Sam Harris on a world without guns

[Stanislaus]

@ExTank

I dispute your assertion and offer this: “Choose Your Own Crime Stats.”

It’s a good piece of work, but the author/presenter trips up by not checking definitions.

The FBI definition of violent crime is:

[

@FBI

In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

](http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/violent-crime)

The Home Office defintion is considerably looser:
[

@Home Office

Violent crime contains a wide range of offences, from minor assaults such as pushing and shoving that result in no physical harm through to serious incidents of wounding and murder. Around a half of violent incidents identified by both BCS and police statistics involve no injury to the victim.

](http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/hosb1011/hosb1011?view=Binary)

If you only look at the UK’s incidence of murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault (GBH in UK-crime-speak) you get a comparable violent crime rate of 202 per 100K.* Pretty much half of the US rate** for the same offenses.**

(Source: Table 1 of the same document shared in the video).

*Murder and attempted murder: 1161; GBH with intent: 19,489; GBH without intent 15,112; All rape: 15892; All robbery: 76,189. Total: 127843 violent crimes. UK Pop = 62.3M. Please check my working.