Legality has nothing to do with it. You did draw an incorrect correlation: We have lots of violence because we have lots of guns. That implies that if there were fewer guns, there would be less gun violence, which is a completely useless and incorrect assumption.
Uh, hello, did you actually read the thread? Did you read beyond the first paragraph of what I wrote? About half of my post is about machetes.
Gahr? I live in a city of well over 2 million. This is larger than the combined population of the Dakotas and Wyoming.
Of course you don’t compare the two countries. You can’t even find solid demographic data that applies to all Americans or all Canadians. It’s true that clarification of the OP’s issue is required. The classic gun death comparison has been between the cities of Seattle and Vancouver, comparable in population, standards of living and weather. Similar parallels can be drawn between Toronto and Buffalo, Regina and Minneapolis/St. Paul, etc.
A week to get from Boston to Atlanta? Did you take the scenic route? I did Washington to Savannah in one day (admittedly I had taken way too many caffeine pills). Boston/Atlanta would be three days, tops.
Skirting the firearm issue and back to my take on the OP:
There seem to be MANY instances of machete-type violence out there. It seems they are often chosen specifically as weapons of terror and torture. Lots of examples of this in South American and African conflicts… some in Asia, as well, although not as famous.
BUT… machetes are very common in the US, especially in rural/semi-rural areas such as where I live. I don’t think the use of tools as weapons is so much a matter of availability as it is a matter of intention (a desire to torture or maim), and hoped-for terror effect. I don’t fear death by firing squad nearly as much as I fear maiming, torture and dismemberment.
There are many gruesome ways for people to be killed (think lynching, necklacing, the classic cement overshoes, ad nauseum).
Most of them require minimal, unsophisticated tools that were not intended to inflict death. Interestingly, many would be very difficult to use defensively.
So, yes, in places where common tools are deadly tools, said tools are sometimes used for violence. This would occur in instances where motivations are depraved and political.
Kind of gives me a good feeling about our political scene…
I dunno. I’d be hard pressed to find two countries that are more similar than the U.S. and Canada.
Without a doubt there are some differences in the way of politics, but overall, we are much more similar than we are different.
Statistics can always be disputed in one way or another, but nonetheless consider this:
Canada, with a population of about 30 million records around 500 homicides per year.
The U.S., with about ten times the population sees on average 20,000 homicides per year.
How do you explain this discrepancy without considering the availability of firearms?
“Primitive society”?! Please refrain from borderline racist statements.
Machetes are seen primarily as weapons in many parts of the world. For example, while I was looking for statistics on machete-related violence, I ran across this analysis, explaining lowers levels of violent deaths in indigenous communities (translation mine):
I also found a study done in an emergency room in Honduras where more than half of the injuries were caused by machetes. When I was living in Venezuela I noticed an inordinate number of people with missing limbs. My friend, who usually knows the straight dope about things, attributed it to machete fights. The machete has been one of the primary weapons of choice in the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Rwanda.
So… the answer is yes, where machetes are common, machete violence tends to be common but does not seem to be inevitable. I’m not going to attempt to draw any conclusions about gun control based on this fact.
:rolleyes: Get over yourself. sheesh.
Tell ya what…just for you, I’ll replace my statement with “technology differently-abled societies”. Feel all warm and fuzzy now?
Face facts:
Primitive method: hacking through jungle with a machete.
High tech method: clearing jungle with a bulldozer or defoliant.
Do you really not see the difference? Who appointed you the PC police, anyway?
Aw jeez.
As much as I’d like to debate gun control/violence control by citing VA vs. MD approaches, this isn’t the thread to do it in.
The question as I see it is: Where the weapon of most frequent availibility is something other than firearms, is that weapon used frequently in violent encounters?
The answer seems self-evident: Where, when, and if there are violent encounters, the weapons at hand will be used. The facts and comon sense seem to bear this out.
The sub-text to the question is whether or not the availibility of weapons per se causes violence. This is where the gun control debate takes off. Some postings argue (with same validity, IMHO) that the availibility of guns and/or machetes do not cause violence in and of themselves. They then hypothesize that trying to limit the availibility of said items would only serve to keep them from those who are less likely to use them for illegal and criminal means.
I would suggest y’all have a look at “Why They Kill” written by Richard Rhodes, and based on the work of Lonnie Athems, PhD. IMHO, its relevance to this question here is in what really cuases violent behavior in both individuals and groups of individuals (societies or sub-groups of societies). I could go off on a tangent about the many ideas from the book that are relevant to this discussion, but we have a lot of tangents here already. …Go read the book, you’ll find it enlightening.
Consider, though, if availibility of weapons causes or otherwise promotes violent encounters in which the weapons are used, then should we not expect a lot of this type of violence in police stations, Army bases, etc. (where the weapons under consideration are guns), or in cooking schools, cutlery shops, and tool shops (where we’re talking about knives and other sharp-edged tools as weapons)? It doesn’t work out that way because of the people and how they view the proper use of their weapons.
ookpik2 easily done - just look at states (which have more in common with eachother then CA-US) that have strict/unstrict gun control and you see a trend of more guns less crime (including homicides)
Back to the OP
Ok we got violence now as intentional wounding (either as self defence or attack)
Now lets look at tools. A (hand) gun really when you get right down to it is designed to kill a person. A machete is designed to hack through vegitation and a car is designed to haul your ass from point a to point b. All 3 can be easily used for wounding/killing someone.
I would say that cars (in the US) and machetes (in areas of the jungle that you need them for travel) are more common then guns in the US. Actually the 2 are both needed for travel while a gun is not.
For the most part here in the US people live their lives and never carry a gun (very few actually carry their gun w/ them most of the time and some don’t even have a gun). What I’m trying to say is that you are comparing apples to guns here. One is a tool needed to travel and one is not needed on a personal level (meaning a person can choose to accept the right to keep and bear arms - see I’m pro choice 
). Also a tool needed for travel is not respected as much as a tool designed to kill. Most of us would not think much of trying to go somewhere if there was something wrong with our car but it still runs if we really had to go there but few would use a gun that they know something was wrong with it.
I really think any comparson between such broad terms (tools) would be meaningless.
I wouldn’t say so. From my reading of the OP, he’s nowhere asking about the total amount of violence. What he’s asking is whether the availability of different types of weapon affects the type of violence committed.
And I don’t think that it’s obvious that “Where, when, and if there are violent encounters, the weapons at hand will be used.”. If it were, the OP wouldn’t be asking the question. Does anyone have statistics?
So a comparason something like:
common deadly tool / per capata intentioal injury rate (country)
gun / .0005 (Gun Land)
machetes / .0008 (Jungleworld)
car / .031 (SUVille)
fishing knife / .000003 (Home of the Wopper)
But you didn’t refer to their technology as “primitive,” did you? You referred to their “societies” as primitive. Within that context, it is a heavily charged word - the whole idea of primitive societies gave birth to racism. Even in the sense related to technology, I don’t agree that your examples are less “primitive” than a machete. For one, bulldozers and defoliants are not a replacement for machetes. Second, bulldozers and defoliants are much more “primitive” in the sense of “crude.” Killing each other with guns at an alarmingly high rate strikes me as primitive as well. If you didn’t mean the word in the racist sense, could you explain the alternative sense you meant it?
Ugh. I can’t find a good reason to keep this open.
jb, there seems to be a General Question buried somewhere in there, but it ain’t gonna come out of this mess. Please take some time to try to refine your question and ask it without GD-type assertions.
One hint – I don’t think that your assertion that large numbers of Peruvians (or whoever) routinely walk around with machetes to clear brush paths for themselves is correct.
Thanks for your cooperation.