Saturday, March 22, 2008

What an amazing coincidence!

Earlier this morning, Awalk snapped at me for ignoring Europe (Once again, the US has 5 times the murder rate of western Europe...)
This afternoon, a fellow from a forum dealing with weapons links me to a very interesting blog page that deals with just the comparison between murder in the USA, and the UK.

Some selected parts:

  • when you remove the firearm stats, the US would still only slip down a few spots on the international rankings. We would still beat the UK, Canada, Australia, and pretty much all of Europe even if you don't remove any other countries' firearm stats.
  • (concerning the effects of gun legislation on the murder rate)
  • as you can see in the graphs, the fatal stabbings fell more than the rate of fatal shootings. Last I checked, however, the background checks doesn't apply to knives..

    But, yea, either way, the US beats the UK in the stabby category.

    Naturally, one could argue that could be because of their silly "knife control" laws or something. So next up, let's look at the blunt objects graph to the right. This category includes things like baseball bats, hammers, heavy rocks, and what have you. Yet despite the much ballyhooed availability of guns in the US, our murderers still use the caveman method twice as often as their counterparts in the UK.


So ... guns are the problem?

2 comments:

Yuri Orlov said...

Well, I went and replied to him. I shouldn't have done it, but he pissed me off. I've had my say and I don't intend to post anything else on there about it.

I'm glad you enjoy debating him because I wouldn't give him five minutes of my time. It's time I would never get back.

badthing1 said...

Hi Michael and Yuri,

Under Leave your comment, I see it says:

Keep things polite and civillized.

If you guys will please extend the same courtesy to my posters on my blog, perhaps they will reciprocate in kind.

We are all adults and have the maturity to decide whether we wish to continue insulting each other's characters or debate the issues at hand. I am hoping that you will decide to choose the latter.

Thank you and I wish you an interesting day. :)