You guys and your guns...

[Svartalf]

So your excuse is that you don't put criminals in jail, even though doing so would be more effective in preventing murder than banning guns? Me, I'd rather put the criminals in jail and have the lower murder rate.

The reference I checked showed the level of incarceration in New Hampshire was related far more to ethnicity than criminality.

Yes, in NZ, we do put criminals in prison. That certainly includes murderers. But our low murder rate (1.4, not 1.7) is due to a lack of guns.

I certainly don't agree with that... until the 1500s, the murder rate was not that low due to lack of guns, and the generalisation of firearms in the 3 following centuries did not correlate a huge rise of homicides, just a higher ratio of direarm murders in the global number.

When there's murder to be done, and no guns, people will use other means, and they are quite ingenious in that regard. Firearm assault and murder rates are very low in the UK due to firearms being scarce, overall violent crime using other means (fists and feet, blunt objects, knives, etc) are relatively high for western Europe.

[JimC]

Svartalf wrote:

...Firear assault and murder rates are very low in the UK due to firearms being scarce...

This, and this alone, is the Groper's point...

[Svartalf]

Svartalf wrote:

...Firear assault and murder rates are very low in the UK due to firearms being scarce...

This, and this alone, is the Groper's point...

OOops... I thought that his point was that ALL murder and violent crime was low.

Me, I put it more to economic and cultural factors.

[JimC]

Svartalf wrote:

...Firear assault and murder rates are very low in the UK due to firearms being scarce...

This, and this alone, is the Groper's point...

OOops... I thought that his point was that ALL murder and violent crime was low.

Me, I put it more to economic and cultural factors.

And many in the thread have agreed that these too play a part. This thread hopefully rises above the "bash yanks coz they're red-neck gun freaks"

[Tyrannical]

Svartalf wrote:

...Firear assault and murder rates are very low in the UK due to firearms being scarce...

This, and this alone, is the Groper's point...

Wanna guess who in the UK commits the most gun crime

[Warren Dew]

Svartalf wrote:

...Firear assault and murder rates are very low in the UK due to firearms being scarce...

This, and this alone, is the Groper's point...

To the contrary, he's incorrectly claiming the causation is to overall murder rates, not just firearms murder rates.

And many in the thread have agreed that these too play a part. This thread hopefully rises above the "bash yanks coz they're red-neck gun freaks"

Considering the claim is made in the face of contrary evidence, the thread is exactly yet another "bash yanks coz they're red-neck gun freaks" thread.

[Svartalf]

Svartalf wrote:

...Firear assault and murder rates are very low in the UK due to firearms being scarce...

This, and this alone, is the Groper's point...

Wanna guess who in the UK commits the most gun crime

Hunters, cops, and the military?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Svartalf wrote:

...Firear assault and murder rates are very low in the UK due to firearms being scarce...

This, and this alone, is the Groper's point...

Wanna guess who in the UK commits the most gun crime

Hunters, cops, and the military?

Groper?

[Blind groper]

Sorry.
I was out of town for a little while and away from my trusty old computer.

i do not think I have said that firearms are the only cause of a high murder rate, but they are certainly a potent cause. I also will keep pointing out that, for the USA, it is not really firearms overall, but hand guns that make the difference. Other nations, like my own, still have firearms in the hands of a lot of the population, but not hand guns. The nations with low murder rates seem to all have almost total bans on hand guns.

Michael Shermer recently made a statement, following the Batman movie massacre, that America must ban semi automatic or fully automatic weapons. I can see his thinking, but it is crappy logic. Overall, such weapons kills very few people. Hand guns, though, kill from 8,000 to 14,000 people each year and wound twice that number in deliberate shootings.

Britain, by comparison, per capita, has just 2% of the murders by firearm, and just over 20% of the overall number of murders.

I do not think you can get past the fact that the wide availability of hand guns in the USA is resulting in many thousands of unnecessary deaths each year.

[JimC]

Warren Dew wrote:

Considering the claim is made in the face of contrary evidence, the thread is exactly yet another "bash yanks coz they're red-neck gun freaks" thread.

The extreme defensiveness of this reply leads me to the obverse point:

Some Americans will never consider that even the slightest criticism of their society is ever justified - how can one ever improve on the perfect democratic society?

[FBM]

I just looked up the global intentional homicide rates by country. We come in 35th. Wtf. C'mon, people, we can catch up to Costa Rica in a year if we set our minds to it!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... icide_rate

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Warren Dew wrote:

Considering the claim is made in the face of contrary evidence, the thread is exactly yet another "bash yanks coz they're red-neck gun freaks" thread.

The extreme defensiveness of this reply leads me to the obverse point:

Some Americans will never consider that even the slightest criticism of their society is ever justified - how can one ever improve on the perfect democratic society?

"extreme defensiveness" =/= dismissiveness, Jim. Just sayin'.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

We need to start a thread about how every should adopt the US system of government, as theirs is a really bad idea. That should be fun.

[Svartalf]

We do need your second amendment, properly applied of course, none of that freaking red tape, and anything remotely man portable to be freely available (actually, I think that every civilian should be issued with antitank rocket launchers and ammo, would help deal with morons who can't drive or park their wheeled trashbin properly)

[Gawdzilla Sama]

We do need your second amendment, properly applied of course, none of that freaking red tape, and anything remotely man portable to be freely available (actually, I think that every civilian should be issued with antitank rocket launchers and ammo, would help deal with morons who can't drive or park their wheeled trashbin properly)

Over-population solved.