We, americans do enough bad things to criticise us for. No need to resort to lies and misleading statistics about us to show your superiority
in some matters - because you do not have it!
This post was a reply in another thread but I see this kind of ignorance everywhere, so here are the data with references.
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Nashwan: There is a big difference between futher gun control in Britain, which had very few firearm crimes, and the US, which has a huge number .
It's rather like banning skiing and climbing to reduce the accident rate. It would have zero effect in the Netherlands, a large effect in Switzerland. You are either lying here or ignorant of US conditions. I will give you the benefit of the doubt, assume ignorance and enlighten you.
Murder Offenders by Age, Sex, and Race, 2001 (excluding 9/11):
White - 5174 (33.4%)
Black - 5521 (35.6%)
Other - 273
Unknown - 4520 (29.2%)
Assume the "unknown" split among white and black equally - even though IMO more unsolved crime is likely to involve blacks than whites.
Note that hispanics comprise almost 12% of the population but in US govt. statistics are counted as "whites" if criminals but often as "hispanics" if victims - which worsens white stats considerably - but let's pretend that everyone is white here - no hispanics.
Whites (+hispanics) that comprise 88% of the population totaled ~48% of murderers in 2001 while blacks who comprised 12% of the population totaled ~52% of murderers!
So the rate among whites is really at least 2.5 times lower than the total one for US. I believe that number would be quite in line with those of UK and other european countries!
Whites in USA mostly live separately from blacks - geographically, culturally, etc. So we really have two distinct countries interspersed on US territory -
mostly white 1st-world country with non-remarkable statistics despite widespread gun ownership and 3rd-world african country wity typical 3-rd world african violence statistics...
It makes as much sense to limit gun-ownership rights of law-abiding whites because of crimes commited by blacks as it is to screw up Netherlands because of climbing deaths in Switzerland!
Not that I propose to limit gun-ownership of law-abiding blacks either - just want to show you there is not much difference between people in UK and similar people comprising majority of US population despite huge disparity in gun-ownership.
miko
