuting old ladies who carry knitting needles to fend off criminals. How do you figure that a culture of giving criminals whatever they want, with no resistance, is going to do anything but encourage them?
Stop drinking the "gun control" Kool-Aid and look at the facts. Britain's historically low crime rate is increasing rapidly, while that in the US (where we have rolled back a lot of gun control in the past 20 years, specifically the bans on carrying concealed that most states had) is falling. This alone ought to tell you that banning guns doesn't "work" in the way you say it does.
This entire blog was written on the premise that the US murder rate is defined in the same way as the UK murder rate. ..ITS NOT.
Official US statistics do NOT include manslaughters (vehicular etc)..they are specifically 'Murders'. The Official UK statistics include ALL murders, Homicides and manslaughters, which means that the disparity in rates is FAR greater than the author states.
The UK is by far and away a less violent place to live, and I'm a Brit living and working in the States. Check the Official stats and not the NRA stats (National Rifle Association). The NRA is a very powerful pro-gun lobbying group, and the whole article looks and feels like it was written by one of their so-called 'experts'.
Most Brits feel that the NRA lobby should be arrested on charges of genocide, and cant believe that so many Americans 'ENJOY' using their firearms to kill creatures.....weird and rather sick !
Please look for official government stats and NOT those provided by gun funded organisations, you may learn more.
John, you have the right idea, but you have it backwards. The US statistics count all killings, including those that are later ajudicated as manslaughter or that result in acquittals. The British Home Office does all it can to massage the numbers downward, including counting only actual murders.
The statistics I used here are official US government numbers. Look them up anywhere you please.
As for the US being a more violent place-- you may want to check your numbers again. The British rate of violent crime is FAR higher than that of the US... about twice as high as ours. The odds of a non gang member being assaulted by a random criminal are greater in the UK than in the US.
As is nearly always the case, you missed the bigger point here. The US crime rate has been declining since we started passing laws that let nearly anyone carry concealed handguns in public, and the UK's has been increasing since they banned guns and made their citizens totally defenseless-- a situation the criminals absolutely endorse.
Finally... I'm not an NRA member anymore. I let my membership expire because they weren't pro-gun enough. I joined the Gun Owners of America instead, and the Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html
Once again misleading and blatantly incorrect info from a gun toting 'fanatic'.
Here are one batch of about 85 sets of stats that I have collected for my research.
Murder Rates per Capita
United Kingdom: 0.0140633 per 1,000 people
United States: 0.042802 per 1,000 people
2007 17,420 US murders (as defined by person against person). Overall gun deaths approx 38,000 Incl accidental shootings, suicides etc.
2007 243 UK murders (as defined by person against person). Overall gun deaths approx 196 incl accidental shootings, suicides etc
(as per the UKs Home Office figures)
The number of UK homicides, incl murders, vehicular homicide etc then push the overall UK number up to 700+.
The number of US Homicides by the same definition would then be over 245,000.
As the UKs population is only 63 million and the US population is 4.5 times greater, I think these numbers prove how appallingly unsafe the US is to live in....Birmingham Alabama has in excess of 100 murders a yr (pop 550,000), that is equal to half of the UKs total (pop 63 million).
As the ownership of personal firearms has always been banned in the UK,(and is not a recent occurrence as you intimate), Britons have cultivated a relatively peaceful and fear free society (inner city areas always have their share of other crimes), and they have a police force which is the envy of the world, and they've done it without 900 million firearms on its streets.
According to the US's own stats, a gunowner is approx 160 times more likely to wound or kill themselves with their own firarm, than thay are likely to protect their property.....interesting fact that one...produced by the Dept of Homeland Security.
As for US rates declining....GOOD, the rates are still an embarassment !!
The US is the 24th most violent society ( and thats using the stilted statistics in a way that ONLY the US uses, as described above), from a list of 62 that report. The UK is 42nd.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
Most of what you have stated in your item is complete clap-trap, and you really should read a little more before you try to influence and distort peoples minds.....Oh sorry I forgot, you were a member of the NRA....says it all really, doesnt it.
Wow! That's one of the biggest bunch of fabrications that I have ever seen posted here yet. Care to provide any citations for your 245,000 figure? (I won't hold my breath, since its obviously made up). Or how about the 160 times thing? (I won't hold my breath on that one either). And we don't have 900 million firearms in the US (although that would be nice)... we have about 240 million (only counting those owned by civilians).
Further, guns have not always been banned in the UK. In the 1920s, there were virtually NO restrictions on the ownership or carry of guns in the UK OR the US, and the UK had far lower rates of murder than they do now. Even with no meaningful gun control in either country, the US had a lot more murder then the UK-- because the sociological problems that cause our murder rate existed then as they do now. Then, as now, it had nothing to do with gun ownership rates or gun laws. It has to do with the existence of a small subculture of inner-city gang types who think it is okay to maim or kill others-- that kind of person is a danger no matter what the gun laws are.
The UK's "total ban" on handguns was passed in 1997, after a series of "Home Office" directives that made acquiring gun licenses harder and harder.
This Wikipedia article has a synopsis of British gun law which confirms my statements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom#History_of_gun_control_in_the_United_Kingdom
The murder rate began to increase at about the same time as this trend toward government-mandated helplessness, and since the UK has told people to "walk on by" when they see someone being victimized, it has only gotten worse. Now the police ask ladies with knitting needles if they would use them to defend themselves if attacked, and if they say yes, they're arrested for carrying-- get this-- an "offensive" weapon.
Is it any wonder that the criminals come out to play when the government there has made such a perfect environment for them? The law abiding are told they may do NOTHING to defend themselves, and that they should do NOTHING to defend others they see being attacked! If you were a criminal, wouldn't you just think that was perfect?
The UK has significantly more violent crime than the US. Murder is not the only form of violence, and in every category other than murder and rape, the UK is worse than the US, including overall violent crime.
From the Telegraph: "People living in England and Wales are at greater risk of falling victim to crime than citizens of most other industrialised nations, according to a study published yesterday."
Rather than just making up numbers and posting blatantly incorrect statements about how the UK has always banned private gun ownership, why don't you take your own advice and do some research?
I would suggest starting with the links I posted in reply #8, and the full version "Guns and Violence: The English Experience" by the same author. I read the British press; I see the articles handwringing about the increasing violence, how guns are available to anyone on the street, how Manchester is now "Gunchester," et cetera.
Let's consider Manchester. The gun murder rate in Manchester is 10 per 100,000 people (link at the bottom of this post). Compare that with similarly-sized Virginia Beach, in pro-gun Virginia, where the TOTAL murder rate is 4.5 per 100,000. (Are you starting to think that murder rates depend on something other than gun laws? You should be!)
The cat's out of the bag-- the UK is a violent place, and while the US has more murders overall, your chance of being a victim of a random criminal (as opposed to being killed because you were a gang member engaged in a gang war) is greater in the UK.
I still wait for someone to give a plausible and factual explanation of why Britain's murder is going up if their gun control works, and why America's is going down if allowing everyone to carry guns is a bad idea. I'd also like to know why America's southern neighbor, Mexico, has a murder rate 4 times higher than ours here in the US despite strict gun control, if gun control works. Take a look at the Harvard study cited below for a study showing how rates of murder have no correlation to rates of gun ownership.
That was the main point of the article, and so far, all any naysayers have managed to do is nitpick statistics (I never disputed that the UK has a significantly lower murder rate than the US) and restate the platitude that the UK is safe because of the gun control that was enacted decades after it was known to be a safe society.
Have a look at my latest post for just one example of the things that go on in the "safe" UK.
Here are some more for your reading pleasure:
US government's CDC studies dozens of gun control measures and finds no evidence any of them have reduced crime:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm
A liberal begins to see the light in Florida:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/orl-miket0407oct04,0,3733024.column?coll=orl_news_util
Liberal admits the NRA may be right:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/10/a-liberals-lame.html
Why Britain needs more guns:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2656875.stm
This is what happens when governments try to ban guns:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;?xml=/opinion/2003/01/05/do0502.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2003/01/05/ixopinion.html
Harvard study concludes there is no link between gun ownership rates and violent crime:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
In greater Manchester, gun murder rate is 10 per 100,000:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4874465-105248,00.html
More on the wonderful British police and the safe UK:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=486950&in_page_id=1770
You might have more credibility if you stopped ignoring facts and distorting statistics, like comparing a relatively peaceful location in Virginia with the most lawless place in the UK.
Note the same article you quote states: "In 2002 the firearms murder rate for England and Wales was 0.09 per 100,000 head of population, compared with 5.4 per 100,000 for the US", which is more statistically accurate.
In 2005/2006 there were only 69 deaths from gun crime in the UK.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/26/nguns26.xml
That's less than a small city like Orlando in the US.
Statistically, Gun control does have benefits:
"The theory probably most scrutinized by criminologists correlates gun sales and violent crime. The strength of this theory lies in data that show that gun purchases and homicide rates from 1965 onwards do mirror each other"
However, the big lie in all this on both sides is that crime statistics are only influenced by gun control. They are not.
The most dangerous and evil criminals in our society will always find a way to get guns regardless of gun law, but gun law and responsible gun ownership does reduce the number of illegal guns on the streets and reduces gun crime overall.
Far more influential though are factors such as drug crime, poverty, immigration, law enforcement policy and policing, and cultural acceptance of violence. These explain the differences between Moss-side, Manchester and Virginia Beach, Virginia far more than any carefully selected statistics on gun crime/ownership can ever do.
Majik... it's not a distortion to compare selected cities with and without gun control. I am simply doing the reverse of what gun controllers do. They cherry-pick a country with relatively low murder and low gun ownership rates (the UK) and cite that as a counterpoint to the US, with high murder, to try to prove that gun control works.
What if we consider Switzerland? They have a higher gun ownership rate than the US, with pretty much every home equipped with a full auto machine gun by the government, and about half of the population able to carry concealed handguns with no permitting process at all. Yet they have a murder rate that would make the UK green with envy.
Or, what if we considered Mexico? They have strict gun controls, but they have a murder rate several times higher than that of the US.
The fact is, in the US and UK alike, murder is very localized in certain urban areas. The overall rate of 5.6 murders per 100,000 in the US tells you nothing about how safe you would be somewhere in the US, becuase the US has murder rates which range from nearly none to ridiculously high all within the same country.
The same is true of the UK. Manchester and Glasgow have murder rates that would not look out of place if listed among the many cities of the US where crime is above the national average.
There really is no point in your listing the "gun" murder rate. The question is whether gun control results in a net reduction of murder. If a given law somehow managed to end all of the gun murder in a given city, but there was just as much murder with other weapons, you may consider that a victory, but I don't.
There is no correlation between rates of gun ownership and murder. The rate of gun ownership in the US did begin to increase along with the rise of the crack epidemic in the 1980s, that is true, but the rate of gun ownership has been increasing steadily since then, while the murder rate has fallen to less than half of what it was during the peak of the crack epidemic.
Further, a correlation is not causation. If I lived in a neighborhood where crack-related crime was taking place, you bet I would go out and buy a gun for defense.
It should also be noted that the rates of gun ownership in America are higher among rural individuals than urban ones, and higher among white individuals than black individuals. Rural communities have lower rates of murder than urban ones, and the rate of committing murder AND being murdered are much higher among black individuals.
It is also not correct to suggest that the UK reporting of murder rates is more accurate than that of the US. The UK statistics only report murders; that is, the Home Office follows cases as they go through the courts and only list convicted homicides in the murder rate. The US lists any homicide, whether or not there even was a trial. Look in Joyce Lee Malcolm's article I cited for a little more about this.
The bottom line here is that the US rate of murder has nothing to do with gun control, or the lack thereof. As you note, there are much bigger sociological issues. We agree on this point.
The idea behind this post from me is not to suggest that rolling back gun control would eliminate the crime. It wouldn't. There is a deterrent effect among criminals; extensive interviews with criminals in prison indicates that fear of armed victims does indeed cause them to avoid potentially armed victims, and the aggregate effect of "shall issue" laws that allow any lawful person within a given US state to carry concealed handguns does show a reduction of violent crime, but since the vast majority of eligible people do not elect to obtain such a permit, the effect on crime is kept to a fairly low level.
The big problem we have in the US is racial. It's politically incorrect to mention that, but we can't hope to find solutions if we are afraid to define the problem. Here in the US, blacks are 12% of the population, but they commit more than half of the murders (nearly all against other blacks). Latinos are a little bit more, about 13.5 percent of the population, and they commit murders at a rate right between white Americans and black Americans (and they too tend to kill others within their own racial group).
Our murder rate is a problem of gangs. Street gangs in America are by far most prevalent among those two demographic groups from which most of the murders come. We have an estimated 750,000 gang members in the US. Three quarters of a million gang members. Guns didn't create the gangs, and I don't think any reasonable person would suggest that these violent gangs would stop being violent if guns were made illegal.
To me, it is evident that the gangs are an effect of years of institutionalized racism against these two groups. The more oppressed they perceive themselves, the more that they see no alternative to the lifestyle of gangs. If you think you have no hope, you can do some pretty horrible things.
The problem of the American inner city is a complex one. There are no good jobs available in black neighborhoods, so the young people growing up there see gangs, and maybe drug sales, as a way to better their lots in life. There's not much else for them there.
And the more crime is in the news, the more police come down on the gangs. While this is an entirely rational response from a law enforcement perspective (they target the people committing the crime), it also has the effect of making sure that the kid who is in a gang, but who is not necessarily a hardened killer, has no options other than the gang itself. He's doing what he thinks he needs to do to survive, and the cops get him and put him in the criminal justice system and make sure he can't try to get out, because now he has a record that will follow him forever.
I can't blame the employers for being afraid to hire someone with a history of gang violence. There are plenty of applicants who don't come with that baggage. But what position does that leave the young urban kid who just wants to do like the rest of us, to improve his lot in life the best he can?
To them, white society is simultaneously telling them to go straight, to stop gangbanging, and all the while making sure there is not really any way for him to do that. What do we do about it? We can't force employers to start hiring people with criminal records if they don't want to. We can't ask the police to go easy on the gangs (they have done this in the past, and the gang violence explodes). So what do we do?
I don't claim to know the answer, but I do know this: Passing law after law that prevent the good people from owning and carrying guns is NOT going to help. It is primarily the cities besieged with gang violence, like Gary, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, Detroit, St. Louis, Richmond (California and Virginia), Oakland, Compton, et cetera, who are pushing for more gun control laws.
The problem with that is that only lawful gun ownership would decline, and the people committing the crimes would not be disarmed.
Wow, what a crock of crap. I agreed with you analysis of violent crime in the UK and the US. Clearly the UK and their residents are in denial for a number of reasons. I wholeheartedly disagree with your reason for high rates of violent crime in inner cities between blacks and hispanics. I'll touch on blacks first. There are only 35 million blacks in this country of which 24% are poor, so that's about 8 million individuals. There are about 1.7 million blacks that make more than 250k a year, so the rest of them fall into the working poor, lower middle, and majority in the middle class. Your false use of "institutionalized racism" is total bs. Most blacks are 1. Not in gangs and 2. Do not committee violent crimes. Out of the population of 35 million again only a very small percentage of blacks are violent and live in the inner city. To further that extent inner city crimes have completely no barring on anyone, but other inner city people. Meaning that if you're black, white, asian, or hispanic and do not live within an inner city high crime area the chance of being the victim of a violent crime in America is extremely small. Furthermore what you should have taken a closer look at was the poverty rates in the UK in which a large portion of violent crimes take place. You would have noticed that the UK which is 95% white has the same distinct issues, that inner city American neighborhoods have and that is what is leading to such a high violent crime rate. Please take note, poverty, unwed single mothers, lack of formal education (chaves and scallies), lack of jobs, as well as a significant stake in the DRUG TRADE!
Please stop attempting to make everything a race issue, because it is not a black and white issues you would serve the debate a lot better if you tackled the issue for what it really is, and that's the profit to be made in distributing/sale of drugs. I agree a lack of jobs, family values, morals, and poverty destroy communities in America as well as the UK.
The reason the UK is not ready to tackle the problem is because of stereotypical images we have placed into society that all whites are good (non criminals) and therefore all blacks (criminals) are bad. The problem with this is it hurts most blacks that do not committee crimes or violent crimes for that matter and seriously hurts the whites that are poor and commit such heinous acts of violence.
Pretending the problem does not exist will not make it go away and the UK will find that out soon enough. Black violent crime in the US has nothing to do with “institutionalized racism” if it did then the black violent crime rate in Chicago, Harlem, st.louis, and Washington DC would have been astronomical in the 1860's up through the 1950's and it was not. In fact the black American violent crime rate in these major cities did not substantially increase until after the 1960's and sky rocketed during the 1970's and 1980's due to the distribution and profiting of illegal drugs (mainly cocaine, crack, heroine, and pot). The increase in violent crime in the UK and US is as simple as the drug trade. This is simply states as the marginal benefit vs. the marginal cost to commit a crime nothing more nothing less. It is very simple economics and that's why Gunchester and DC suffer from high rates of homicide. Not because there are blacks and hispancis. Another more academic way to put it is if the penalty for getting caught increases past the benefit that they are gaining, dealers will stop taking such risks and focus their efforts elsewhere. In most cases, but what happened in the 70’s and 80’s in inner city neighborhoods was an alternative possibility in which drug dealers continued to deal drugs and raised the price of their products in order to cover their newly added costs, just as any business would do. However once the prices of drugs were much higher, dealers became much more willing (increase in competition from rival gangs etc)to do whatever it takes to assure the safety of their business (murders, murders, murders and etc). This means that it will be much more likely for dealers to carry guns, and be willing to use them, since losing their product is much more costly than it used to be.
In the US, 12% of the population is black, but blacks commit more than half of the murder. Similarly, Hispanics murder at three times the rate of whites (which is still way less than the rate of blacks). These are just facts, and if we hope to solve the problem, we have to stop pretending (as a society) that these facts do not exist.
No one said all blacks are bad or all blacks are in gangs. But facts are facts-- one eighth of our population commits more than half of the murders. That shows a problem in that group that is more pronounced than in the other groups.
The rates of violence do not correlate with poverty across the board-- whites in places like West Virginia are impoverished but exhibit much lower rates of crime than we see in impoverished blacks.
It is simply a fact that gangs are violent, and that most members of gangs in America are black and Latino. I don't buy for a moment that they are any more inherently violent than whites or Asians, so discrimination on the basis of race seems evident.
Part of the problem now is that inner city children are most often raised only by a single mother. This was not the case in the years past; the family unit served as a bulwark against the effects of racism by giving the inner-city child a group to belong to (the family) other than a gang (especially during the hours right after school, where many kids now come home to an empty residence).
Now, the welfare system which has made fathers largely irrelevant has had a very detrimental effect on family life in the inner city (regardless of race).
The drug trade plays a role in violence, certainly. Prohibition of alcohol in the US caused a major rise in violent crime, and only legalizing alcohol fixed that.
Unfortunately, no one takes the idea of legalization seriously in the US... mention it and you're instantly accused of being some kind of druggie yourself (as if the only reason to be in favor of legalization is to get your stuff cheaper).
As long as demand for any given good is high, a ban is going to fail. Violent crime will always grow around the black market supply lines. When the government provides artificial scarcity, that makes the banned item expensive, and that provides a huge financian incentive for people willing to break the law to supply that item.
Accepting for a moment that 'the statistics show' that gun control has no positive effect on the murder rate.
Would any of the pro-guns posters care to present an articulate, well cited, argument on how 'the statistics show' that gun ownership reduces the murder rate? Or reduces the chance of being a murder victim?
John Lott wrote an entire book about his study showing that relaxing laws on gun ownership and carry reduces crime. (I am sure you were waiting for me to cite this one, so here it is!) "More Guns, Less Crime."
Lott's study is the only one to date that considers data from every county in the entire country. He has taken the effort to control for every other factor in the crime rate, and has rerun his statistical analysis when critics have suggested things that he omitted that may have had an effect on the crime rate.
As for proving that carrying a gun reduces the chance of that person being murdered: That sounds to me a little like asking for proof that having fire extinguishers around reduces the chance of your house burning down. That said, though, the US Government's NIJ Crime Victimization surveys clearly show that when a person is accosted by a criminal, the safest action to take is to resist that criminal with a firearm. It's safer than compliance, safer than resisting with a knife or pepper spray, safer than resisting with bare hands.
Guns are the most effective self defense tools in existence. That's why police carry them. Nothing else works as well. Pepper spray, stun guns, tasers, knives, clubs, etc., are less effective in stopping a violent attack than guns are.
Additionally, a gun requires less training to use effectively than the other weapons listed above, and it does not require strength to wield effectively (like clubs and knives do), nor does it require that the attacker be allowed to get into contact range with the victim.
Not everyone should carry a gun for defense. Some people do not have the right mindset (the most important thing), and they may freeze or otherwise fail to wield the gun effectively. For such people, a gun is not a good choice (and neither are the other weapons, for that matter). But for people that have resolved that they are not going to be willing victims, nothing beats a gun for preserving the safety of the intended victim.
Basic fact is that the figures show the USA has a higher murder rate.
It is interesting to note that Canada has a history and custom of gun ownership, which is similar to the US. Canada has just over 10% of the US population but also only has about 3-4% of the US murder rate.
So the connection between Guns and murder rates is not straightforward.
However, guns make it a lot easier to commit mass murder. A single person can kill several people with a handgun without much effort. A person with an assault rifle can kill a lot more. Hence incidents like Columbine and a pattern of mass murder events occurring in the USA every other month or so.
An assault rifle can turn even a 98-pound weakling into a deadly force. Such an individual with a knife, club or sword etc would find it much harder to kill a dozen people or so.
So, if the USA does has a greater proportion of murderers, as the statistics seem to indicate, then isn't that just the sort of place you would want to restrict access to guns which make mass murder so much easier to commit?
porcupine nine said "As for proving that carrying a gun reduces the chance of that person being murdered: That sounds to me a little like asking for proof that having fire extinguishers around reduces the chance of your house burning down." ...
That counter argument rather ignores the fact that it is all but impossible to start a fire in someone else's house with a fire extinguisher.
Abe: Absolutely not! In fact, it is in a place with a relatively higher murder rate that it is the most important that the potential victims be able to easily obtain the most effective self-defense tool available.
Criminals have always proven their ability to get ahold of prohibited items, regardless of what the laws may be. Gun bans, like the failed ban on drugs, have only kept guns out of the hands of the law-abiding.
The proverbial (otherwise) good person who "loses it" and commits mass murder on the spur of the moment is exceedingly rare. Think about any of the mass shootings that have been in the news lately-- they were all planned out well in advance.
The killers in any of these mass murders would have had plenty of time to obtain guns or other means to commit their crimes. (Look at how many people were killed in Oklahoma City by a bomb made with ordinary motor fuel and a common farm fertilizer).
Restricting guns does not prevent murder. It simply provides another source of income for enterprising criminal smugglers. The only way to control murderers is to put them in prison-- and until then, to make sure that the regular people are able to defend themselves.
I have no concerns on the need of ineffectual people to carry guns, but this Brit can assure you that the reason for the soaring crime rate in the UK since the 60's is the erosion of deterrent to persuade criminals to do as they please by a string of useless governments. Sooner or later the death penalty will have to be restored, ironically, to save lives
I agree with your stance.
I happen to be living in Victoria Park, Manchester UK, in between Moss Side and Longsight and have to say that the crime and murder rate here are far higher than those of any major US city I've previously lived in, including SF which also enforced a full fledged gun ban. I think the gun ban in the UK has gone way too far, and as I'm a foreigner in this country it always startles me when I see that the majority of police officers are subjects to the gun ban as well, except for the tactical aid units.
Sorry but you are just wrong.
The murder rate in SF is 12.9 per 100,000 people - whilst the highest murder rate in the UK, which is for Nottingham (not Manchester) is only 5.21 per 100,000 people - less than half that of SF.
The city with the highest murder rate in the US is Baltimore with 42 murders per 100,000 residents - over 8 times that of the highest murder rate in the UK.
We may be a bit behind in the %age murder rates, possibly partly because the UK government encourages murder to be classed as manslaughter or other unlawful killings rather than admit their policies have caused an escalation in cold blooded mindless MURDER. don't think it will be too long before we catch up, unless we wake up first. One thing that stands out is that if some mindless moron wants a gun, he will get it.
I think we will have to go some to increase our murder rate by 8-fold to catch up with the USA.
Specifically on gun crime.
The rate of deaths by gun crime (including all flavours of murder and manslaughter) in the UK is 0.12 killings per 100,00 of the population in England and Wales.
In the USA the rate is 2.97 gun crime deaths per 100,000 of the population.
That means you are just under 25 times more likely to be unlawfully killed by someone with a gun in the USA than in England and Wales.
Interestingly, in Canada where guns are just as freely available (if not more so) as in the USA the gun crime killing rate is only 0.54 per 100,000 of the population. i.e. as a Canadian you are 5.5 times LESS likely to be murdered by a gun than a USA citizen is - even through guns use is just as prevalent.
On the basis of those facts, for me, gun control is working very nicely in the UK thank you.
Looking at the USA and Canada though - when we say Gun control - perhaps we should just say "taking guns off the Americans"?
Because it looks like an armed USA citizen is about 5.5 times more likely to kill you than a similarly armed Canadian?
So if a society has an exaggerated predisposition to murder then for me that is an argument for more gun control not less.
(Just correcting a typo)
I think we will have to go some to increase our murder rate by 8-fold to catch up with the USA.
Specifically on gun crime.
The rate of deaths by gun crime (including all flavours of murder and manslaughter) is 0.12 killings per 100,000 of the population in England and Wales.
In the USA the rate is 2.97 gun crime deaths per 100,000 of the population.
That means you are just under 25 times more likely to be unlawfully killed by someone with a gun in the USA than in England and Wales.
Interestingly, in Canada where guns are just as freely available (if not more so) as in the USA the gun crime killing rate is only 0.54 per 100,000 of the population. i.e. as a Canadian you are 5.5 times LESS likely to be murdered by a gun than a USA citizen is - even through guns use is just as prevalent.
On the basis of those facts, for me, gun control is working very nicely in the UK thank you.
Looking at the USA and Canada though - when we say Gun control - perhaps we should just say "taking guns off the Americans"?
Because it looks like an armed USA citizen is about 5.5 times more likely to kill you than a similarly armed Canadian?
So if a society has an exaggerated predisposition to murder then for me that is an argument for more gun control not le
Since this blog started there have been more mindless massacres by gun toting loonies even in Belgium, famous for nothing. I am beginning to wonder if this phenomenon may have something to do with the epidemic use of cannabis, there are definitely more schozzos on our streets here in the UK than there ever used to be back in the days when I was a teenager and stupid abuse of drugs was virtually unheard of. Perhaps the answer to these massacres is to use the Malaysian deterrent to drug trafficking.
Of course the Belgian one was a knife massacre but the reasoning is the same and it shews that you don't have to be e loony with a gun to murder.
Abe: "Gun crime" and "gun murder" rates are useless statistics. Does it matter if someone is killed by a gun or some other means? Is it more tragic somehow if someone is killed by a criminal with a gun than one with a knife?
Would you consider it a triumph if the US eliminated gun murder and replaced it with the same number of murders by other means?
The rate of murder, including gun murder, and the rate of gun crime generally, has gone way up in the UK since their gun ban. You think the ban is working?
Most of the murder in the US, including the "gun crime" rate, is driven by a small number of people. Most of our violent crime is driven by gangs. You suggest that we need more gun control because of our higher propensity for murder? Most of us are not members of gangs; why should we be denied a fundamental civil right on the basis of what some idiot gang bangers do?
Does it make sense that the good should be forced to be defenseless because there is a large number of criminal predators? What kind of perverse logic dictates that the more likely we are to be attacked, the more important it is that we be denied the ability to resist effectively?
Most large cities in America have problems with gang violence, and most of those cities already have strict gun control laws. They don't work. They have the effect of putting a large number of defenseless victims right in the vicinity of all of the violent criminals. And that's supposed to make everyone safer?
I think the figures show that guns are not the sole issue. It is more a question of the type of society you live in. Canada has just as much use of guns as the USA and yet the gun homicide rate in the USA is 5.5 times higher per 100,000 people than in Canada. My (tongue-in-cheek) question was that if the USA is 5.5 times more violent from a gun crime perspective than a similar nation with equal access to guns - then is that not a classic case for more gun control in the USA? With regard to guns themselves I still stand by the view that they turn a lone (perhaps drug-addled) 98lb weakling into a multi-murder massacre fiend. A school child with an automatic rifle can kill dozens. With a knife or club etc he can only kill a few. So when the next nut-case goes "postal" I would much rather he hit the streets with a knife or club than an Uzi. The Belgian event is an isolated case and that was mainly defenceless school children killed by a madman with a knife. By far the majority of massacre events in developed nations are carried out by gun men (and I mean the word "men" - very few women go nuts with a gun) and most of these massacres seem to take place in the USA. You have the occasional one in Europe but the USA is still by far the gun-massacre "king". With the gun homicide rate per 100,000 people 25 times lower in the UK than in the USA I am quite happy to have my right to own a gun removed by law. With effective gun control in the UK I have no need to carry one in order to defend myself.
Regards,
Abe
Abe, gun control laws have the effect of disarming people who obey laws... which means they weren't a risk to kill anyone in the first place. They do not prevent repeat offenders from being armed-- the growing gun crime rate in the UK shows this.
As such, gun control laws have the sole effect of making it safer and easier for criminals to prey on innocent people. They don't prevent gun crime. The whole point of the US vs UK articles I wrote was to illustrate this! The UK has had lower rates of murder than the US for decades. London had one fifth the rate of murder that New York had even when neither city had any significant form of gun control, and this relationship has held relatively constant for at least a century. It's changing now, though, that the UK has worked so hard to make any form of self-defense illegal, along with a rise in the gang issues which have fueled the US murder rate for decades.
While the "going postal" type shootings are spectacular headline grabbers, the fact is that they are very rare, inside the US and out. We have a third of a billion people here, just about, so it may seem like they happen a lot, but when you factor in the number of people who live here, the odds of being killed by a "good person gone bad" are very, very slim.
Much more dangerous, and common, are the garden variety criminals who pursue crime as if it were a job. A lot of this is drug sales (drugs being completely illegal-- a lot of good that ban does).
If you think you can prevent this type of criminal from getting a gun, you're mistaken. Even British schoolkids know that they can get a gun if they want one, law to the contrary or not. There have been several news reports recently (in the UK press of course) about how how easy it is to get a gun despite more than ten years of prohibition.
Gun control laws don't make guns stop existing. They don't make gun crimes stop, either, any more than drug bans made drugs go away. They only prevent good people from having the chance to defend themselves.
You say that thanks to "effective" gun control laws, you don't have the need to carry a gun for defense? Are you aware that other than murder and rape, the UK has a higher rate of violent crime than the US?
I have not been to the UK, but surveys show that Brits are more afraid to go out after hours than Americans, and the Brits I have spoken to who have been to America nearly universally have said they feel safer here. While our murder rate is higher, its mostly gang on gang violence, and if you aren't part of that war, you're a lot safer than the statistics show. (That does not mean I am going to give up my concealed handgun and rely on the goodwill of criminals for my own survival-- while the odds are that I won't be attacked, I want to survive EVEN IF I AM attacked.)
Have you read the article (and its second part, later in the blog) to which you are replying now? Some very ghastly things can be done with other weapons, and legally required helplessness has been a terribly ineffective means of preventing such mayhem.
In addition, gun control makes sure that women, the infirm, and the aged are at the mercy of criminals, most of whom are young males, who possess a natural strength advantage.
You are right about how crime is a sociological issue. If you look at US statistics on crime by race, you see that black individuals commit crimes at a far higher rate than whites. And while the US does not have statistics on Latino vs. Anglophone whites, the state of California does, and it shows also that Latinos have a much higher murder rate than Anglophone whites.
Now, of COURSE this does not mean that minority groups are inherently murderous-- that's not what I am saying at all. Those happen to be the demographics where the majority of the gang members come from. That is a sociological issue, since not all gang members are minorities, and not all minorities are gang members.
If the problem is mainly gangs, why does it make sense to ban guns from people not in gangs? Guns are the main weapon for gangs, but they have priven that they can get items they want to have, like drugs, even if they are illegal. So gun control laws disproportionately impact the law abiding people, who would use guns for defense against the criminals.
Finally... you have a right to effective self defense, and in today's society that means a handgun. It matters not that your government infringes that right... the right exists nonetheless. Rights do not come from the government; if they did, they could be taken back if and when the government decides to, and that makes them privileges, not rights.
Rights, rather, come from God, if you believe, or if you don't, then from nature, as determined by reason. We would not deny a wild cat living in a jungle the use of his claws or teeth, even if the issue of catching prey were moot; to do so would be to make him defenseless against the danger that clearly exists there.
Humans don't have sharp teeth or claws, but we do have intellect and opposable thumbs. Guns are our claws. It is no more acceptable to declaw those of us in the urban jungle than it is to declaw the wild cat.
It is true that the UK has more recorded violent crime than the USA. Incidence of violent crime is approximately 4 times greater in the UK than in the USA according to the collected statistics.
But if my choice is between 4 times more likely to suffer an injury of some sort from violent crime in the UK or 25 times more likely of being shot and killed in the USA. I know which country I would want to be in when taking my evening stroll......
As for public impressions of rising violence in the UK - voilent crime in the UK fell by 8% from last year and the most serious violent crimes (e.g. murder) fell by 12% from last year.
So I still feel safe in the UK without feeling the need to carry a gun. God given right or not.
Regards,
Abe
sorry Abe, it is REPORTED crime in the UK that is falling as less and less of us see the point in wasting our time reporting it. Those of us the live in high moronic crime areas katow it is going through the roof.
or even those of us that live in high moronic crime areas know it is going through the roof
Sorry Alan but the British Crime Survey figures, which are based on surveys across a random statistically valid sample of the public and are independent from official Home Office figures, actually report a larger drop in violent crime than the Home Office. BCS statistics do not rely on REPORTED figures but instead are based on a survey of the public to find those individuals who have actually experienced crime whether reported or not. Public fear of crime is actually rising whilst in reality the figures are falling. You can thank the media for that.
Regards,
Abe
Abe, once again, it matters not whether a person is shot to death or stabbed, bludgeoned, or choked to death. Only the overall murder rate matters, not the means of murder. And the rate of murder in the UK is not 1/25 of that in the UK. Are the people stabbed to death in the UK any less dead than the ones shot to death here?
The US has a lot of gang murders which are mostly gang members killing other gang members over turf or drugs. Not all of the murders are of this type, but estimates I have seen run from two thirds to 80% of murders are gang-on-gang violence.
That does leave a significant number of non-gang murders, but it's not nearly as risky as it would appear from the U.S. murder rate (5.5 per 100,000 per year, last I saw) would lead you to believe.
So again, unless you would plan on joining one of those gangs on your evening walk, your risk in the US would be much lower than the raw statistics would appear to show.
Other violent crimes, such as armed robbery, rape, etc. are likely to be committed by repeat offenders who prey on members of the general public. And some of the remaining murders do happen during the commission of these crimes, as is the case with the smaller number of murders in the UK each year.
It is a mistake to look at the crime rates of a country as a whole and decide the risk based entirely upon those statistics. The risk of being a victim of a random act of violence in the US is pretty low for people who don't associate with gang members.
And, with that said... some of us don't rely on the odds of being chosen as a victim for our own security. I stay out of dangerous areas, especially at night, and pay attention to my surroundings, all the things suggested to reduce the risk. But if things go south despite my best efforts, I am not going to be a victim.
I may never need my concealed handgun, and I hope with every fiber of my being I won't, but if I ever do need it, it will be the one object I have needed the most ever in my life. I'm not about to give some thug my implicit approval by quietly submitting to him if he should choose me or someone around me for a victim. Criminals need willing victims; I don't intend to be one.
sorry Abe, but I am involved with the crime issue locally, and am aware that little or NO questionnaires are aimed at those living in high crime areas. The government, aided and abetted by local authorities who want the rewards for 'meeting the targets' make very sure of this.
Interestingly, where hospitals keep records of victims of assault the trend is ever upwards in all of our cities. It's no good believing the statistics or surveys of a government that is hell bent on using Goebbels type means to tell us their version of the 'truth'
Porcupine Nine:
Correct that the murder rate in the USA is not 25 times the murder rate in the UK. I did not say that however. I did say that the unlawful homicide rate by Guns in the USA per 100,000 of the population is 25 times that of the UK. This does not include accidental shootings, "lawful" killings and suicides. There are more people each year in the USA that accidentally shoot and kill themselves or other people than the total number of murdered or killed accidentally by guns in the UK.
I also said that the overall murder rate (by any means rather than just by guns) per 100,000 of the population in the USA is 8 times that of the UK.
And this is what raises a problem. You say that carrying a gun enables the USA citizen to effectively defend himself/herself from all forms of violence and homicidal maniacs etc.
So in the USA we have a lot of peaceable people walking around carrying a gun ready to defend themselves from other gunmen, people with knives, swords, broken bottles etc. This should be quite a deterrent to the average moronic thug.
However, in the UK where far fewer people carry guns (almost none compared to the USA) the overall murder rate is still 8 times LOWER than the USA.
If carrying a firearm provided the benefits you state then surely the murder rate in the UK would be HIGHER than the USA because the good USA citizens can effectively defend themselves from the bad ones – and this even ignores what should be a very significant deterrent factor. But in reality the reverse is true, you are still a lot safer in the UK even though you have no right to "bear arms".
alan:
Sorry but the BCS crime figures are collected independently of the British Government and are validated as a representative sample by the NAO. No offence, but in informing my opinion I would rather use independently validated, professionally collated figures collected on a national basis than rely on your local anecdotal experience.
Regards,
Abe
Sorry, forgot to add that the latest figures gathered in Accident and Emergency units show that knife-related injuries are down.
Regards,
Abe
I would be more inclined to believe there is no tie up with the bcs academics if there was ever any imput taken from high criome areas. There isn't
Sorry but as far as your unsubstantiated opinion goes in comparison to independently validated figures my previous post still stands.
Regards,
Abe
Abe, there is actually a deterrent effect, and it has been described by Lott in his book "More Guns, Less Crime," among others. You can't simply compare the US to the UK and conclude that there is no deterrent effect based on disparite crime rates. That, in fact, is why I wrote this article in the first place-- it is quite common for gun banning types within the US to point at the UK, with their restrictive laws and relatively lower murder, and try to claim that one follows from the other.
The "gun control caused the low murder rate in the UK" argument makes no more sense than the "pastafarians" arguing (in jest) that the increase in global temperatures is being caused by the reduction in the numbers of pirates in the world... two trends that match better than gun control and murder in the UK do (since the UK's low murder rate has been around much longer than the ban on handguns).
Now, one fact that you may not know is that the US gun laws vary wildly from place to place. In Vermont, anyone can carry a concealed handgun with no permit required at all. In Chicago, you can't carry at all, concealed or otherwise, and handgun ownership alone is regulated to the point of being a de facto ban.
Obviously, the deterrent factor is going to be greater in Vermont than in Chicago where a criminal can be quite certain that his intended victim is not armed.
Which do you guess has a higher murder rate? (I am comparing a state with a city, I know, but the point holds true anyway.) Vermont's rate of murder is a fraction of the national average, while Chicago's has remained many times above the national average for decades.
Now, I am not saying that the tiny murder rate in Vermont is a function of their liberal gun laws. But if you are trying to make the argument that Britain's restrictive gun control laws and relatively lower murder rate indicate that deterrence from armed citizens is not a factor, then surely you can see that my example presents precisely the opposite picture.
My argument in favor of concealed guns, however, does not hinge on the deterrent effect, or the lack of it. (Please see my article on this site entitled "The Problem of Collectivism".)
I am not so much concerned about the aggregate effect of concealed carry on the actions of criminals. I am not proposing concealed carry as "the" solution to crime, or even as "a" solution to crime. I defend concealed carry as being (1) an inalienable right of all people, based on the natural right to self-defense, and further protected by the Bill of Rights (for those of us living in the United States), and (2) the single most effective thing that an individual can do to be able to survive a criminal attack, and finally (3) a concept whose negative impact on other innocents is relatively minor (since the people who would obey a law against concealed carry aren't the ones committing murder or any other crime, since they respect the law), and is overshadowed many times over by its positive effects.
What I am most concerned with is the effect that ME carrying concealed will have on the actions of a criminal if he happens to mistake me for a suitable target. And by extension, the same principle applies to all other people who wish to take responsibility for their own safety.
Porcupine Nine:
Your reasoning and comparisons still seemed flawed to me.
Taking your points in turn:
1. You seem to ask “If the UK gun ban is so effective why has the UK murder rate remained the same (or even slightly increased) since it was introduced?
The simple answer is that, effectively, there has been no recent introduction of a gun ban. I know that there was a change in gun law, following the Dunblane incident I believe. However, gun ownership in the UK was actually already so low that imposition of the new laws did not cause a significant fall in weapons in the hands of the public. Therefore, the UK’s already low murder rate did not really fluctuate when the gun ban came in. In proportion to the population of the UK the number of guns owned was so small that removing them had no significant effect upon society as a whole, We were, in effect, already imposing our own gun control because the vast majority of the population saw no need or reason to own a firearm. That was the main reason why the gun control laws were so easily introduced in the UK. The vast majority of us did not own a gun so nobody really objected or even cared. So our pre and post “gun ban” murder rates were actually just one murder rate under the same regime of self imposed gun control.
2. You seem to say that the deterrent factor in the State of Vermont is greater than the deterrent factor of the City Chicago because Chicago has draconian gun control legislation and therefore also has a greater crime rate. Ok, for the sake of discussion I will ignore the fact that you are comparing a single city with a whole state – which on the face of it is spurious. However, I cannot ignore the relative population densities of the 2 regions compared. The population density of Chicago (population 9.5 million!!) is many times that of the whole state of Vermont (population only 623 thousand!!) and therefore obviously their relative crime rates cannot be sensibly compared and no reasonable conclusions can be drawn from any such comparison. That is why any figures I quote for the number of murders etc are PER 100,000 OF THE POPULATION. (Pardon the caps – no underline facility here). This provides a balanced view between the 2 regions being compared and some reasonable conclusions can be drawn. Another thought that comes to mind is that the number of guns actually owned in Chicago (legal or illegal) must be many times the number of guns owned in the whole state of Vermont. Therefore, the region with the highest number of guns does in fact have the highest murder rate. Thus turning your argument on its head and showing that your comparison does not in fact “hold true”.
3. Even ignoring criminal activity, your inalienable right to own firearms is killing circa 500 innocents - American men, women and children, every year in shooting accidents alone. That is a very high price to pay to ensure you get every ounce of freedom from your Bill of Rights.
Regards,
Abe
Abe, the UK had a much lower murder rate than the US even when neither one had any significant gun controls. There was a time when any Brit could grab his revolver and head out the door without any goverment official assuming he was up to no good. And even then, the British murder rate was very low. Brits just don't kill much-- it has nothing to do with the availability of guns.
The US is and was a country formed of immigrants, and that has always caused tensions that have not existed in the much more monolithic UK. The US is a country founded by revolutionaries who fought their own government for their independence. That spirit of rebellion has never left us.
That, and not gun control, is and was the cause of our higher murder rate. You could pass heavy gun control in the US and it would not reduce the murder rate (criminals would not obey the law), and you could make gun carry legal in the UK and it would not increase it.
It's the people, not the tool, that drive the murder rate.
Chicago has a population of just under three million, not 9.5 million. I am talking about the city proper, not the surrounding suburbs.
In Chicago, a criminal knows that law-abiding people NEVER carry concealed guns, because carrying a concealed gun is illegal. That means little to no deterrent effect on criminals who prey on innocents-- it has nothing to do with crime rate per se or population density.
A criminal in Vermont does not know if his intended victim is armed or not. That will have some deterrent effect-- how much is open to debate. But it's not important to my argument regarding concealed carry.
The bottom line is that you can't make judgments about things like deterrent effect of handgun carry unless all other variables have been controlled for. I showed an example where the opposite was shown as compared to your example (liberal laws, low crime) to illustrate that the simple comparison you made is not valid. I know my comparison is not a good one-- that was the point. Neither was your comparison of the deterrent effect in the US and the UK.
If you want an example where other factors have been controlled for, check out Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime." He controlled for all the other factors in every county in the US, and his results are in the title.
500 people a year is really quite minor in a country this size. That's not even two people a day in a country nearing a third of a billion people. 40,000 a year die in car accidents, and over 100,000 a year are killed by medical mistakes (I am thinking its closer to 300,000, but I am not sure about that).
There can be no doubt that there is some negative effect from guns being legal. There will be some gun accidents by lawful people that would not have happened otherwise. There will be some previously good people who "flip out" and shoot someone, maybe multiple people.
That said, though, you can't do a cost-benefit analysis without looking at the benefit. Several studies have estimated defensive gun uses in the US each year to range from 800,000 to 1.5 million. That by FAR outweighs the negative things above.
Of course, we must also consider that the Second Amendment was not primarily about personal defense against criminals. It was, and is, about being able to defend against a government that no longer serves the people, but instead rules them.
Liberty is an end in itself. Living a life without liberty is pointless... better to die a free man than to live as a slave. I would not give up my guns for any price, nor for any law, nor for any empty promise of safety that experience shows can never be provided by government.
Porcupine Nine:
You miss my point, even when the UK did not have any significant gun controls the UK has never, ever, had any significant numbers of guns in the hands of the public. It is just not part of our culture and that is one of the reasons why our murder rate has always been so low and that is also why the imposition of new gun controls in the UK has always been immaterial to our murder figures. So there never was a time when it was the norm where a “Brit could grab his revolver and head out the door.” It was a very rare occurrence in proportion to the size of the population and very much less common than ever occurred in the USA at any point in its history since settlement from Europe began. It is noteworthy that when Dunblane occurred and the “right to bear arms” was almost completely removed from the hands of the British people our murder figures did not budge in either direction. This underlines how insignificant and irrelevant gun ownership was (and still is) to the UK population.
With regard to your Chicago\Vermont reference you need to be more precise in relation to what you are talking about – and of course we cannot be sure what crime figures you are referring to or what geographical region they refer to. In any event 3.5 million is approaching 7 times the population of the state of Vermont in a very much smaller space than Vermont – providing for a radically different population density and making any type of sensible comparison impossible. Your reasoning, therefore, still does not “hold true” I also stick to my view that the region with the most guns per square mile also has the highest murder rate – an inescapable fact.
I am disappointed with the almost casual way you dismiss 500 tragedies a year as “quite minor”. This is almost 200 more than all the American military deaths incurred in Iraq during 2008 – ask the families of those patriots if they feel their sense of loss is “quite minor” in terms of the impact upon their wives, their husbands and their kids. A figure of 500 men, women and children killed every year is always significant and never minor, irrespective of the size of your population and irrespective of how important you feel your rights are. I am sure that there are a lot of grieving families out there who would in a heartbeat exchange your right to bear arms for the chance to have their child back with them again instead of in the ground. Of course you could always ask them to see the “cost benefit analysis” of their current situation. You might feel that my rhetoric is overly emotional – but that is the true coin in which these situations are really measured. It is always easy for the politicians to reduce the impact of these issues to “statistics” and “cost benefit studies” but the people who have suffered real loss fundamentally understand the real truth of the price they pay every single day.
Regards,
Abe
Abe, your assertion that the number of guns per square mile has any bearing on crime rate is nothing more than a wild guess. There is a difference between guns possessed by criminals and guns owned by lawful citizens.
In Chicago, for example, there are essentially no lawfully owned handguns. With the exception of a very few which have been lawfully owned since 1986, they are ALL illegal. How can you claim to guess that the number of guns per square mile has any bearing on the murder rate? No one even knows how many guns are illegally possessed there... criminals being rather unwilling to give statistics on their unlawfully possessed items.
Compare that with an area that has liberal gun control laws, and thus has a lot more legally owned guns. You may have a greater estimate of how many guns may be in such an area, but it's still an estimate.
The murder rate is based on the number of MURDERERS per 100,000 people, not on the number of any given inanimate object per square mile. Murderers murder-- guns do not. You are totally overlooking that murderers without guns still kill people, and good people with guns still don't kill people.
Britain may not have had the depth of the gun culture that we have here in America, but that does not mean that it has never been true that a person could lawfully grab a gun and go about his business armed.
The fact that Chicago, Washington, DC, New York, Oakland, etc., have high murder rates, and high gun murder rates, despite very restrictive gun laws, shows one of the points I am trying to make. You can control the gun law, but you can't make guns stop existing. Too many gun control proponents seem to equate gun control laws with a lack of guns.
If your assertion about murder rate being a function of the number of guns per square mile is true, then it would stand to reason that in 2003, the year for which I have statistics, there were many times more guns in the city of Washington, DC (44 murders per 100,000), a city where handguns had been completely illegal for decades, than in El Paso, Texas (3.6 murders per 100,000), where guns are legal and easy to obtain. Both cities had about 600,000 people at that time. (Wouldn't guns per 100,000 residents be a better measure than guns per square mile?)
Freedom is not free, Abe. There are a lot of things that we do that put ourselves, our families, and completeothers at risk. Every time you drive a car, you put innocent people you don't know at risk, not to mention any friends of family who. We're all human and we make mistakes-- either of us could cause a fatal car accident (that is, if you drive). 40,000 Americans die that way annally, but no one is proposing banning cars. We accept that life is a risky thing, and that the freedom that cars bring us is worth the risk.
Compared to that, 500 accidental deaths per year is not a lot-- and again, that 500 must be compared to the 800,000 to 1.5 million defensive gun uses in the US each year. It's still a massive net benefit to have guns legal, even though to people affected by the 500, it doesn't matter how many others were saved by guns.
At least in theory, we could all be a lot safer if the government controlled every aspect of our lives, prohibiting any item that might harm us. Cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, and fatty foods would have to go too, as these kill even more Americans than car accidents each year. Cars must go, of course, and so must swimming pools, power tools, and household cleaning chemicals that might be poisonous. What's a little dirt compared to saving lives?
The example above is intentionally absurd, in order to illustrate the point. Life is risky, and the government cannot and should not ban anything which could bring harm. Who would want to live in a place where we were stripped of every thing which could be a risk?
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Does anybody have any cited statistics on defensive civilian gun use in the United Kingdom? I highly doubt(with much certainty) that it will be higher than the United States. Hell I'm pretty sure that the United States has the highest defensive gun ratio(compared to criminal firearm use)on earth.
yea, this study is stupid and your analysis is full of shit.
And what? A criminal doesn't know what person is law abiding or not, nor could they possibly know if a person is carrying a gun, whether it's legal or not to carry it in that state.
This blog is bad and you should feel bad.
I read this very carefully, especially the comments about the higher rate of violent crime in the UK and yes, I dare say your statistics are right. However, this would seem to be the best reason for supporting gun control. If people tend to violence, even in the UK's apparently 'passive' culture, surely it would be a good idea to restrict their use of firearms so that they can only do damage with boot and fist.
Scotland yard once commented that the last time the UK had a murder rate approaching that of the present-day US, men carried rapiers as a matter of course, legitimately. If you arm everyone, you create the potential for a situation to turn from dangerous to deadly. Murderers are not the conveniently criminal, murderers are jilted lovers, spurned wives, depressed co-workers. They really don't need a gun and neither do you.
Then if guns are not the issue, Americans are....for such a "Proud to be American " culture says a lot eh...
From my cold dead hands, America is never be disarmed we love to be free more than we love to be safer.
LOL!!! "America is never be disarmed" !!!
This redneck can't even construct a sentence in English!!
It's idiots like this which demonstrate that gun control is needed to keep deadly force out of the hands of knuckle-dragging morons!!
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