Gun crime has plunged, but Americans think it's up, says study

That's what I figured. Thanks for the clarification

robeiae said:

There are more people fighting in Detroit and Chicago alone, than in Afghanistan.

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Also, as we all know, only american service men and women are considered people. Afghan's?, they're something else.

_Sian_ said:

Wait, so there are more gun related homicides in America each year than there were soldiers that died in Afghanistan?

....maybe it has something to do with the number of people involved? It would be easier to compare percentages of a population. Because my first thought was "holy crap", and then I thought about the number of people fighting in Afghanistan vs the number of people in America.

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I think the fact that we can ask that question in comparing violence among civilians in American towns and cities to the violence happening in an active combat zone highlights our problem pretty starkly.

I think that at least some of the gun crime problem is concocted by the media for the titillation of readers, some of it is down to what unfortunately happens in life and some is downright propoganda. Let's take a look at real life.
In my younger days I lived in an area of South London which bordered New Cross and Deptford. The local memorial was a burnt out house which was the result of a fire at a party which had killed a dozen or so teenagers. Until I was recognised as a "local" I was propositioned every time I walked down my street by kids trying to sell me drugs. Yet I'd go down to the local pub and find a decent, welcoming community there. At the same time I'd read the local newspaper and see stories of rape, pillage and murder going on around the locality, and I didn't recognise this as the place I lived in. These were streets that I walked around at any time of day or night, feeling quite safe.
And then after I'd moved on to a different part of the city, I heard that a newcomer had decided to move in on the local drugs trade and ended up getting shot and dying on someone's doorstep as they opened the door.
I think it's all very well for the hunters of this world to shrug their shoulders and hide behind whatever amendment there is to the constitution, but this is what happens in real life. Even in a country with prohibitive gun laws like Britain.
I'm now going to try and be clever here, so please shout me down. To use a mathematical integral calculus equation, if you give nobody a gun then nobody gets shot, but if you set the upper limit where everybody gets a gun then everybody ends up shooting each other. So where do you set the limit?

Well, first off, why if you give everyone a gun does everyone shoot each other?

Chrissy said:

Well, first off, why if you give everyone a gun does everyone shoot each other?

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Because it's on TV!

kuwisdelu said:

Aye. Coverage of gun crime probably is up.

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this was a bit of "news on the news process" maybe ten years ago with shark attacks......the media went crazy about the "string of shark attacks" and later they realized the year's total was not out of the ordinary at all.....you know, after the hyperbole.

muravyets said:

I think the fact that we can ask that question in comparing violence among civilians in American towns and cities to the violence happening in an active combat zone highlights our problem pretty starkly.

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why? if you don't take the numbers into account, and do some sort of percentage, that's a pretty flawed assumption.

I suspect in an average year there are more recorded deaths by tiger attack among fishermen in Bengladesh and India than animal trainers in the USA....but you're comparing a pool of millions versus hundreds. So the fact is a moot point.

Now, if you can point to actual percentages, or cases per 1000 citizens, or whatever, that means something, but when you compare the two without looking at the number of people involved in total, there's no way to suggest there is or is not a problem in the first place.

Bartholomew said:

Some stats.

http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf#page=27

It's great that gun deaths are down from the astronomically, war-like numbers they'd reached in the 90's.

2008 saw some 8000 handgun homicides. Let's compare that to some other stats.

http://icasualties.org/oef/ByTheatre.aspx

That's 2126 deaths for the entirety of Operation Enduring Freedom, starting in 2001 and going until 2013.

Frankly, I question the motives of that article and of this thread.

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I question the motives of anyone who would compare thousands of soldiers with billions of citizens without looking at any sort of percentage, only the number they can use to wave around like a bloody shirt.

So, Bart.....4x as many Americans died in 2008. Assuming one can roughly divide Operation Freedom's toll by thirteen, we'd get 164 lives lost each year. Compared to 8000. 164 is just shy of 1/50th of 8000.

I've seen a quote several times of about 0.5% of the populace at any one time is active military. So if we take that 164 and multiply it back by 200 we get 32,800, which is a fair bit bigger than the number 8000. And fails to take into account that that 0.5% includes a hell of a lot of non-combat folks who are skewing the stats too....I suspect you could at least double the figure of 32,000.

Even if we don't, all american military (and remember a lot of them were not deployed at the time, were non-combat, etc.) that still says they were over 4X as likely to be shot than someone on the street.


Now, if you calculate in that you used the "high" of American history for your gun stats, and you also then cull drug violence and other crimes which weren't exactly "innocent bystanders," your stats are even more flawed, if you intended to suggest ordinary Americans (even ordinary, poor inner-city americans) are anywhere near as at risk as service members.

As far as military and "domestic" gun deaths, the two AREN'T comparable.....not unless you do so dishonestly.

America has a violence problem, and without question we turn to guns to solve it too often, but folks who either don't take the time to analyze the information or simply choose not to because of an agenda don't help...on either side, of any issue.

Chrissy said:

To be completely fair, and possibly un-libertarian, who would benefit from these perceptions?

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The investors, that's who. Anyone who has a 401, 457, TIAA-CREF, so on and so forth, and then there's the board of directors who make money off of the investors, and don't forget our congress critters that make tons of money, legally, from insider trading on this sort of information.

Someone pointed a finger at the gun industry, and someone else pointed a finger at the media.

I'll point a finger at the investors that are invested in both industries INCLUDING the insurance/health industry.

Fear sells and investors love a terrified public because they can be coerced into purchasing all sorts of products (home security systems, etc.,) and insurance policies.

Peter Diamandis on All The Horrible Things Happening In The News:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BltRufe5kkI

(previously posted in the "News is bad for you" thread)

Chrissy said:

Well, first off, why if you give everyone a gun does everyone shoot each other?

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Because I was trying to be flippant and use a formula to explain it

quicklime said:

why? if you don't take the numbers into account, and do some sort of percentage, that's a pretty flawed assumption.

I suspect in an average year there are more recorded deaths by tiger attack among fishermen in Bengladesh and India than animal trainers in the USA....but you're comparing a pool of millions versus hundreds. So the fact is a moot point.

Now, if you can point to actual percentages, or cases per 1000 citizens, or whatever, that means something, but when you compare the two without looking at the number of people involved in total, there's no way to suggest there is or is not a problem in the first place.

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Uh... because cities and towns are not supposed to be war zones? War zones can be expected to have very high rates of violence and violent death, while cities and towns not at war, uh... shouldn't be under the same expectation? So therefore, if cities and towns have rates of violence so high that they can be usefully compared to active war zones, that tells us the cities and towns have a big effing problem?

I kind of thought that one would be pretty obvious.

For those of us living outside the US, the debate about gun violence over there has long resulted in a shrug of the shoulders. To us Limeys, in a modern world personal guns shouldn't be needed, but a lot of American people seem to have an affinity to the idea of their right to own a gun, so what the heck. It's all wound up in their country, their culture, their history, so it's up to them to decide. But I did come across this:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_..._death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html

As Stalin said, a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. This site is an attempt to turn the million deaths of a statistic back to the tragedy of a single one, and I for one applaud them.

muravyets said:

Uh... because cities and towns are not supposed to be war zones? War zones can be expected to have very high rates of violence and violent death, while cities and towns not at war, uh... shouldn't be under the same expectation? So therefore, if cities and towns have rates of violence so high that they can be usefully compared to active war zones, that tells us the cities and towns have a big effing problem?

I kind of thought that one would be pretty obvious.

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that much is...as I said, the sweeping generalization is entirely full of holes though. So the two shouldn't be comparable, as you initially said, but really.....well, they aren't. That's the point.

quicklime said:

that much is...as I said, the sweeping generalization is entirely full of holes though. So the two shouldn't be comparable, as you initially said, but really.....well, they aren't. That's the point.

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Yes, I know, but it wasn't the additional point I was making by adding that comment to the original comment, which is why I wasn't making a generalization and... oh, what the hell. Whatever.