Baalzamon said: To add to the argument, gun restriction, while it absolutely appears to reduce HOMICIDE with a gun, doesn't appear to reduce violent crime at all.
Britain and Wales, for instance have more than double the rate of violent crime as the US.
So I've got to ask (even though this trade-off isn't necessarily inevitable), would you be more comfortable with a higher gun homicide rate but substantially lower violent crime, or vice versa?
I've personally lived in a city (where I went to college) where people frequently got beat up and robbed if they walked around at night. It wasn't at all enjoyable. Ironically, this was also the 1st time I ever kept a gun in my house as my neighbor's were being robbed in the middle of the night etc and I didn't want to feel completely defenseless to this. |
This is an argument I've seen several times before and every time it seems to be the result of someone not really looking very deeply into the question before shooting out an answer. If you actually compare violent crime by narrow categories between the USA and the UK, you will find that the US far exceeds the UK in almost every category.
So where does this falsehood originate from? It is a question of definitions. Lets compare the UK's definition of "violent crime" to America's:
United Kingdom:
“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.” (THOSB – CEW, page 17, paragraph 1.)
United States:
“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. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses which involve force or threat of force.” (FBI – CUS – Violent Crime)
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As you can see, the definition is far more broad in the UK. If you push someone with no physical harm being done, this is classified as a violent crime in the UK, while it wouldn't be in the US. The US does not include simple assault in its definition of violent crime, which suppresses the statistic.
Lets compare a few numbers with definitions that are more comparable (numbers are per 100,000 individuals using 2011 crime stats):
Robbery (UK:US) = 135:113 = 1.1x more likely in UK
Burglary (UK:US) = 460:702 = 1.5x more likely in US
Rape (UK:US) = 26:26.7 = 1.02x more likely in US
Homicide (UK:US) = 1.14:4.6 = 4.0x more likely in US
Agg. Assault (UK:US) = 35:241 = 6.9x more likely in US
You're argument is fundamentally flawed because you are not comparing like to like. USA has more violent crime if you are looking at comparable definitions.