Newtown School Shootings

[ICantSpellDawg]

311,000,000 people in the US, 62,000 in the UK - we are not "such a small country". The population of England is 50,000,000 or there about - there is no state government - I share parliament with 62,600,000 other Britons.

I'd say my government should be just as remote as yours. We're also not under "tight control" - I'm lucky if I see a cop a week and I live in the "County Town" which is also one of the wealthiest and best resourced town in two or three counties. You can forget about CCTV, half of the cameras have no tape.

and yet you have higher violent crime rates per 100k? Interesting.

[Ironside]

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.

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.

[Sir Moody]

can you name your source for the claim the UK has a higher violent crime rate per capita than the US - the only sources I can find was an article in the Mail in 2009 and a corresponding article in the Telegraph - hardly a reliable source since they were Anti Labour at the time

[ICantSpellDawg]

can you name your source for the claim the UK has a higher violent crime rate per capita than the US - the only sources I can find was an article in the Mail in 2009 and a corresponding article in the Telegraph - hardly a reliable source since they were Anti Labour at the time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vi...81-to-2007.png

It was a comparison between the FBI rates and Home Office. The data was presented in this video which I have been posting.

[Sir Moody]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vi...81-to-2007.png

It was a comparison between the FBI rates and Home Office. The data was presented in this video which I have been posting.

yes but what was the source? that is just an info graphic with no links to the source data so it cant be fact checked

I am not fundamentally doubting (we do have a problem with drunk violence over here) but I take any claims on statistics with a BIG pinch of salt unless they provide the links to the original data (wiki and youtube don't count)

It is entirely possible that the Home office counts offences the FBI doesn't consider violent crime - which would immediately invalidate any comparison

this is usually why we compare homicide rates - its one of the few crimes we universally recognize

[Idaho]

My guess is that these stats compare violent crime but remove actual murders. Which provides a meaningless comparison.

[Husar]

My guess is that these stats compare violent crime but remove actual murders. Which provides a meaningless comparison.

The only meaningful comparison is the one with atmospheric lead levels.

[ICantSpellDawg]

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.

I do appreciate that you recognize significant demographic differences between the two countries that may affect rates. I agree that under-reporting could be a larger chunk if you agree that the same population might have much higher rates of homicide and cannot reasonably be compared with the UK.

[Ironside]

I do appreciate that you recognize significant demographic differences between the two countries that may affect rates. I agree that under-reporting could be a larger chunk if you agree that the same population might have much higher rates of homicide and cannot reasonably be compared with the UK.

I agree on that you have an entirely different gun culture that would be very hard to change, for better or worse.

It's just weird that your crime areas are very polite until they shoot eachother to death. UK got very high violent crime statistics, while yours is very low. In part it's different definitions (for example, in the UK any sexual assult is an assult, in the US only forcible rape counts as an assult), but it's one area that it would be very good with an excellent summary report. Really needed to properly compare the data.

Murder is popular in crime statistics since it's hard to not notice the body, so it's suffering least from underreporting and classifications.