The International Crime Victims Survey is a telephone survey. They just call people at random and ask them if they’ve been the victim of a violent crime - and, as such, it’s highly subjective to say the least. It’s not a very serious study of actual rates of crime.
Of course, it is worth noting, when discussing this study,
People who have been murdered don’t answer the phone.
It is the opinion of most people that murder is a more serious affair than car theft, but the ICVS doesn’t count it as such.
Over 7,000 times a day, Americans use guns to defend themselves? :eek:
That simply cannot be right. Wouldn’t there be large piles of dead burglers and muggers in the streets, obstructing traffic and generally looking bad, if 7,000 times a day someone took a pot shot at a crook?
As someone who has walked in the streets of cities in the US and Canada, I can tell you which side of the border feels safer, for what that is worth. I doubt I am alone in that supposition!
If RickJay’s stats are correct, it points to another factor that may contribute to US gun violence. Every state in the top ten is in the south. It may seem silly at first, but we can’t ignore the role played by climate.
This site points to some research that seems to indicate that heat can increase the propensity for violence.
Of course, the southern US also has a fairly distinct culture, which I’m sure plays a role. I read about a study last month where the researchers randomly bumped into people in a school hallway and then measured their reaction. The study found that southerners were much more easily provoked to violence. The article I read chalked this difference up to a more pronounced sense of “honour” found in southerners.
Random anecdote: one year, my grandma scared a burglar out of her house with a broom. He jumped over a fence in our backyard to escape her furious thrashing and landed on a skunk. He got caught by the smell. [True story!]
The point of my previous comment was that the figure given seems, in the absence of any citation, to be utterly unrealistic–or intentionally misleading . How was this “7,000 a day” arrived at? By believing everyone who says in some poll that they have scared a criminal with a gun? What does “using a gun to defend yourself” mean? Just carrying the thing around? Or as you suggest brandishing it at an alleged criminal? Or shooting a confirmed criminal? Police reports?
The figure was given, it seems to me, to give the impression that guns were commonly used to thwart criminals. Which I seriously doubt is the case, with quite that frequency.
I suspect that it is a rare situation that one has a gun, and the gun is loaded and to hand, when a criminal happens by. While no doubt it happens, so does the brandishing a broom/skunk combination.
Certainly using guns to thwart crooks will be more common than using skunks. After all, many carry them for just that purpose! No-one keeps an anti-burgler skunk around.
But I seriously doubt that it happens 7,000 times a day in the US. I’m willing to be proven wrong by objective evidence (as opposed to anecdotes), however.
Moderator’s Note:Svt4Him, please review our policy on copyright issues. I have edited the post where you copy-and-pasted an entire article and replaced the text of the article with a link to the web page where it can be found.
Well, Spoons, I’m a female and I lived alone near but not in a high crime area of the city. I figured my absolute best chance against a potential burglar or the East End Rapist would be a gun.
I don’t really know if I could successfully defend myself against an attacker with a broomstick, a baseball bat, a knife, my hands, but due to years of practice and training, I’m pretty sure I can do that with a gun.
Note that I did post a story about a homeowner in Kammerer, Pennsylvania (Somerset Township) who defended his son’s life from an intruder who was choking the kid with a baseball bat - but in that case, he hit the guy in the head to stop him.
I don’t think that other options are necessarily not as good for other people. I’ve just chosen for myself what I think the best method for me is.
Although I agree that RickJay’s demolition of Susanann’s post was well-done (and richly deserved), I do have to point out that this part seems to be in error. Maine gun laws seem in general to be very lenient (no permit needed to purchase either handguns or rifles or shotguns; no registration or licensing of owners); the only thing you need a permit for is carrying handguns, and Maine’s procedures for issuing concealed handgun licenses clearly put that state firmly in the “shall-issue” category.
No. It is not funny at all. Only an idiot would try to compare Quebec with New York, unless you knew nothing about demographics.
Population density is one of the most important factors in evaluating crime statistics.
Nearly all of my state/province comparisons reflect population densities, and I would never try to compare Michigan with Ontario, or Quebec with New York, as you have, when the population densities of those state/province comparisons are different by up to a hundred times!!!
Come on now, you are not fooling anyone by trying to compare a densely populated state of 400 people per square mile with a sparsely populated province of only 4 people per kilo.
It is a lot harder to murder people when there are only 4 of them in an entire square kilo, but a little easier when you have 400 people in a square mile. Shucks, even if you killed everyone in sight or within range of your weapon in Quebec, you would still manage to kill only 4 people!!
Everyone would agree that comparing a densely populated area with a sparsely populated area is crazy.
Vermont(murder rate in the year 2000 of 1.5 http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/vtcrime.htm) is much closer to the demographics of Quebec(murder rate in the year of 2000 of 2.0 with a 10 year average of 2.1 http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/011031/d011031b.htm) in population density than New York.
Population densities are the same reason to compare British Columbia with Idaho instead of heavily populated Washington, etc.
Alaska can be compared by both of us with the Yukon easily, since Alaska is the only state bordering it, with alaskas 4.3 rate to the Yukons 6.5 rate.
I gave all the sources to the crime rates, so everyone can look for themselves at the true murder rates for border states and border provinces.
The largest city in Vermont is Burlington, a teeming metropolis of 169,391 people. (That’s the metropolitan population of Burlington.)
Montreal is a city with a metropolitan population of over three and a half million people–the city limits of Montreal contain over a million people, whereas the entire state of Vermont has a bit over 600,000 inhabitants.
The population of Vermont is 70% rural; the population of Quebec is 80% urban. The are almost exactly the opposite of each other in this extremely critical demographic measure!
Your contention that is is reasonable to compare these two political units in this matter–or in almost any other economic or sociological discussion–demonstrates either total ignorance of the most basic principles of demographics, statistics, sociology, or geography–or outright dishonesty.
New York City alone has more people than not only Montreal, but all!!! of the entire Quebec province, and that isnt even including the millions of visitors at any given time in NYC.
The entire province of Quebec takes up 1,667,926 square kilometers and have less people than New York City which takes up far less land area.
It is crazy to compare Quebec with New York City. If you think they are comparable, then you dont know demographics. The population densities are too different, and there are too many other factors of crime that are involved than just gun registration.
Rickjay: Good job demolishing that extremely biased and mislead post of Susann’s.
Susann said:
This is an interesting statement, coming from someone who just tried to compare British Columbia to Idaho, conveniently ignoring Washington, and who compared Quebec to New Hampshire, ignoring New York. Do I take this to mean that you intentionally left those states off your list, while you yourself recognize that population density is important? That would make your post not just wrong, but shameful.
This whole debate does underscore one thing: The great driver in crime rates is clearly not guns. In fact, whatever correlation there is between gun ownership and crime seems to be very, very small. So small that it’s hard to tell whether gun ownership helps or hurts.
If you were to make a big list of the things that drive crime rates, they would include things like racial tension, a disenfranchised population (natives in Canada, urban poor in the U.S.), population density, overall poverty, culture, law enforcement, education, and tons of other things. Gun ownership doesn’t look to me like it’s even on the radar.
Susanann, you just haven’t a clue what you’re talking about here, because, evidently, you’ve never been to these places.
Stating that Quebec’s or Ontario’s population denisty is actually that far removed from New York’s - and let’s remember that you didn’t even know the population of New York in your last post - is deceiving. Most of Ontario and Quebec is totally uninhabited; unless you’re really concerned about the homicide rate amongst woodchucks, you would know that the great, great majority of Ontarians and Quebecers live right along the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence lowlands, in big cities, just like their neighbours in Michigan, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania. They aren’t living across all that land; most of northern Ontario and Quebec doesn’t even have roads. Almost EVERYONE, e.g. 90-95% of all those people, live in a densely populated band right on the water and the U.S. border. If you don’t believe me, look at a map.
And frankly, this is a pretty piss-poor response. Why did you entirely leave out Ontario? Why no explanation for why you cherry-picked the years you were comparing?
But we all know why you left out Ontario… because it has the lowest murder rate of any Canadian province. Why did you do that?
Well, UNLESS YOU LIVED IN MONTREAL, for Christ’s sake. You do realize how big Montreal is? There are more people living there, in a densely populated area, than live in all of Vermont and New Hampshire combined. The great, great majority of Quebecers and Ontarians do NOT live far apart, Susanann. They live close together, in big cities, just like most Americans in the bordering states. How much more simply must this be stated?
Another falsehood; where does this 4.3 rate come from, and what year is it from, and what year is that 6.5 rate from?
Well, what do you know… you’re full of it. The Alaska murder rate was 4.3 ONLY in 2000; in every other year it was higher:
And your figure for the Yukon, Gosh… you picked the worst year the Yukon had in years. In the previous 10 years the aggregate territory rate was 4.8. Why did you leave that out? I wonder!
Well, yes, and I used some of your very sources. You just didn’t happen to mention the less favourable years in your posts. Funny, that.
Trying to compare the two countries while leaving out the two provinces with two thirds of all the people in Canada!!! is, well, a rather suspicious thing to do, don’t ya think? I’m sorry, but your post was utter nonsense.
Well, at least you’ve abandoned your hilarious “New York has more people than Canada” line. You learned something, anyway. Of course, this doesn’t explain how you compare Quebec, with several major urban centers, to Vermont, with no major urban centers. The population of Vermont is less than Montreal’s rush hour traffic.
But actually, you’re wrong here, too. First of all, since we’re comparing MURDER RATES, not total murders, the fact that New York City is bigger than Montreal is meaningless. That’s accounted for by the fact that we are comparing RATES. What matters is that Montreal is an urban area - the people there are in a big, densely populated city, just like New York City. They are not living four people to each square mile, as you like to pretend. So why is the murder RATE so much lower in Montreal than it is in comparatively large American cities?
Your comparison of Quebec to Vermont is either A) dishonest, or B) plain stupid.
QUEBECERS LIVE IN BIG, BIG CITIES.
NEW YORKERS LIVE IN BIG, BIG CITIES.
NO VERMONTER LIVES IN A BIG CITY.
Surely you can see that a comparison between Quebec and Vermont is actually less logical than a comparison to New York? But hey, why not compare Quebec to… Michigan? Or Ontario to Michigan? Detroit is no bigger than Toronto, Lansing is smaller than Ottawa.
If you really insist on comparing places of equal population and denisty, Susanann, why not do cities? I challenge you to find any American city with a million people or more that has a lower murder rate than Toronto. Toronto is the biggest, densest, most American-style city in Canada. It has a huge, huge population of ethnic minorities. Compare it to ANY American city, any one at all. Cities of similar size include Seattle, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, Dallas, Boston, Houston, Cleveland, San Francisco… all have higher murder rates, with or without CCW laws. Why aren’t concealed weapons reducing violent crime in those cities as compared to Toronto?
Sam Stone is of course exactly correct; the murder rate follows the disenfranchised minority. In Canada, that minority is native Canadians, who are disproportionately likely to live (and be in dire economic straits) in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, B.C., and the territories. So you used THOSE stats. In the U.S., the disenfrachised minority is blacks, who are disproportionately found in big cities… and so you refuse to compare crime rates in urban areas, because that would blow your theory straight to hell.
Maybe Susasann thinks that the Quiet Revolution was when Lesage decreed that every square mile (this was before metrification, of course) of Quebec must have the same population, in order to reduce the noise levels in downtown Montreal?
I guess what I was getting at is that it’s not necessarily the fact that one is brandishing a gun–rather, it could be that the burglar did not expect to be confronted at all, much less by an angry tenant brandishing anything, be it gun, baseball bat, or antique vase.
I really do think that the answer to the OP’s question lies in what was alluded to in a few posts on the first page–the attitudes of our respective people towards firearms use. You and I illustrated this point: in my case, it simply did not occur to me to get my guns (yes, I own a few); instead, I reached for my bat. In your case, you reached for your gun.
In my experience, it doesn’t occur to the majority of Canadian gun owners to use a gun for self-defence. All the law-abiding Canadian gun owners I’ve known don’t own guns for any purpose other than for sport–for hunting, target shooting, and similar purposes. Guns may be in the home, but they are being stored waiting for the next hunting trip up north, the next visit to the firing range across town, and so on.
Catsix, you mentioned the East End Rapist. While I’m unfamiliar with him, it is worth noting that we have our fair share of serial rapists up here too. But I don’t recall ever hearing of any Canadian single women living alone asking for guns to use in self-defence against rapists–what we do hear from them are calls for more police patrols in their neighbourhoods, for news and other media to keep the pressure on police to find the rapists that are out there, and so on. Again, no matter how much safety and security guns might provide these women, it seems that it simply doesn’t occur to them to consider guns for self-protection. At least, if it does, they’re not saying so publicly.
We’re back to our respective people’s attitudes, and I don’t believe that we’re going to change those any time soon.
