Another fun chart

[SwordsMaster]

After my opium chart last week, I give you something more controversial. Now, keep it civil. This is NOT against gun control, but it seems fairly obvious that, while in Europe people swear a lot, and threaten people drunk, our co-specimens from across the pond actually kill people. Note that I didn't say guns kill people.

The murder rate for England and Wales is higher than anywhere in western Europe (except Finland, Belgium and France) but Britain still lags Canada and America. However, when it comes to non-deadly violence, Britain soars ahead. In a 28-country International Crime Victims Survey, Britons were the second likeliest (after Icelanders) to say they had been threatened or assaulted in the past five years, ahead of countries with much higher murder rates.

So please focus on the sociological issue, and not the logistical one. After all you can kill people with a sharpened stone.

And feel free to rehost the chart

Chart re-hosted below. ~Kukri

[HoreTore]

It's pretty darn obvious, the more lethal weapon you have access to when you're mad, the easier it is to kill. Here in europe we don't have access to weapons, and as such people are usually only punched...

[CountArach]

*Awaits CR's post and the 6-7 pages of deate that it creates*

[Tribesman]

Damn I thought it was going to be that funny one .
Where despite the British media making a big song and dance about knife crime being on the increase yet the numbers showing that it is just the same as it has been for a long while .
Which was accompanied by an "expert" saying that the numbers are wrong and the government manipulated them and how easy it was to manipulate them to make a point , and then providing his own numbers which he honestly hadn't manipulated which showed that he was right and the others were wrong .

[Husar]

It's pretty darn obvious, the more lethal weapon you have access to when you're mad, the easier it is to kill. Here in europe we don't have access to weapons, and as such people are usually only punched...

Note how the countries which are culturally more lax about deadly weapons have higher homicide rates as well. you can kill someone with a sharp stone but you usually don't have one lying around in case you need it...
Concerning violence it mainly makes England, wales and the Netherlands look bad, considering that countries with the same or more population like France, Germany and Italy are far lower on the scale. One could deduct from that that the population of a country doesn't have much to do with it's crime rate, so what are the social and political differences between those countries?
I've always seen the Netherlands as similar to Germany in many things, I never knew they were that violent...

[Don Corleone]

Doesn't the 5.5/100K number of fatalities for the USA include the number of self-inflicted gunshot casualties, not just homicides?

I'm not certain I understand how you can say this isn't supposed to be a pro/con gun control thread, then ask folks to pay attention to the Sociology, not the logistics. Gun control is all about what sort of society you wish to be, and whether you're willing to sacrifice justice for safety.

[SwordsMaster]

Doesn't the 5.5/100K number of fatalities for the USA include the number of self-inflicted gunshot casualties, not just homicides?

I'm not certain I understand how you can say this isn't supposed to be a pro/con gun control thread, then ask folks to pay attention to the Sociology, not the logistics. Gun control is all about what sort of society you wish to be, and whether you're willing to sacrifice justice for safety.

It isn't about guns. It's about the people who use them, as simple as that. Why is it that you must own a gun to be "free"? Specially since the government listens to your phone conversations anyway, and can restrict your travel and use of your own money anyway. What are guns guaranteeing? From the economic perspective they have a high cost in acquisition - licenses, their actual cost, precautions to keep them safely, etc - and a negligible chance to actually use them, kind of like your chance of winning on the roulette, so if it isn't about your freedom, and it isn't because you expect to use them, then what is the point of having them? Specially since the countries with lax gun ownership laws (like US and Switzerland) are the ones that rank highest on fatal crimes.

Or am I not understanding something?

[Don Corleone]

It isn't about guns. It's about the people who use them, as simple as that. Why is it that you must own a gun to be "free"? Specially since the government listens to your phone conversations anyway, and can restrict your travel and use of your own money anyway. What are guns guaranteeing? From the economic perspective they have a high cost in acquisition - licenses, their actual cost, precautions to keep them safely, etc - and a negligible chance to actually use them, kind of like your chance of winning on the roulette, so if it isn't about your freedom, and it isn't because you expect to use them, then what is the point of having them? Specially since the countries with lax gun ownership laws (like US and Switzerland) are the ones that rank highest on fatal crimes.

Or am I not understanding something?

I think we've been around and around about this, but at the end of the day, it really boils down to how you view the Social Contract. Do you view yourself as the fundamental atomic unit within the body politic, or are you a subset of a larger whole, and the fundamental element is the society itself.

I personally view myself as the autonomous unit. I am responsible for my own safety, happiness and welfare. The guarantees for these things listed in the Consitution are more of a promise not to infinge on these then they are to provide for them. I have something of an antagonistic view of government. In my mind, it is a necessary but thoroughly corrupt evil. The individuals within it may not be, in fact they may be decent and upstanding individuals (I dream of a day when they all are!) But the role of a proper functioning government is to control its citizens behavior and force them to do things that are against their own personal best interests (taxes, military service, eminent domain, etcetera). Governments may use different methods for accomplishing this, such as coercion and manipulation, but at the end of the day, governments don't actually make or do anything, they manipulate the goods and services of the autonomous individuals they control.

But even the difference between a representative democracy and a dictatorship is that in a reprsentative democracy, you get to pick who holds ultimate power over you. That's it. So, when we as free individuals enter into concourse in a venture such as government, and we agree to surrender some of our individual rights so that the group as a whole can prosper, certain guarantees need to be provided for.

That's all the Constitution is at the end of the day. I know a lot of Europeans deride American Constitutionalists for having an ideallic view of an arcane document, but it's a contract. In fact, it is THE contract.

And as I'm signing my autonomy away, I expect certain provisional protections. One of these is the right to defend myself, against intruders and against a tyranical government. Now, you can tell me "you don't really need that right" all you want, but I can make the very same argument about all other rights American citizens enjoy. Assuming I'm innocent, I don't really NEED a right not to incriminate myself, correct?

As for why more Americans die in dysfunctional conflict situations than Europeans, as I've already told you, your numbers are somewhat skewed. But even assuming the numbers of Americans murdered per 100K is dramatically higher than it is for most European countries, I would say it's a complex question that has a complex answer. One facet of it is access to firearms, sure, but that's not the only aspect.

If access to firearms was the primary reason Americans die at a higher rate than Western Europeans, you would expect Myanmar, or a host of Latin American countries that like Western Europe, have also outlawed personal firearm ownership to have zero murder rates, or at least very low ones. But your slide doesn't show countries like them (or China, or other Asian countries, or African countries for that matter).

[Husar]

It isn't about guns. It's about the people who use them, as simple as that.

Well, Europeans aren't people who use guns so basically this thread has nothing to do with Europeans then? Makes me wonder why you mentioned the British then.

[Ironside]

Doesn't the 5.5/100K number of fatalities for the USA include the number of self-inflicted gunshot casualties, not just homicides?

I'm not certain I understand how you can say this isn't supposed to be a pro/con gun control thread, then ask folks to pay attention to the Sociology, not the logistics. Gun control is all about what sort of society you wish to be, and whether you're willing to sacrifice justice for safety.

Homicide as defined here includes murder and nonnegligent manslaughter which is the willful killing of one human being by another. The general analyses excluded deaths caused by negligence, suicide, or accident; justifiable homicides; and attempts to murder. Justifiable homicides based on the reports of law enforcement agencies are analyzed separately

This is how the 5,5/100k number is calculated.
So that Lemur was right makes that case non-existant in these statistics btw.

I do love the justice for safety remark though, it's so interpretable. Are it the ones who wants guns who trade justice for safety or the other way around?

I'll maintain the idea that the "US gun factor" is the American's relations to guns as personal defense, spreading to the criminals as well, not the amount of guns itself (although it certainly not improving the problem).
That isn't the sole problem of course, so what other factor plays into that murder rate?
And why is GB and Netherlands so high in the threat rate?

BTW Don, unless you got some other source the Finns are killing eachother about 3 more than the Norweigians. I'm not sure that I would classify that as less violence.
The main reason here seems to be violent drunks (most murderers and victims are drunk).

[Tribesman]

Let's keep it civil.

That was civil , well as civil as you can be when faced with someone writing such utter nonsense .