The most dangerous places are places where there's access to firearms for criminals, but they're illegal or prohibited for citizens. The most heavily armed states in the USA actually have lower gun crime and violent crime. Likewise, extremely heavily armed countries like Switzerland and Israel also have low violent crime rates.

You've got to go to one side or the other to be safe. Near complete removal and prohibition of firearms (like Japan) works. Arming all legitimate citizens who want arms works. But having firearms available easily for purchase on the black market, but restricted/prohibited legally tends to promote the worst of both worlds.

Is that true when you compare cities of similar size / population density? Sure, Montana has a ton of guns and little crime, but it's also rural and has no people. Looking at cities >250k, the high-crime cities (let's say, those over 10 violent crimes per 1,000 inhabitants) don't seem to skip states with loose gun laws: St. Louis, MO; Memphis, TN; Indianapolis, IN; Kansas City, MO; Atlanta, GA; Houston, TX; and Tulsa, OK; are all high on the list.

(Data from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...)

Houston also has a significant low-income population, and experienced white flight to the suburbs on a massive scale through the 70s and 80s; leaving behind a wrecked shell of a city (downtown has only recently started to come back to life; when I lived in Houston, downtown real estate was dirt cheap, but everyone was afraid to go there after dark).

In short, I don't think it's anywhere near as simple as "guns lead to more/less crime".

NYC's another interesting data point (but merely that) -- violent crime rate is roughly the same as Phoenix's... one city with a heavily armed citizenry and one virtually defenseless, same results. Obviously, other factors matter more.

If you go down the list of US cities with violent crime problems in order, the unmistakable trend is they're all at the bottom end of the economic spectrum. Safe bet that the local unemployment rate has a lot more to do with crime than gun laws.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...

I could see Houstion being a little more laid back about recording every little gunshot. For one, guns in texas are sorta like bread and butter. For another, it doesn't look good to have an excess number of reported gunshots in a given annual report.

The population point is interesting and I'm not sure about that. Maybe something to do some looking into at some point, I'd be curious to know more.

Edit: This seems almost comically biased and appeals to emotion a lot, but does cite some stats - http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493636.html

More Guns Less Crime is a snappy title, but mostly seems like a work of ideological pro-firearm propaganda in light of its author's many documented ethical issues.

This wouldn't be so much of a big point, except that he did spend a lot of time trumpeting about this single year of slight rise in crime. If you read his studies at the time, he also grossly misrepresents things like doing that trick where you report going from 4 to 5 incidents a year as "OMG! 25% increase!" (can't remember the exact number)

Kleck is another guy with crazy stats. In one report he mentioned that concealed handguns saved 230k lives per year in the US. I crunched the numbers to see how that would translate to our 'lawless', 'gunless' country, where criminals 'have free reign', and it would mean we would have 15k deaths because we don't do concealed gun laws. Turned out that our annual murder rate from all sources combined is about 300. Part of the pro-gun propaganda is the implicit assumption that every crime involves death or rape.

I've spent a lot of time looking at gun issues over the years and started out from a total anti-gun perspective, with the exception of farmers and security. As I've examined it, the problem really seems to be handguns. Rifles don't seem to be so much of an issue - anecdotally at least, it's hard to conceal a rifle. The armed Swiss that's so often reported are armed with rifles, too (interestingly the 'armed society is a polite society' people always seem to leave out west Africa...). When you start looking at the statistics in the US, it really jumps out at you how bad handguns are there. I've also never, ever, seen any pro-gun argument make note of the role of the startling increase in US incarceration have an affect on crime rates. It's an interesting topic and blinkered passion rise on all sides, that's for sure.

Port Arthur was a very large massacre with ~35 dead and made up about 10% of our annual murders, but usually spree killers comprise a much lower percentage. Legislation shouldn't be made based on the outlier case. It's even worse in the US - the high visibility spree killers would only total 100-200 per year, but there are about ~17k murders annually in the US (11k of those are with handguns). The spree killers that make the headlines are a drop in the bucket in the US, and in Australia they're actually pretty rare - separated by years, not to mention that we haven't had much in the way of such things this millenium.

In short, focusing on spree killers misses the bigger picture. The sheer number of spree killers is immense in the US as compared per capita to its contemporaries, but even there it's still a drop in the bucket.

---

six degrees of separation: one of my teachers at high school taught Julian Knight (Hoddle St bloke) how to shoot, in the school's army cadet programme...

six degrees of embarrassment: I had been seeing a lass from Tasmania for a month or two and was making a short series of dark jokes (my MO) about the Port Arthur massacre. She waited patiently to the end of it, then let me know her aunt died there. She said it was worth waiting to see my suitably embarrassed expression...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,_Virginia : Richmond was ranked overall as the 5th most dangerous city and the 12th-most dangerous metropolitan area in the United States for the year of 2005.

In Switzerland, though, I think it's important to keep a few things in mind when you look at the statistics, before you judge it as a heavily armed country:

- It's mandatory for every male to serve in the army, where we are all issued rifles. We get to keep the rifles at home when not on duty, and get to keep them after our duties are complete should we wish to. This makes up a huge part of the guns owned in CH. Military rifles are very hard to conceal and do not make for very good armed robbery weapons.

- While guns are common, ammunition is hard to come by. Military ammunition is only given while on-duty, and must be returned to the arsenal when not on-duty. While many people have guns, few have ammunitions.

- For almost everybody, guns remain locked in the attic / basement to be used only should the military call.

Please let me know if you ever find a truly unbiased study on gun laws and their impact on crime. Seems like everyone's got an agenda, which is unfortunate because it's really a pretty interesting topic.

It seems that Switzerland has a low gun-crime rate but I wouldn't be so quick to give credit to their gunlaws for this. Switzerland and the United States are very different places.

Again this is just my $0.02

I lived in Ballymun for a year and witnessed all sorts of craziness - arson, vandalism, stabbings - but not once a gun crime. I've never been attacked or robbed myself either, thankfully.

I think the difference is that due to demographics the Irish don't face the constant threat of the urban zombie hordes attacking.

That's not true in the slightest. Prevalence of guns directly equates to a greater incidence of gun crime, on both an international (say, U.S. vs. other nations) and intranational basis.

"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

I really doubt there's anything new or interesting to be had from rehashing the gun politics argument over again.

I'll just report a comment I made 5 months ago when this happened:

"THIS debate definitely does not belong here. Seriously, even if humankind ever does sort out the essentially intractable problem of governmental control over the carrying of lethal weapons by the citizenry, I am willing to bet everything I own that we won't be sorting it out here on Hacker News.

I reckon we could have a fucking boring argument about it though. I've seen it done, it looks easy."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2028182

The latter. Most of us live in places where crime is not a problem. We're not all in mortal fear for our lives, having property stolen left and right at gun point.

And .. the modest amount of actual crime I've seen, no guns were brandished.

I'd rather be threatened with a gun than by a big palooka with his fists.

* Fists or a gun, you're going to do what he says. He's got the drop on you, we can assume he's picked a place where help is unlikely to come, you can't get away quickly.

* A guy like that is big, likes to fight. He's going to do some damage. If he gets into it, he can cripple you for life, rack up some serious hospital bills.

* Criminals with guns don't seem to have much of a chance to learn to use them well. Contrary to TV, while shooting a gun is easy, actually hitting something is difficult. It takes practice.

It seems that the Westerner attitude is that "somewhere else" things are really bad. New Orleans has close to the highest murder rate in the world.

I have.

It seems that the Westerner attitude is that "somewhere else" things are really bad.

If I lived in a place where crime was a problem, I'd say so.

New Orleans has close to the highest murder rate in the world.

Cape Town was higher, last year.

And? I don't especially care about New Orleans: don't live there, wouldn't want to live there. It's a problem, but there isn't anything I can _do_ about it, so why worry?

About your larger point, maybe. If true I doubt it's a cultural thing but just the way people are.

That said, there are worse ways to be mugged. I had a friend develop a pretty bad smelling problem, and his sponsor in NA used to mug people by sticking a dirty needle into their neck and threatening to inject them with whatever was in it. Pretty savage.

I've never mugged anyone, but I would guess that the first step is to establish control over the victim. With a gun against an unarmed victim, the mugger gets control easily. With neither armed, the mugger might need to actually attack and force submission before the victim decides if he should fight back or not.

That's not to say that I hope to ever have one pointed at me.

Not to mention how much harder it is to shoot something moving, compared to something that isn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill

This being said, the US has a very high murder rate (triple its contemporaries) with the bulk of them done by handgun. It seems that it's not that easy after all to escape...

... and this is part of the problem with the gun debate on both sides - there's so much emotive argument on hypothetical situations, and very little examination of what actually happens in the world out there.

One example is "if mugged, would you rather knife or gun?", but that question doesn't allow for my answer "I'd rather have better social programmes so the chances of being mugged in the first place are lower".

A hammer or steel bar, on the other hand, is not immediately threatening because for the most part they aren't used to harm people.

I was walking behind a guy this weekend and noticed a Glock sticking out of the back of his pants. It's a little unnerving that one would just stroll around with a weapon that can do so much damage, so easily, in such a casual way.

As a Canadian living in the US, I don't think I will ever get used to the sight of casually toting around guns on the street - particularly when it's just tucked into your waistband.

To be fair though, there are holsters that go inside the pants hiding the gun and leaving only the handle sticking out.

EDIT: I'm not denying that you saw that guy with the glock, but your last sentence makes it sound like it's a common occurrence in the States, and it really isn't.

Remember that you are dealing more likely than not with a psychopath; it's as psychologically easy for them to knife you as to shoot you. The issue is that a gun is technically harder to use than a knife. Even at 10 feet, trained marksmen regularly miss moving targets.

"I slashed people, rifle-butted them. I was punching and kicking. It was either me or them. It didn't seem real. Anybody can pull a trigger from a distance, but we got up close and personal."

20 insurgents killed at knife point with zero British killed.