Fairly good discussion you had there ICaSpeDa. I'm gonna requote one good data point there, since it's very relevant to the discussion, even if I won't comment on it this time.

in particular, though, the thing that leads me to believe that this dude is retarded is him making a big deal out of the US having "six times the number of large metropolitan areas!" as the UK. well, we also have five times the population of the UK. if he wanted to make some meaningful comparison, he'd look at the fraction of the US and UK populations that live in cities.

some other statistics are probably helpful. in england and wales, 9.3% of homicides are committed with a firearm, and in scotland it's 2.2%:

http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn01940.pdf

in the US it's in the neighborhood of 66%:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us...esbyweapon.svg

this, to me, says a lot about why the murder rate is so much lower in the UK. -- the non-firearm-related murder rates are actually pretty similar. it seems like guns play a significant role here.

Quote Originally Posted by ICantSpellDawg View Post
and yet you have higher violent crime rates per 100k? Interesting.
I did occur to me that you probably have a larger underreporting of violent crime than, say the UK. You have a large population that mistrusts the police and a more "manly" attitude, so I suspect that smaller violent crimes doesn't get reported as much. Does that explain the whole difference? No idea (but probably not), but it's worth to remember.