doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Presidential candidate supports INDIVIDUAL RKBA

Jake, it's hard to disagree that the article in question is both outdated and garbage--if you actually look at it, then look at worldwide murder rate statistics. Not just cherry-picking a few select countries.

We have better health care than Slovenia but a worse murder rate. (Theirs is 1.47 per 100,000; ours is almost 4x as high.) Of the approximately 110 countries on which recent data is available, over 70 have lower murder rates than the United States. Of the 37 with higher murder rates, 9 are former Soviet republics in the aftermath of the breakup of the USSR, and most of the rest are experiencing significant political turmoil of one sort or another, or have problems with narcoterrorism. Examples would be El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Mexico, Zimbabwe, and Uganda. Not likely shining examples of universal health care either.

So maybe we ought to worry about our murder rate, which is incredibly high among what one might call (in non-PC terminology) "the civilized world" as well as (or perhaps in conjunction with) our health care crisis.

Just goes to show the results of looking at "general propositions" without focusing on the specifics.

Again, linking gun control to national murder rates is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, implying cause and effect. No such connection has been proven. And statement #2 is flatly false: "those countries with stricter gun laws" include some of the most murderous nations on earth.

On the other hand, the cause/effect connection between UHC and infant mortality is widely acknowledged in the health care field. Free PMI (Protection Maternelle et Infantile) clinics have significantly reduced infant mortality rates in France.

If anyone here truly believes that stricter gun laws reduce homicide rates, I suspect he'll find more agreement among the gun-grabbers than he will in this forum.

You can quibble about the WHO 'overall performance' criteria, but you can't avoid the facts: the US ranks below the OECD average in almost every objective health statistic except one - we have the highest cost. At the price we're paying for health care, public and private, Peter, you're right - the US should rank much higher. But we don't.

I have been following this with great interest and have decided that if we elect Hilary, we will forget all these problems. This Hilary:




Not the other one!

USA today had an interesting article, including the positions of Hillary and Obama. Its an interesting read:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-02-26-guns-cover_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

Larry, I don't know why the US has such a high murder rate compared to other "civilized" countries. It is certainly true that America was formed with conflict. It is also true that we have many diffuse cultures here which maintain independent identities. But any link between murder rates and our ability to own guns is conjecture. Canada's statistics on those two issues alone would shoot down that theory.

We also have more hamburgers consumed than any other country per capita. I don't think it is linked to murder. We also have more bathrooms in our homes per capita than most of the world. I don't think that is linked to murder rates.

However, it is pretty hard to not compare the price spent on health care per capita with the fact that 40 million Americans have no coverage. The life expectancy and birth mortality issues are rather unarguably associated with health care. Wait times for procedures and appointments with health care providers seem likely to be linked to health care.

It sure seems like a discussion of specific issues should try to draw on factual information on those issues.

Regards, Jake

Jack, the facts are that comparing the United States to societies most similar to our own (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Western Europe), ALL of them have significantly lower murder rates than we do. And with few exceptions (Switzerland and Finland), there are far fewer guns per capita, and/or the gun laws are far stricter. Meanwhile, as I pointed out above, virtually all countries with higher murder rates than ours--regardless of their gun laws--are societies less like our own, and mostly experiencing some sort of political or societal unrest, either now or in the recent past. Or insurgency, or narcoterrorism. I used as my primary models the SAME countries YOU addressed, specifically, concerning their health care plans: UK, France, Italy. Apples to apples.

While guns don't kill people all on their own, they are certainly a tool of choice among murderers. And statistics clearly show that in societies most like our own, there are either fewer guns and/or tougher gun laws than we have--and FAR fewer murders.

Not that that is an argument to restrict gun ownership in this country. But it does show, clearly, that when one takes a "fair and balanced" look at statistics concerning a general proposition (unlike the unabashedly pro-gun propaganda piece you linked), it can lead one to a general conclusion that may be erroneous.

In the case of gun ownership/gun laws and universal health care, the devil remains in the details: the specifics of the particular country involved, and the particular health care plan (or gun legislation) proposed.

Jake, while people may die as a result of eating hamburgers or may slip and fall and die in the bathroom (or drown in the tub), neither hamburgers nor bathrooms are used to murder people. We're talking MURDER rate, not DEATH rate. Your analogy thus goes a bit wide of the mark.

Interesting article on the relationship between gun laws and violent crime in England: http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html

"The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low level of armed crime even before guns were restricted. A government study for the years 1890-92, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world. A hundred years and many gun laws later, the BBC reported that England's firearms restrictions "seem to have had little impact in the criminal underworld." Guns are virtually outlawed, and, as the old slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. Worse, they are increasingly ready to use them.

"Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing ever since. Last December, London's Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.

"Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England's inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people."

Our country has always had a high level of personal violence. I'm sure lots of PhD dissertations have been written about it. Some things that are different about our country from a Canada or some of the European countries is that we have a huge problem with drugs and gangs. I've been in California this week and the LA Times had had stories every day about the expansion of the Mexican Mafia gangs into the Central Valley and across the west. The brutality is not confined to the big urban areas or cites. Many small towns across the country are afflicted with gangs. In Arkansas and western Tennessee, many of the gangs are involved with the trans-shipment of drugs up I-40 from Texas to Chicago.
Memphis has plenty of legitimate jobs, and yet the gang members and drugs are destroying the city.
In New Hampshire, which I consider home, if there is some heinous crime, it is usually caused by the various gang members that have spread from Massachusetts and are usually drug/gang related.
Anyone watched a kid play "Grand Theft Auto?" I wanted to take my nephew out to shoot a single shot 22, but got the kibosh from his parents. They had a big issue with me teaching him gun safety and the discipline of shooting well. At the same time they do not have a problem with him playing unbelievably violent and obscene video games. Crazy to me.
Until the various violent groups stop shooting/raping and robbing, I'm going to have a concealed carry permit. Some places in this country you don't need one, but in big chunks of this country, you do. I drove into my old neighborhood in Dayton, OH last year, but didn't have a pistol in the car due to the stringent gun laws in OH. Big mistake to drive by our old house. It is now officially a crack neighborhood.
I'm not supporting gun restrictions until the bad guys give theirs up and get a J-O-B.

My two cents worth.

Here's another item for anyone who imagines gun laws reduce violent crime. England's Telegraph newspaper reports on the recent rapid increase in gun violence:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/02/24/nguns24.xml