If you read the article, its actually “gun crimes” that have dropped 40%, which I presume includes attempted murder.
Well, that’s what I get for not reading the article! :smack:
Let’s see - 2002 the homicide rate was 1.5 (see graph below)
In 2012 the homicide rate was 1.35
In my arithmetic, that’s a 10% reduction. Not quite the 50% you claim. And still higher than before the gun ban.
Here is a graph of homicides in UK:
Isn’t it interesting that immediately after the gun ban in 1997 for the next 20 years the homicide rate went up?
Your arithmetic must be iffy because it hasn’t been 20 years since 1997.
ETA: and no. There was a single doctor who had upwards of 250 patient deaths switched to homicide in those years.
I guess you didn’t notice that the graph takes that into account and plots that differently.
As for 20 years - yes, 10 years. So - in the UK homicide rate went up for 10 years after the 1997 gun ban (and is still higher today than it was then). Meantime in the US, without the gun ban, and with relaxation of CCW laws in a lot of states and an increase in gun ownership, since 1997 the homicide rate went down from 6.8 to 4.8 - 30% decrease. Interesting how that worked out, isn’t it?
Again, rates vs absolute numbers. Your first cite gives 1000 a decade ago vs 600 this year (the page I got my number from said 550). A 40% drop.
But a decade obviously isn’t a good number to pick, since that ends up on the year of Shipman’s murder spree.
So, if you take Shipman’s murders out of the equation, the UK homicide rate dropped only 10% in the last decade (other countries’ rates including the US dropped quite a bit more), and is still higher today than it was before the gun ban.
Yeah, exactly. One thing that really irritates me is the US debate using the UK as some sort of evidence or example - either pro or anti gun.
Why do you imagine that is?
20 quatloos says it’s something to do with the criminals knowing that British subjects are defenceless. :dubious:
Don’t know. Why do you think? Especially considering that at the same time in other countries (like in the US) homicide rates were dropping.
Sounds pretty okay to me.
Never seen a gun in private ownership and never want to.
Hey, it’s you who posited that it was “interesting”. It’s almost like different countries have different demographics, different population densities, different economies, different crime reporting standards, different social trends, different patterns of drug usage and demand. For a start.
You aren’t under the impression that Scotland, England and Wales were heavily armed prior to the post-Dunblane handgun ban, are you? Because that would be wrong and stupid.
And yet, in all those different Western countries, almost uniformly, homicide rates were dropping while in UK they were rising after the 1997 gun ban.
This is why ‘England bans guns, so the U.S. needs to ban guns because England’s example proves the effectiveness’ and ‘In Switzerland everyone has a gun and they have a low crime rate, so everyone needs to be armed’ are not valid arguments IMO.
So why do you think this was so? Do you think it was because of the 1997 gun ban, seeing as you mention it?
Exactly.
I am stating a fact. Since I have no data to back my opinion, I won’t state it.
I was just curious why you mentioned 1997 so much, that’s all. It’s good that people don’t opine on things they don’t know about. 
Because that was the year of the gun ban law. Do you think the politicians who passed it expected the homicide rate after it was instituted to go sharply up? Yet that’s what happened.