higher murder rates in countries that have never lost a war.
NB: vietnam was not a US war.
Exactly my point. Robert William “Willie” Pickton claims to have killed upwards of 49 hookers.
That’s what I keep asking. Do we need something to be illegal to know whether or not it’s acceptable? I know it’s wrong to rape little boys, even if some countries still allow it. Right now we have a society that should know murder isn’t acceptable, so removing the law shouldn’t change that. What it would most likely do is allow someone to go out and kill Pickton before he reached 20. If that happened, the murder rate actually goes down.
I’m not sure I think fewer people would kill. I’m certain that in the transition there would be a lot more murder, which is how transition goes. Personally, I think when we reach steady state the murder rate would stabilize, which I think is what happened in Iraq.
If we have a society where murderers get killed, what happens to the overall murder rate?
Same with murder. There are people that will kill even though it’s legal, and people that won’t even if it is legal. How does the criminal nature change the proportion of those two groups? To me, running a red light and driving drunk are very serious offences, but people don’t seem to care. Upping the criminal offense doesn’t seem to stop those that are intent doing what they want. The rest of us just need to be told it’s dangerous and we go along with it.
Actually, that difference is statistically insignificant (about 0.008%) and fails to account for the broad range of variables that can differ in these circumstances. also doubt that they account for any long-term medical effects of abortion, such as the increased risk of having an ectopic pregnancy.
And how significant is that risk?
Anyway, for a real-world example, look to times and places where murder is committed with relative impunity, such as Somalia or 1920s Chicago. The wealthy and powerful will insulate themselves behind rings of bodyguards and order murders for revenge, against business rivals, against nosy people like reporters…
I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. I didn’t say that the increased risk of ectopic pregnancies WOULD make abortion more risky than childbirth. Rather, I said that (a)
the difference is statistically insignificant, and (b) these statistics do not appear to take long-term medical effects into account, whatever the extent of such effects may be.
The link that I provided also points out that these stats are not entirely reliable, since they rely heavily on self-reporting. The bottom line is that we shouldn’t put much stock in the claim that abortion is safer than childbirth.
I don’t have anything too solid- just a quote from a police officer after an exceptionally cold and deadly Halloween weekend this year. I looked up some statistics, but it’d need more sophisticated analysis than I could do, as you’d probably want to try to correlate murder and temperature on a week by week basis, and you’d probably need to correct for a sudden vs. gradual drop in temperature, etc.
I don’t get your point - you’re downplaying a risk as insignificant while incidentally mentioning another risk whose significance, if any, you don’t know and don’t care about?
It’s in any case off-topic.
Removing a control like the illegality of murder would tend to reward a society’s most ruthless, most violent segment, wouldn’t it? Is this a cohort that needs more influence?
I will gladly reiterate for your behalf. First though, please note that I did not say that I don’t care about this risk. (More on that later.) What I did say is that (a) the statistics that are commonly cited for abortion-related and childbirth-related deaths are not entirely reliable, and (b) even if we do regard them to be reliable, the difference is statistically insignificant.
Why are these stats unreliable? In part, because they rely heavily on self-reporting. Additionally, they also fail to consider possible long-term effects of abortion on the mortality rate, such as the increased risk of ectopic pregnancy.
You asked how large this specific risk was (that is, the increased risk of ectopic pregnancy), and I freely admitted that I don’t know. This doesn’t ultimately matter, since I was not trying to prove that abortion is deadlier to the mother. My point is simply that we don’t have enough information on hand to make that judgment reliably. This is not the same as saying that I “don’t care” about the issue. Rather, it’s an acknowledgement that we don’t have enough information on hand to draw a conclusion.
I repeat: I’m not saying that abortion IS as risky as childbirth or riskier. In fact, I’m not taking a stand on that matter at all. Rather, I’m pointing out that we don’t have sufficient basis to draw that conclusion. The burden is not on me to show that this risk is indeed much greater; rather, the onus is on whoever makes the claim to consider this factor, as well as other possible long-term effects, whatever they may be.
But since you asked, I did find one paper from a medical journal report which discusses this increased risk. If I’m reading the abstract correctly, it says that women are 1.5 times more likely to have an ectopic pregnancy if they have had a previous abortion. I don’t know any specific beyond that… and again, we both know that the burden of digesting these stats rest, not on me, but on whoever chooses to make a specific claim about the relative risks of childbirth and abortion.
Well, since ectopic pregnancies are dangerous, best to keep abortion legal so a woman won’t have to jump through any hoops in getting treatment.
Hookers are not homeless. And prostitutes are more at risk than most people, since they must expose themselves to men they do not know - exactly the behavior everyone tells women they should not engage in on first dates.
I can’t imagine the society which would legalize murder, but that society would have to basically say it was acceptable in order to do so. Think of all the societies in our past where killing those outside the tribe was perfectly acceptable. A detailed case study can be found in the song about cannibals in Flanders and Swann’s second album, At the Drop of Another Hat.
Sure it would stabilize - if there was anyone left. Murder was not legal in Iraq, and the stabilization there was due to enforcement and the fact that at-risk populations separated themselves from their enemies.
Depends on whether the murderers’ families said it was deserved, or if they thought that the revenge was a terrible injustice.
I don’t know in general, but at the intersection near me where people ran the red light all the time, the installation of a red light camera made a lot of difference. Sure it was against the law before, but the chance of getting caught was very small. So, making red light running actually illegal reduced its rate a lot.
Not an issue. Treating ectopic pregnancies was never illegal under anti-abortion laws, since this falls squarely under the “life of the mother” exception. Surgery is not always necessary under such conditions, since ectopic pregnancies frequently resolve themselves. When surgical removal is necessary though, it’s because the mother’s life must be saved and the embryo simply has no hope of survival–indeed, most of the time, it is already dead.
You seem to be under the impression that if elective abortion is banned, then women who have ectopic pregnancies would simply be left to die. That simply is not true. Pro-lifers generally have no problem with procedures that technically qualify as abortions if the mother’s life is endangered and there is no way to save the unborn.
That’s a completely different question from the one you asked in the OP.
Whatever the relative murder rates are, for example, in the US vs Austria, there would be more murders in both countries if in any of them murder was legal.
I may be missing something though… I don’t understand how anyone would associate the legality of murder with the disparity of murder rates in some countries with somewhat similar laws on murder.
Let me bring up a couple of new items to ponder.
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Would murder be entirely without legal consequences, or criminal consequences? For instance, would the surviving spouse or dependents be able to sue the killer for damages, loss of income, etc. There are a lot of non-criminal things you can do that will still have major consequences, mostly financial, due to the legal system.
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How do you legalize killing without legalizing all the lesser forms of assault/battery? Are you liable for a criminal penalty if you beat the crap out of someone? Do you have a defense against an assault charge if you intended to kill them but didn’t hit them often enough with your baseball bat?
I guess my point about that is, if you keep lesser crimes of violence criminalized, everyone will better off killing someone they’re pissed at than punching them in the nose.
What about crimes like rape? Better to kill the rape victim than leave them to report.
Would there even be autopsies or investigations of murders by police?
A lot of folks have mentioned here that there would be revenge killings. No doubt, but of whom? I’ll tell you – of who people think did it, without any real evidence one way or another. In fact, I think this guy did it, and you think some other guy did it, so maybe we kill them both, and the real killer is off celebrating.
If murders aren’t investigated because they’re not crimes, serial killers will never be caught. And if nothing else changes, their killings will skyrocket because they enjoy it.
No, I’m really only under the impression that the abortion discussion is of no obvious relevance to a larger discussion about legalized murder.
I agree with Lemur866. This reminds me of arguments with libertarians who insist that even without government involvement, bridges and canals will still get built.
The fact is that some things can be done a lot more efficiently and effectively by a central authority. Deterring and punishing crime is one of those things.
Well, you’re the one who claimed that we should keep abortion legal in order to save women from the dangers of ectopic pregnancies. That’s the point I was addressing. If you don’t really believe that, then with all due respect, you shouldn’t have brought it up.
Legality and acceptability are two very different concepts that a lot of people blur. What do you consider the acceptable age for a person to buy and consume alcohol? Should a 19 year old American abstain while in Canada? Is it still unacceptable even though it’s now legal?
Canada still technically has laws against marijuana, but over the past few years it’s acceptability has grown to the point that anyone who wants to does, and anyone who doesn’t won’t. Making pot legal would have a very small impact on number of users since those that would use do.
I’ve seen similar studies with speeding, that the actual speed limit has very little impact. Those that will speed do. Remove the speed limit and people drive pretty close to what they would have before. Most people just aren’t that comfortable driving fast, and you can actually have areas where people drive slower.
When the murder rate is already 4.8 per 100,000 you have to acknowledged that those who want to kill probably will. For a lot of us, murder is consider unacceptable regardless of the legalities of it. That leaves a portion of society that are in fact abstaining because of the law, so how many people is that? And is it the same for every country? How would the murder rates change in Austria as compared to the US. It seems that murder is less acceptable in Austria than in the US, so in my opinion removing the law would have a smaller impact. The US, in my opinion, is a much more violent place so it’s more likely to descend into a hell hole.
No, not legal, but instead not enforceable which is like pot in Canada. The presence of the law is only as effective as how enforceable it is. Obviously it’s not a world people would want to live in, but it still stabilized. And where it steadies out would represent how violent a society is.
No, your last statement is incorrect. Running the light was already illegal, and a segment of the population didn’t care. Having the red light camera didn’t make it more illegal, it made the consequences of running it higher. You’ll also notice that people don’t run a red light when there are cars in the intersection. Running the red light happens on a fringe, before cars in the other direction start going. There is an element of self preservation beyond both the legality and acceptability of the act. Most of us stop at red lights because it’s in our own best interest, not because of the law involved. And most of us realize people run red lights, so we pause and check before entering on the green.
The question posed in DrCube’s OP asked how legality impacted behavior. Would you kill someone if it was legal? Or do you inherently know that it’s wrong and you shouldn’t do it?
Raping little boys is legal (and acceptable) in some places, but I don’t need a law to know that it’s wrong. Should I end up in one of those countries I still wouldn’t do it, legal or not. But we know that some people will do it if it’s illegal, and some people will do it if it’s legal, and some won’t do it at all. The question posed in the OP looks at the break down of those three groups within society.
If you look at drunk driving laws you can see how legality can impact acceptability. Not that long ago people didn’t consider it an issue. Then MADD increased awareness of the consequences, while at the same time lobbying to increase criminal enforcement. Now, after about a decade, a chunk of society recognizes DUI as wrong, while a chunk still considers it acceptable. The question then is, how many people would drive drunk if it was made legal again? Would you?
Even if there were more how many more? The US already has 4 times as many murders as Austria, is that because Austrians are really good at following the law? Are Austrian police that much more effective? Or are there fewer in their society willing to kill?
Even in Mexico, with all the drug crime and lawlessness, their murder rate is still only 18 per 100,000, which is more than twice as good as neighbouring Belize.
So when you look through the list, how much of the murder rate is based on legality, and how much of it is based on society?
You’re missing a lot, but that’s another discussion. When you look through the list, how do you explain the disparity?
If it helps, look at it from the other direction. Imagine a country were murder is legal and people are tired of all the death so someone suggests making it illegal. Do you think they’d end up with
0.56 murders per 100,000 like Austria? Or would it be more like the US at 4.8, or Honduras at 78?
I personally find it hard to imagine a murder rate as high as 78 per 100,000. Do you really think if Austria made murder legal (but not acceptable) it would get that bad?
Heck, I’ve just been reading the first few books in the Honor Harrington series, essentially Horatio Hornblower in the 35th century, i.e. all the trappings of the 18th-century British class system - with spaceships. The fourth book revolves around the (apparently casually accepted) practice of dueling with pistols, mixed in with a lot of bellyaching about “professional” duelists, i.e. people who are particularly good shots and will, for money, insult their boss’s enemies to provoke a physical confrontation which in turn can be used to force a lethal duel.
It’s silly and contrived, of course, but probably indicative of what’ll happen in a world of legalized murder - those who have money will just game the system to their advantage, as those who have money always have.
Sort of like what we have now?