American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene?

Re:American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? by lwhalen on Sunday September 22, 2013 @10:15AM (#6426711)

I would like to see that chart with 'homicides' instead of just firearm-centric ones. I crunched these numbers several years ago for my own amusement and found that in countries with strict gun control, violence in general and violent deaths especially went WAY up, surpassing the US's by a fair margin. No I don't have a source at the moment, it was a weekend's worth of Googling trying to find data that didn't come from biased sources (either the NRA on one side, or groups like the Violence Policy Center on the other), and done purely for my own amusement.

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Re:American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? by antr on Sunday September 22, 2013 @10:58AM (#6426802)

Here you go, intentional homicide rate (as per United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime data) per 100,000 inhabitants:

  USA        4.66
  Canada     1.58 (US murder rate 3.0x higher)
  UK         1.13 (US murder rate 4.1x higher)
  Australia  0.99 (US murder rate 4.7x higher)
  Germany    0.86 (US murder rate 5.4x higher)

On the numbers you crunched, which western countries "with strict gun control" did have a higher murder rate than the U.S.?

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Re:American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? by alexeisadeski3 on Sunday September 22, 2013 @02:31PM (#6427443)

>On the numbers you crunched, which western countries "with strict gun control" did have a higher murder rate than the U.S.?

Mexico, most of Central America, most of South America, most of the Caribbean, some of Oceania.

What is interesting is that Washington State, Montana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine all have very similar homicide rates to their Canadian neighbors.

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Re:American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? by antr on Sunday September 22, 2013 @02:46PM (#6427490)

Ok, I see, but most of those are not considered "western countries" as per Huntington, as they are not comparable in economic development, HDI, etc. Apple and oranges.

I was referring to comparable nations, primarily to the anglo-saxon countries on the above list really comparable to the US. The U.S. has 4x more murders than the average of the western countries above. That is 4x, food for thought.

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Re:American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? by alexeisadeski3 on Sunday September 22, 2013 @03:53PM (#6427742)

If you control for Ango-Saxon admix, it seems that the US will have a very similar homicide rate to other Ango-Saxon nations. Higher, perhaps, but probably only by a bit:

http://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2013/07/22/yout...

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

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Re:American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? by antr on Monday September 23, 2013 @08:19AM (#6430310)

4 times higher

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Re:American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? by alexeisadeski3 on Monday September 23, 2013 @01:52PM (#6432783)

Also, this map pretty much demolishes the 'violent USA' and 'loose guns controls cause homicide' theories:

http://www.unitednorthamerica.org/images//MurderRate2007.jpg

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Re:American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? by antr on Monday September 23, 2013 @02:12PM (#6432981)

If you know basic arithmetic you should be able to point the flaw with that map. I'm pretty sure that this is what the NRA uses in their speeches.

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Re:American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? by alexeisadeski3 on Monday September 23, 2013 @03:03PM (#6433407)

If its so obvious, share with us.

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Re:American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? by alexeisadeski3 on Monday September 23, 2013 @11:50AM (#6431752)

How do you figure that?

The first link gives an upper bound of 1.32x higher... and it'd probably be a solid bit less given that youth murder rates are higher than adult murder rates...

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Re:American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? by antr on Monday September 23, 2013 @01:58PM (#6432845)

I understand that you might be unhappy with the US murder rates, and you are trying to paint a different picture. I get that. But lets not make up cases, exclude/include different scenarios, races, demographics, etc., a la politicians, I thought this was Hacker News, facts over bullshit. Macro numbers are what they are: "Total Murders divided by Country's Population".

I'm not talking about the cause behind the murders, but just the rate. But hey, bottom line, believe whatever you want, I'm not here to make you hear what you want.

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Re:American gun use: Shouldn't the world intervene? by alexeisadeski3 on Monday September 23, 2013 @03:03PM (#6433401)

If you want to determine the cause behind that macro number, you control for it.

No bs.

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