I'm surprised no one here has made mention of the correlation between led in the atmosphere and violent crime.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
171–180 of 266 posts
Re: Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/american-gun-deaths... As others have mentioned, a hefty percentage of those deaths are suicides. Would those suicides have happened if the option of a firearm wasn't available? Perhaps.
Japan has a very high suicide rate despite near non-existence of guns.
The issue at stake here is the counterfactual ‘If guns were (not) available, would the suicide rate be different’.
How does your (oddly specific) statistic address this question?
Re: Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
#173The article "In Medical Triumph, Homicides Fall Despite Soaring Gun Violence" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732471250457813... from December 8, 2012 provides some perspective on falling absolute numbers (and thus a falling rate) of gunshot deaths. "Crime experts who attribute the drop in killings to better policing or an aging population fail to square the image of a more tranquil nation with this stat…
There's a graph of "non-fatal violent firearm crime" right in the article. It looks flat to me between 2001 and 2011. Are both true somehow? Those facts seem to be in conflict.
The one you really want is the third one: "All non-fatal violent crime".
Basically, all crime is down from its 1993 peak, and it so happens that firearm-related crimes are a subset of that. I don't have the time to run numbers to see what the percentage change is, but it'd probably be enlightening.
Re: Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
750 were killed by hammers or clubs which includes any blunt force attack (vase, bat, golf club, etc. I am assuming that you're accurately quoting a number, though last I saw that number was more in the 450 range). Secondly every home has numerous objects that qualify as "clubs", many of them serving valid, functional roles (for instance to hammer, or to hit balls, etc). In many households a firearm has one single pu…
>The second is that few argue for "rifle control", but instead want "gun control". Except that's not what was actually happening. Most of what was hotly debated over the last few months has been over an "Assault Weapons Ban", that is a ban on certain semi-automatic rifles, very rarely involved in crime. It was only after that was defeated that people started talking about universal background checks. >Those guns that…
>Except that's not what was actually happening. Most of what was hotly debated over the last few months has been over an "Assault Weapons Ban", that is a ban on certain semi-automatic rifles, very rarely involved in crime.
That's because they knew that the nuts in NRA and other pro-gun lobbies would never in a 1000 years accept a total "gun control" law. So they scaled down their proposal.
Plus you also have this BS amendment about the "right to bear arms" that you treat as some kind of holy scripture.
I wonder what would have happened if some part of the constitution called for the "right to own slaves".
Re: Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
#175Just a sanity check: "Researchers have studied the decline in firearm crime and violent crime for many years, and though there are theories to explain the decline, there is no consensus among those who study the issue as to why it happened."
If I had to guess, I'd say it's because it's harder to get away with a gun crime now than it used to be. TV shows like CSI probably have more to do with the decline in gun violence than any other environmental factors.
It's probably a combination of things, but the correlation to the banning of lead seems to be the highest of any other single reason.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
Re: Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually I forget where I read it but there is a hypothesis going around that the overall crime reduction has to do more with liberalization of things like birth control and access to abortion options. At work at the moment and don't have time to pull up the details until tonight, but the examples given say of romania where none of the above is legally available still has a high crime rate. The general gist of things…
That has mostly been shown to only have mild statistical relevancy, not nearly enough to be the majority of the explanation.
The Freakonomics explanation (I just finished reading that chapter), says legalized abortion was a major contributor to decreasing crime rates in the 90's. However there were other contributing factors too. Author notes that it wasn't the "innovative policing strategies" of NYC that helped decrease crime rate, but the fact that they hired so many more police. There's a correlation there too. There's also a lot of discussion about crack cocaine and how that increased crime at its peak, but then related crime subsided.
Re: Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's tough to kill at a distance with a hammer, unlike a rifle. I suppose that's why people fear rifles more, but honestly I think the hammer killer is more frightening. If someone decides to randomly put a bullet through my head from half a mile away, I'll never even hear it coming. But if someone decides to crush my skull with a hammer, I'm going to be around long enough to know that I'm going to die in a really st…
These hammer-wielding maniacs rival many an American shooting spree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnepropetrovsk_maniacs
That's the most horrific thing I have ever read
Re: Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The second is that few argue for "rifle control", but instead want "gun control". Except that's not what was actually happening. Most of what was hotly debated over the last few months has been over an "Assault Weapons Ban", that is a ban on certain semi-automatic rifles, very rarely involved in crime. It was only after that was defeated that people started talking about universal background checks. >Those guns that…
>>How is gun control going to help our suicide rate What if I think people have a right to kill themselves?
Man up and jump off a bridge. Or issue guns with only one bullet. It's not like you're going to miss.
Re: Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
#179Of course it is. All violent crime is down. That has nothing to do with the fact that kids are still accidentally getting shot. I propose a new law; if a child (under 18) is found in possession of a gun the gun owner is fined $50,000. If the gun's ownership cannot be established, the parents or legal guardians are fined $50,000 instead. People might be a little more serious about locking up their guns and not letting…
This is an awfully wrong approach. As with things like Alcohol, if you teach your children how to operate and act responsibly, they get into less trouble with it as an adult.
If you stilt their growth and don't allow them to touch a gun until they're 18, they won't have developed enough to handle it themselves without supervision.
Re: Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a baseball bat in my house and it's not there to hit balls but to hit anyone who attempts to come into my home without my permission. I doubt I'll ever need to use it, but there you go, it's one single purpose is to "maim or kill", which in reality is actually protection and I'd be happy with fear itself being the deciding factor. I don't come down on either side on gun control, they're mostly banned here in t…
You are correct, but it's a matter of degree. It's much, much easier to maim or kill with a gun than with a baseball bat and that's why I'm glad no one has guns in the UK. If someone comes at me with a baseball bat I can run away. If someone comes at me with a gun, I'm dead.
I read somewhere about a study which suggested that some ridiculous high number of gun uses (90+% if memory serves) were resolved without discharging the gun. The thing is, these situations were rarely, if ever, reported (and if they were, it's often up to speculation if the situations would actually have led to a crime), leading to a systematic difficulty in accurately deciding the effectiveness of guns in crime prevention.
The point is, if someone pulls a gun, and you run away, they have very likely achieved their goal, and are unlikely to discharge the gun.