That poverty cause crime is just unsustainable. In the 30s and 40s America and Americans were much less affluent and crime rates were lower. There may be a very small percentage of crimes were necessity was a factor but this is just not true in the majority of cases.
That TV and violent movies cause crime is also unsustainable because Europeans watch the same trash and do not have the same level of violent crime. I find this argument quite silly.
If poverty causes crime then the reverse would be true: wealth causes honesty. Anyone can see it is not true. People commit crimes regardless of their wealth or poverty.
I’ll add one more, slightly facetious response to the OP’s question.
The laws against murder in the US are well known. The rate of arrest and subsequent conviction are high for murder. Most adults (and some children) convicted of this crime do years of hard prison time, even when we acknowledge TBone2’s point that some convicted murderers serve reduced sentences. Thus, there can be only two plausible reasons for a high murder rate: a) murderers believe they won’t be caught, or b) they are not intelligent enough to recognize the personal consequences of their actions.
So, the US murder rate is so high because so much of our population is really, really stupid.
Thank you for quoting me out of context! I’ll trust the gang to go back and read what I actually wrote.
As for the “homeless” in the U.S., no one knows how many there are, where they are, what they’re doing, etc. By their nature, the “homeless” are unlikely to show up on any survey, and they certainly fall through the cracks when census time comes around. Various organizations outside the government give estimates of the number of “homeless” at anything from practically zero to several million, depending usually on the given organization’s political agenda. (That is to say, if the Polling Organization happens to be in the business of collecting donations for the purpose of feeding/clothing/housing the homeless, you can bet that organization will find spokespersons who will ‘verify’ that there are at least a million or two homeless in your little town of 20,000.)
At any rate, none of this goes to the OP. I don’t claim to be able to say why there are so many murders in the U.S. I just couldn’t sit by and see some sillinesses offered as reasons.
Oh, oh, wait!!! Wait!!! I know!!! ShetlandPony, you’re a reporter, right? There’s just something about the way you rearranged my words… Yeah, you’re a reporter, um, excuse me, I mean a Journalist.
ShetlandPony, If murder rates in the 30s and in the 90s were in the same ballpark and there was much more poverty in the 30s, doesn’t that kind of support the notion that poverty does not cause crime? How about other countries that are poorer than the US and yet have lower drime rates?
If you’re going to abuse people in an over-populated society and not educate them properly (so that the abuse can be maintained); the only way murder rates will reduce is to install manual suicide machines in every city. I guarantee that an (inside only) manually operated 10 ton crusher, would completely dispell any hesitation for suicide; where the organism is pondering it long before homicide. The society is abusive and quite frankly; it needs to take its licks. You can’t deny what you’re doing to people in a counter-intelligent society, by sweeping it out of site. People should realize that their ignorance kills people; they should WATCH it, because there’s no other way to get it through their thick skulls.
Actually, I do have a cite for this. Dr. Brandon Centerwall of University of Washington claims that it’s television itself that causes violence, not violent television. By creating shorter attention spans and social frustration, a game show is as likely to be part of creating a mindset where violence is used, as a cop show. He has a pretty powerful argument and if you bother to read averything that’s in the link I provide below, I will add that Sweden har very little violent crime (of the US type) until 1994. That’s seven years after we finally got commercial television. One might argue that it’s not television per se, but connerial television that creates the violence. Centerwall claims there could have been 10.000 fewer homocides, per year, in the US, had television never been invented.
The are somethings with which I agree wholeheartedly. That levels of poverty are relative is clear to me which is why I restricted my OP to a comparison of US and Western Europe. As you have already noticed, I disagree with some of your opinions on the real level of poverty in the US.
I am going to have to nit-pick to your response on “easy access to guns”. Access to handguns is more than a question of Constitutional Jurisprudence. Their availability ( legally and illegally) , their relative price, their acceptance in society ( or major sub-cultures) have all led to the need for metal detectors in some schools, just to take one example. The murder rate rate is now less than in 1968 - although it peaked significantly between then and now.
I have great difficulty in believing that 2/3 of all murders are causally linked to television ( although after seeing a Jerry Springer
Show, there might be some room for argument ) I also cannot believe that the Swedish Rocker wars are a product of too many Volvo adverts.
I have another related question. Do people in the US feel safer now than they did in 1992. The murder rate has dropped by 40%
In some parts of the United States it would be as unthinkable as asking a Germans to stop drinking beer and Frenchman to stop drinking wine. There are those of us in rural areas who grew up with firearms in the house, who use them to hunt almost year round, and who shoot targets.
The idea of not owning a firearm is nearly unthinkable to me. They’ve been in my life for so long and I’ve hardly had any negative experiences with them.
It often only takes one negative experience. After that, you or some relative or friend is in a state where experiences of any sort are no longer possible.
There was a significant gang war across Scandinavia (primarily Denmark but also including Sweden) in the 90’s between the Hells Angels and the Bandidos. They went as far as firing Anti-Tank weapons at one another. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/134767.stm
I think you should take another look at the reference you give for Centrewall’s correlation. The article is from a free speech organisation and shows up the deficiencies of the correlation between TV exposure and violence in society.
I’d say Lucwarm’s got it right,you should compare the US murder rate to a country like Brazil not any European country. In a multiethnic society it is almost inevitable that some minorities begin to feel this is not their society, the police an army of oppression. From there it’s a short step to an urban jungle. This seems to especially happen if there is no strong family tradition to impose a set of respected rules into the vacuum left by the ‘alien’ state.
If my take on it is right you’ll find that the murder rate for people of European background in the US (the dominant ethnic group which sees the culture as their own) is not much higher than that of European countries. The difference is probably due to guns being more lethal and some of the other factors cited.
The overwhelming reason though is a multicultural society but that’s the price you’ve got to pay. Removing guns wouldn’t effect the problem much. All the other functioning multicultural societies in history have been dictatorships (absolute monarchies actually) the US is the first multicultural democracy, there’s no telling if it’s going to work but we’re trying.
You could be talking about driving an automobile, hiking, or horse back riding. Do you feel the need to tell people who engage in those activities that they might have negative experience that leads to death? There are those who seem to believe that people cannot have an over all positive experience with firearms over the course of their life time. I just wanted to point out that isn’t the case.
I don’t want to hijack this thread but since the availability of firearms might be a contributing factor to homocides I don’t think we’re straying to far. My grandfather used to take a rifle to school so he could shoot squirrels after class. (Yeah, they ate 'em.)
I think it is instructive to compare the US with European countries. For example, the levels of almost all types of crime are broadly similar in the US and UK. Except murder and, I think, rape.
If the general level of crime is similar between the two countries, why would murder be much, much more common in the US (by a factor of about 7, last time I saw statistics)?
Well, we didn’t have much luck controlling illegal access to alcohol in the 20s and 30s, we aren’t having much luck controlling illegal access to drugs currently, so what the does anyone think about our chances of controlling illegal access to guns?
Tbone was dead-on-the-money about ever-increasing restrictions on the legal purchases of firearms. From licensed dealers. Private purchases are still practically unrestricted. Oh, there are some laws against certain types of private purchases; as a Texan, I cannot legally sell a handgun to a denizen of another state.
Not that there’s a whole lot to stop me from doing so, should I so desire. Only the risk of imprisonment should I be caught, which is good enough for me. YMMV.
As far as their acceptance as totem-symbols of power in certain sub-cultures, or of those certain sub-culture’s willingness to resort to violence with those totem-symbols…
Let’s speak plainly. We’re talking about Blacks. African Americans. Negroes. Colored. Dare I say it? The dreaded “N” word?
What do you propose, ShetlandPony? Sweeping bans, and door-to-door/house-to-house searches for, and confiscations of firearms? The collective internment of an ethnic groups (can’t forget about those nefarious Italians and la Cosa Nostra) for “social reintegration” or “cultural reeducation?”
Either way steps on our Constitution in so many ways it’d take an American Civics course to begin to describe, and another Civil War to resolve.
Tony Soprano Voice
And if you have a problem with us Italians, then we can just step around back and settle it, capisca?
/Tony Soprano Voice
A loaded question. There is no correct answer, just a rambling collection of different opinions. Safer from what? Street crime? Terrorist hijackers? West Nile virus? Jehova’s Witnesses?
amarone:]
I can say the same thing about automobiles and partially cooked hamburger. Deaths by friends or relatives falls into that category called “death from accidental discharge.” Which number less than a thousand a year. Considering an estimated 50%+ rate of gun ownership in the U.S. (that would be about 140,000,000 to 150,000,000 people), I’m willing to bet we stack up against other countries quite well in that regard.
Uncle Toby: right on! An examination of homicide rates among whites only in America yields numbers on par with Europe. However, the suicide rate among whites only is astronomical, exceeded only by countries like Japan, which are about as ethnically and culturally monolithic a culture as one might find on this planet (outside of the Inuit).
And, interestingly enough, Japan has a near-zero rate of private ownership of firearms, and no history of “rugged colonial individualism.”
They do have a very long tradition of meek obediance to authority, of unquestioning acceptance of whatever those in authority dictate…
Marc: I used to take firearms of every type to school with me on Fridays so I could drive straight out to Deer Camp during deer season from school. They stayed in the trunk of my car, unloaded. My friends, and several faculty, knew of their presence; and no one, from principal to peer, ever made a fuss over it. This was the early-mid 80s in suburban St. Louis, Missouri.
I am amazed, saddened, and sometimes even frightened at the difference from the America I grew up in and the America I now live in, all in the space of about 17 to 20 years.
Well, we didn’t have much luck controlling illegal access to alcohol in the 20s and 30s, we aren’t having much luck controlling illegal access to drugs currently, so what the does anyone think about our chances of controlling illegal access to guns?
Tbone was dead-on-the-money about ever-increasing restrictions on the legal purchases of firearms. From licensed dealers. Private purchases are still practically unrestricted. Oh, there are some laws against certain types of private purchases; as a Texan, I cannot legally sell a handgun to a denizen of another state.
Not that there’s a whole lot to stop me from doing so, should I so desire. Only the risk of imprisonment should I be caught, which is good enough for me. YMMV.
As far as their acceptance as totem-symbols of power in certain sub-cultures, or of those certain sub-culture’s willingness to resort to violence with those totem-symbols…
Let’s speak plainly. We’re talking about Blacks. African Americans. Negroes. Colored. Dare I say it? The dreaded “N” word?
What do you propose, ShetlandPony? Sweeping bans, and door-to-door/house-to-house searches for, and confiscations of firearms? The collective internment of an ethnic groups (can’t forget about those nefarious Italians and la Cosa Nostra) for “social reintegration” or “cultural reeducation?”
Either way steps on our Constitution in so many ways it’d take an American Civics course to begin to describe, and another Civil War to resolve.
Tony Soprano Voice
And if you have a problem with us Italians, then we can just step around back and settle it, capisca?
/Tony Soprano Voice
A loaded question. There is no correct answer, just a rambling collection of different opinions. Safer from what? Street crime? Terrorist hijackers? West Nile virus? Jehova’s Witnesses?
amarone:]
I can say the same thing about automobiles and partially cooked hamburger. Deaths by friends or relatives falls into that category called “death from accidental discharge.” Which number less than a thousand a year. Considering an estimated 50%+ rate of gun ownership in the U.S. (that would be about 140,000,000 to 150,000,000 people), I’m willing to bet we stack up against other countries quite well in that regard.
Uncle Toby: right on! An examination of homicide rates among whites only in America yields numbers on par with Europe. However, the suicide rate among whites only is astronomical, exceeded only by countries like Japan, which are about as ethnically and culturally monolithic a culture as one might find on this planet (outside of the Inuit).
And, interestingly enough, Japan has a near-zero rate of private ownership of firearms, and no history of “rugged colonial individualism.”
They do have a very long tradition of meek obediance to authority, of unquestioning acceptance of whatever those in authority dictate…
Marc: I used to take firearms of every type to school with me on Fridays so I could drive straight out to Deer Camp during deer season from school. They stayed in the trunk of my car, unloaded. My friends, and several faculty, knew of their presence; and no one, from principal to peer, ever made a fuss over it. This was the early-mid 80s in suburban St. Louis, Missouri.
I am amazed, saddened, and sometimes even frightened at the difference from the America I grew up in and the America I now live in, all in the space of about 17 to 20 years.
amarone, you’re just wrong. I’m sorry, but it is not “instructive,” but idiotic to compare the US with European countries.
The cultivation of female armpit hair and the consumption of songbirds as delicacies are two obvious points of disparity that happen to come to mind. We in the US don’t do that. Europeans are forever looking at us and saying the same thing – “We don’t do that.”
If you have nothing else to do, try comparing murder rates in Japan vs. US, Japan vs. UK, Switzerland vs. US, Vietnam vs. Cuba, Brazil vs. Indonesia, India vs. Mexico, Afghanistan vs. Finland. When you’re finished, perhaps you’ll have some understanding as to how cultural factors figure into crime statistics.