I think of it this way...violent crime happens everywhere, whether you like it or not. People kill people. Personally, I'd rather be shot from a distance than stabbed all intimately and have to smell my killer's breath before I die.
Another gun thread
- Thread starter mituozo
- Start date
Not white knighting for anyone, just having a good time.
But yeah, also was thrown off by "yanky" - so that makes two of us.
People arguing for increased gun control ignore the fact that guns cannot ever be completely controlled, and ignore the fact that the human brain is far more dangerous and have far more willpower than an inanimate object.
You cannot just throw a bandaid on a gushing wound of violence by attempting to control the access to a certain type of weapon. People will fight and kill with fists, sticks or rocks if necessary.
You must instead control the stimuli which push a human brain towards violent tendencies in the first place. Everyone in the advertising industry knows that even very small hints (like color) can affect a person's mood and even guide them to a specific action. Society, politics and media all are constantly sending different stimuli towards citizens. This affects their behavior, and these days a good number of them snap.
On television you see a lot of propaganda where individuals argue against other individuals who are very poor at articulating their arguments. Listening to that nonsense won't get you anywhere.
Even comparing gun statistics is problematic because you are comparing nations with different cultures and different stimuli affecting the populace each day.
The solution is simple. Brainwash the entire populace into being pot smoking hippies and you will have no gun violence at the cost of productivity.
You cannot just throw a bandaid on a gushing wound of violence by attempting to control the access to a certain type of weapon. People will fight and kill with fists, sticks or rocks if necessary.
You must instead control the stimuli which push a human brain towards violent tendencies in the first place. Everyone in the advertising industry knows that even very small hints (like color) can affect a person's mood and even guide them to a specific action. Society, politics and media all are constantly sending different stimuli towards citizens. This affects their behavior, and these days a good number of them snap.
On television you see a lot of propaganda where individuals argue against other individuals who are very poor at articulating their arguments. Listening to that nonsense won't get you anywhere.
Even comparing gun statistics is problematic because you are comparing nations with different cultures and different stimuli affecting the populace each day.
The solution is simple. Brainwash the entire populace into being pot smoking hippies and you will have no gun violence at the cost of productivity.
The thing is though, the US isn't one homogeneous nation where the murder rate is 4.7 across the country. The majority of the US has a rate lower than that of the UK, Germany or France.
The problem is , there are areas in the US, and groups of people that skew the data so significantly it makes our overall murder rate higher than that of Europe or Canada. Even though this is a well accepted fact, people in society, and our own government want to pass laws that punish the groups of people with extremely low crime rates.
Instead, wouldn't it be better to look at the states/areas that have extremely low crime/murder rates to learn what they do right? That would make sense to me but for some reason that is not what the media & government call for. Out of the 10 states with the lowest murder rate (Under 2 per 100k) only 1 has additional gun control beyond federal levels.
This is just a guess but maybe that's because your murder rate IS higher than Canada
I posted this yesterday in response to someone pointing out the 1.2 rate for the UK :
homicide rates 2011
1.3 Vermont
1.3 New Hampshire
17.5 District of Columbia
New Hampshire and Vermont are two of the states where it is most easiest to purchase and carry guns. DC on the other hand has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the US.
VT and NH are usually the two lowest states, but notice they are still a bit higher than UK. Quite a few nations have rates under 1.
1.9 Utah
2.8 Montana
4.0 Alaska
3.8 New York City 2012
Compared to places like Iceland (0.3), Japan (0.4), and Switzerland (0.5), many of the more peaceful areas of the US still have higher homicide rates. Cities do tend to have higher rates, but also at the same time the state with the least population density (Alaska) has about the same as the biggest city.
The difference between Switzerland and Utah can't be explained by gun laws, race, or population densities. US culture as a whole would appear to have something unique to it that goes beyond those factors.
Alaska Crime Rates 1960 - 2011
New York murder rate at lowest rate in 50 years - Telegraph
How Switzerland Developed a Gun Culture That Works | TIME.com
If you want to decrease gun deaths, end the War on Drugs. Anything else is about controlling the population, not ending gun deaths.
With homicide simply defined as the killing of one by another then there are additional underlying factors such as the acceptance of killing in self defense and allowing Police to kill suspects. Just a thought that may or may not apply as I did not research the topic.
Last year Utah had 49 homicides, 10 were known to be self defense or by police.
A list of Utah
"A list of Utah's homicides in 2012. The list also includes killings that were deemed to be in self-defense or a justified use of officer force."
In terms of crime statistics, "homicide" usually refers to criminal homicide.
Look at US geographical distribution for homicides.
I need to get the exact #s, but in my state of 11 million people (Ohio), out of 88 counties, something like 80 are below 2 per 100k in homicides. The 8 remaining counties bring the state up to the average of 4.5 or so.
In said 8 counties, the majority of the murders take place, or the murderer lives in something like 20 zipcodes. The geographic dispersion of murder in the US is amazing. This of course goes to show you that there are certain groups in the US with immensely high murder risk rates and should be addressed.
Do you not think the same is true in the UK?
Most the murders & violent crime are done in the big cities here, too. Again, it's lots of gang members killing gang members, lower working class people on council estates that join gangs, stab members of the public for whatever reason, etc..
Comparing crime rates from country to country isn't the way to analyse the problem, you have to look inwards.
You also can't treat it as if guns are the only thing responsible for homicide/violent crime rates. Much of ours is undoubtedly caused by the war on drugs in combination with a working/benefit class being exposed to "how the other half live" on a regular basis, especially in cities, making them very bitter towards the rest of the population.
The media has very much pushed forward on a "the rich" are evil kinda thing, and the working class lap it all up.
Whilst it's not fair to say all of the working class are like this, as some of them do aspire to change things, progress in their lives/careers etc, but there's big underlying social problems in our country. There's an increasing gap between the middle class and the bottom of society, and it's only going to get worse. The middle class resent the poor (they take all their tax revenue in benefits, etc) and the poor resent the middle class because the poor think they deserve better than their miserable lives.
Combine all this with the entitlement culture we're building, and you have a nation full of people who are working and doing something with their lives + a group of failures who feel entitled to having their lives paid for by the rich, and blame all of their problems on other people/the government without taking any responsibility for themselves or their failures. "The rich" should pay for it with tax hikes, because they're the reason they can't get a good job, etc (that's actually their opinion)...
In order to reduce our violent crime rates I would say that drugs need to be legalised, and addictions treated like an illness rather than a crime. Secondly, our education system needs an overhaul - something needs to be done to try and get working class kids out of their mentality/"victim" mindset and being more productive. The answer isn't more benefits, but trying to deal with problem families better, getting people working and making people realise that they're not entitled to everything.
We need a culture of responsibility. People responsible for their lives, their families lives, and their communities as a whole, rather than viewing it as the government's responsibility. Unfortunately this isn't in a government's mandate, because it doesn't get them votes, and makes them less relevant.
If people are responsible, it doesn't matter whether you give them guns, knives, or what.
I pretty much guarantee if you legalised guns in the UK, that homicide rates would shoot up in our cities though. The young thugs that are currently walking around with knives in their pockets and acting the hard men, would suddenly have a way to kill people from a distance - far more anonymously and less intimately. Likewise, people who deem them to be a pest, or who've been bullied/abused for a while or whatever will be far more likely to deal with the problem by shooting people. (Harry Brown is a great film that follows that sort of line - an extreme case, but I can imagine people killing for less when they're on the edge of their wits - you then end up with the "Harry Brown's" spending their lives in prison for murder).