I’d posit I’m one of the few NRA supporters that does not like to compare murder/crime rates between the US and UK. However, it has been shown in previous threads re gun control, that the UK has historically had lower murder rates than the US, period, prior to any gun banning and that it is statistically insignificant today. “Skyrocketing” murder rates showing a %50 increase in firearms deaths in Brighton only reflect 15 deaths this year vice 10 deaths from last year. Apples and kumquats, the UK had no need for a blanket ban, it was only a kneejerk response to the tragedy in Dunblane.
Two studies by US agencies that have come to light in the last few months also show that laws banning specific types of weapons and numerous gun laws enacted in this country to reduce criminals (but in effect, impacted LACs considerably) access to firearms has done neither, and the efficacy of these laws has been called into question.
Well I think that BF has just brought up a very good point, that the UK’s murder rate was not at all similar to the US murder rate when firearms were much more widely available there.
So it’s not as if your country went from having a murder rate similar to ours, banned firearms, and then saw that rate drop to where it is now. It started low and is still low.
What caused the murder rate in the UK to be so much lower than that of the US before the UK had restrictive gun laws or gun bans?
The problem with that argument is that SentientMeat claims it is the ‘ease of access to firearms’ that causes the higher muder rate in the US than the UK.
However, when citizens of both countries had easy access to firearms, the murder rates were still very different.
If ‘ease of access to firearms’ is responsible, why wasn’t pre-ban UK more like current US?
My intention was to get he who believes the US should ban all firearms because ‘it worked in the UK’ to realize that that’s not exactly how it happened in the UK.
They had a low murder rate compared to the US, they banned firearms, and they still have a low murder rate. How can they conclude that banning firearms was a ‘success’? A success at what?
Snake: In response to your long post in the other thread, wherein you propose an explanation for America’s comparative lethality (which I agree is more appropriate here rather than in a thread primarily concerning more powerful arms used by soldiers), I will venture that the idea that “culture” can somehow account for that lethality is, like the idea that violent crime in the UK is skyrocketting, a myth. This statement certainly is:
We are to believe that US culture makes its citizens more quick to anger or more eager for confrontation than the UK? More likely to forcefully repel any perceived infringement of their individual space by another? Surely you would be saying that the US is a more violent place than the UK? That is simply not the case.
As for culture as defined by the media, I have no citation to hand, but I think you will find that UK media is just as violent, gun-laden, “excessively permissive” and given to simplistic morality regarding killing, as that in the US.
We may look through our demographics and scour our “cultures” for any distinguishing characteristics which may explain US lethality, but you will find that both of our nations are populated by human beings who, sadly, end up in heated, forceful or violent confrontations for whatever reason on a regular basis (and, of critical importance, just as regular a basis in the two nations unless you have statistics other than those crime/violence rate ones I’ve already provided).
So, if we agree that “confrontations” are largely just as regular in the two countries (and I would hope that we can avoid unnecessary pedantry here), something is making them more lethal in the US. How does “culture” do this?
The fact remains that even when firearms access for law abiding citizens of the UK was fairly unrestricted, the UK did not have the murder rate the US does now.
If firearms are legal, they are easy to access. Having ‘more of them’ does not make them easy for criminals to get, unless of course you’re implying that those of us who legally own them are either giving or selling them to criminals, or leaving them so unsecured as to invite theft.
My firearms are not ‘easily accessible’ to criminals.
We don’t, because you haven’t established that the two countries are similar enough in culture or demographic to be accurately compared. It seems absurd to compare a relatively tiny country such as the UK with one as vast and varied as the US, just on its face.
We are not the UK, and the UK is not relevant to any discussion about firearms in the US.
The UK has not had anything like unrestricted access of the level found in the US for centuries. The 1995 legislation was by no means a paradigm shift.
The comparative lethality of the US is not even a legitimate field of study?
Is this guy indicative of the type of editorials put out in the UK? If so, I can understand where SentientMeat’s coming from. Here’s his opening salvo:
"IN a country where too many innocents are killed or wounded by firearms every day, you’d think the last thing they’d need here in the States is a fad which glorifies violence.
But believe it or not, more and more Americans, seemingly ordinary Joes, are aligning themselves with the ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ mentality by putting bullet holes on their cars.
Hey, where’s the harm? It’s fun and fashionable and we’re Americans. Guns-R-Us."
BF, the Daily Record is a Scottish tabloid of dubious intellectual [sub] ahem[/sub] calibre - certainly not what I would hope others thought of as typical!
Where I’m “coming from” is a simple question really: By what reasonable mechanism might demographic or cultural differences lead to such a different murder rate?
IMO, the drug trade and inner-city economic conditions are directly attributable to the homicide rate. The problem with gun control is that it really doesn’t impact crime control. It’s against the law to commit murder, but people still do it, regardless of the tool used. I think changing socio-economic conditions play a large part. Also, there seems to be a sea change in mores and values which can be attributed to media influences or changing lifestyles. As a child growing up in the '70s it wasn’t unusual to have a shotgun in the rack on the back window parked in the school parking lot and then going hunting after class let out. As far as I know, none of my classmates settled any grudges with firearms.
You are further proving that our socities are in fact, extremely different. Another factor is that the UK evolved from a lord and servant type system, whereas the US came to be because of violent revolution.
Can you really honestly compare things that were never really the same?
Only if the comparison is legitimate, which I don’t think comparing the US to the UK is.
Yes, exactly.
Those who are willing to commit a capital crime like murder probably are not going to give a damn that their means to commit the act are also illegal.
And in places such as where I live now, it’s quite common for lots and lots of people to own firearms and it’s extremely easy to carry one concealed if you are a law abiding citizen, but people here aren’t going wild and turning every argument, every confrontation, into a shoot 'em up.
Agreed, which is why there is a high murder rate in deprived urban areas and amongst drug gangs in the UK too, on a comparable scale. The US and UK are similarly crime-ridden, violent and drug-affected, but the murder rate per capita in the US is vastly higher.
But might it make those crimes and violent acts less lethal?
I am simply asking, time and again, for a difference which might reasonably explain the different murder rates. Of course they are different in many ways. I am repeatedly asking you to identify which particular difference you consider to be important. We can then explore whether there is a reasonable mechanism there by which the murder rate might be affected.
I simply think it odd that it does have very similar crime and violence rates but the murder rate is way, way different, out of all proportion to what might reasonably be attributed to ‘random’ variations.
How might that inflate the murder rate so radically without affecting overall crime and violence?
