Vass wrote:
How does the fact that this study indicates that England and Wales, Canada, and Australia all have overall higher homocide rates than the US take anything out of the argument that the US has a higher gun-crime rate? It seems to be another of those "your negative feature makes our completely different negative feature look nowhere near as bad, so until you sort out your problem don't talk to us" type of arguments. Useless. Apples and Oranges.
It merely points out that, despite the amount of screaming that goes on about how crime-ridden and unsafe the U.S. is, you have a lower chance of being murdered here than in Canada, Australia, or Britain. Yes, you have a higher chance of being shot in the U.S., but saying "Hey, at least you weren't the victim of
gun violence!" isn't of much comfort to someone who has been stabbed to death.
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While I'm at it, I feel that Mauser, the author, left important questions unanswered, and in some cases asked the wrong questions entirely. He states that governments are introducing gun control to reduce criminal violence. However it's equally plausible that they intend specifically to reduce firearms crime and any overall reductions are a bonus. Mauser continues that gun laws causing a change in the level of firearms crime is not at issue and that of prime importance is that gun control should improve public safety. I would've thought that the major reason for *gun* control would be for prevention of *gun related* crime...
But one of the major hypotheses of the entire gun control argument, used by the pro-gun side, is that guns in the hands of private citizens discourage criminals. There is significant evidence to support this. Thus, any legislation that removes guns from the possession of law-abiding people would have to demonstrate that it would cut crime in sufficient numbers to "make up" for the increase in crimes that would occur without the deterrence of guns.
As Britain and Australia are proving, whatever drop may be caused by stricter gun legislation is
utterly wiped out by the crime-increasing effect of this lack of deterrence.
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Looks like the study was possibly written with its initial audience in mind, and while it's most certainly an interesting study well worth reading just for a differing opinion I can't help but notice that Mauser, as the president of a rifle club, defintely has personal reasons for arguing as he does.
Of course he does. But simply saying "He supports that argument for personal reasons" is not in and of itself a method of disproving that argument.
Finally, one bit of contention about American crime statistics is that they are not uniform across the board. From the FBI report of crime in the U.S. for 2002 (2003's full-year report is not available yet), here are some statistics:
Black murder victims: 6,730
White and Hispanic murder victims: 6,757
Black murderers: 5,579
White and Hispanic murderers: 5,356
Race-unknown murderers: 4,604
(Whites and Hispanics are lumped into one category, and Asians are placed into "other" alongside Native Americans and Pacific islanders. The "Other" category is very small and not of importance in this discussion)
These statistics may seem reasonable at first, and if they were per-capita then indeed they would be. But they are not per-capita; they are raw figures, and when a combined white/Hispanic population that comprises 75.1% of the total population has a murder count roughly equivalent to a black population that comprises 12.3% of the total, the disparity becomes very clear (population figures from the 2000 U.S. census).
Odd, isn't it, how Michael Moore managed to make an entire movie about murder and gun violence without ever mentioning this statistic. It's almost as if he has an axe to grind...