And yet, as we have gone over numerous times in the past, those "Americans killed at a greater rate" Are often (50 percent or higher) people with extensive criminal records living in a select handful of neighborhoods typically in a major urban area. There is no gun violence to note, no more than in Europe, outside of those specific communities.
Again, only 3 US states can match the murder rate for England and Wales, and the UK rate contains large cities like London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Gtr Manchester etc.
The rates are comparable to the US homicide rates and shows that hardened criminals in either country will kill each other about as often, and will make a deadly weapon out of a plastic coffee cup lid if that is their only option. Maybe, we just have (and have long had) more of "this kind" of criminal? See my second post.
It's not "more of this kind", because it's a rate, not an absolute number. The evidence shows that the US prison population, minus guns, carries out less murders than the US average, whereas the British prison population carries out substantially more than the UK rate. Perhaps we have similar rates of violent criminals, but the absence of guns makes them less dangerous. After all, in prison, where guns are not available, our criminals are every bit as murderous as yours.
There is already a firearm black market supporting illegal gun sales at a fraction of that price and profit.
Because supply is so easy. Cut off the source of supply, and suddenly criminals have to go to much greater lengths to obtain a gun.
Importing guns will add some, but not extremely so, to that cost if the UK is any example.
Well, a handgun in the UK costs $2 - $4,000, if you have the contacts to buy one. Homemade guns using blanks to fire ball bearings are cheaper, but not the sort of thing you want to use if you can help it. Guns that might have been used in murders are cheaper, but of course leave you open to life in prison, even if you never fire it yourself.
For the gangs, it could easily be part of a package deal with their cocaine suppliers.
Probably. Mid level drug dealers require firearms to do their "job", so price isn't much of a deterrent. But they tend to keep the guns to deal with other drug gangs, not use them on the public in street robberies.
You better tell that to the Guardian:
Despite recent slight falls in the levels of gun crime, inner south Manchester remains one of the most dangerous parts of the country. 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.
In Greater Manchester the rate was to 10 per 100,000, while in Longsight, Moss Side and Hulme it was 140 per 100,000.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3...-105248,00.html
I wouldn't trust British newspapers that much.
Greater Manchester has a population of 2.5 million. If the firearms murder rate was 10 per 100,000, that would be 250 firearms murders in Manchester in 2002.
In fact there were 97 homicides involving firearms in the 2001/2002 year, and 81 in 2002/2003, for the whole of England and Wales.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hosb0104.pdfI suspect someone in the Guardian has misread figures given for crimes per million, rather than per 100,000.
BTW, politicians in both countries (and many cities) manipulate statistics to best serve their purposes.
Gun-related killings and injuries (excluding air weapons) have increased over fourfold since 1998,” he wrote. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...icle2328368.ece
Ah, but what's an "injury"? In the UK it includes
stress from seeing the gun.
The one figure that they cannot manipulate one way or the other is the number killed by firearms. It was 49 last year, down from the high of 2002, and lower than the figures for the early 90s.
As I pointed out, the US has more inner city gang problems than the UK has, and has had for over 200 years even when gun laws between the two countries were the same or less restrictive in the UK.
It's not gun laws, it's the availability of guns. Guns used to be freely available in Britain, but because a handgun cost a few weeks wages, very few were about.
It's the
availability of guns, not the specific laws surrounding them. (I'll bet that 50 years from now there will be far more crime committed with laser weapons, even though there will be laws against them, and lasers are available now.)
Why is it, though, that those handful of communities have those problems in Manchester, etc.? Why do people in those communities keep killing each other while people, perhaps a few block over, do not? Answer me that?
I don't know. Why is crime concentrated amongst the urban poor?
I know that it is, though.
And I also know that it is even when waves of immigrants come and displace the existing urban poor, as seen in, for example, London.
This peer reviewed (Harvard) paper points out some of the logical shortcomings with the more guns = more crime grossly broad hypothesis:
But it's a straw man argument. Nobody is saying guns cause crime, any more than Kleck is really arguing guns prevent crime.
The argument is that the availability of guns to criminals results in increased murder rates.
Why is it that the most violent UK city has more robberies than the US average, but less people killed in robberies? More violent assaults, less people killed in violent assaults? Why do robberies committed with guns in the US have a higher murder rate than robberies committed with knives?
The simple fact is a criminal with a gun is a lot more dangerous than a criminal who hasn't got a gun.
Very few buy them legally or go through the same channels. Most (perhaps 70 percent) couldn't pass the background check. Is there a criminal black market network in place where people break the law and face prison time to sell a gun for $100 or $200 in profit. Sure. And straw purchasers and thieves should be punished rigorously. It does get back to the earlier point though, where $100 - $200 in profits is enough to risk jail time for supplying illegal guns.
Because the risk is low. But the risk, and effort, in acquiring guns abroad, and smuggling them in, is much, much greater. It's even greater if there isn't a legal market in the country.
If a gun dealer is taking a handgun to a criminal contact in the UK, and gets stopped, then as soon as the police find the gun, he's arrested. He doesn't have a licence, and is facing 5 years in prison. He will be on remand, unlikely to get bail.
Now imagine the same case in the US. The illegal dealer probably has a licence himself, so if the police stop him with a gun, he's covered. They have to catch him in the act of selling.
And that's before you get to ammunition, which is freely available in the US, very hard to get hold of in the Uk.
Again, you use a gross statistic that does not reflect the reality of violent crime in the US. Illinois is a very safe state. Cook County is actually a very safe county.
Is it? I looked up the number of murders for Cook County. 2000 - 2004 there were 3,453 murders. I suppose you could consider that safe, if you weren't one of the 3,453 murdered, or one of their family or close friends.
We actually have entire states where you could drive for 2-3 hours and not see another human, which skews any gross national statistic. Again, you cannot make an apples to apples comparison here. Where is your Montana, Alaska, Texas or a dozen other similar areas?
But these rural areas should make the US
safer. If you look at murder rates, they are higher in urban areas.
Aside from London, your "urban areas" tend to be quaint villages nestled around a variety of mid-sized cities and towns
No. Take Greater Manchester. It's an area of old industrial towns that expanded until they made one giant urban area. Places like Trafford, Bolton, Salford, Stockport etc are not "quaint villages".
with a largely homogeneous population
The police and politicians in the UK don't like to give breakdowns of crime by race. However, I did find a nice research document on firearms crime in Gtr Manchester from 1997 - 2000.
Out of 46 people shot in Manchester in the period, 76% were black, 7% Asian, 17% white. Out of the suspected shooters, 69% were black, 25% white, 6% Asian.
In fact, lets look at the 10 largest cities comparing the US and UK. Oops, let's make it 11 so we can get a 2nd UK city in there.
1. New York 8,214,426
2. London 7.2 Million
3. Los Angeles 3,849,378
4. Chicago 2,833,321
5. Houston 2,144,491
6. Phoenix 1,512,986
7. Philadelphia 1,448,394
8. San Antonio 1,296,682
9. San Diego 1,256,951
10. Dallas 1,232,940
11. Birmingham 992,000
Well, the figures are a bit off, for example Gtr Manchester should be 5th on the list. But you seem to miss the point. We are talking
rates. As the US has about 5.5 times the population, you should see about 5.5 times the population in large cities. In fact the top ten, even excluding Gtr Manchester, shows about 23.5 million living in US cities of over a million, 7.2 million living in British cities of over a million.
If you put those as rates, 1 in 7.9 residents of England and Wales live in cities over 1 million population, compared to 1 in 12.7 US citizens. And as I said, that excludes Manchester.
That should make US murder
rates lower, because a smaller
proportion of your population lives in large cities.
I don't feel any less safe in the US. In real life terms, I'm not less safe.
In real terms, you are.
