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Alaska, by the way, has one of the highest rates of gun deaths in the country. As you know, it's a very Republican state.
Alaska also has a suicide rate of 42.3/100,000, many of those would use a gun (since I don't know anyone without one). However take away the gun, and if you're suicidal just go for a decent walk outside on a day like today (-55F peak) not dressed for it, and the result is the same. Much of Alaska's suicides are likely down to low sunlight levels in the winter (I have no stats that prove this, but it's my observation that people are much more depressed in the winter).
You can't include suicides, if there were a correlation between suicide and gun ownership, then the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and Japan would have the lowest suicide deaths in the world, but that's not the case, quite the reverse.
I was on another forum and someone asked the question "do you feel safe walking to your backyard at night?".
I was horrified that not only over 50% of respondents, both rural and urban, said NO.
One respondent even stated "I don't even put my rubbish out unless I'm carrying".
Come on America...is this really the way you want to live?
Why the argument about guns causing gun deaths? Cars cause auto accidents, no one disputes that...
Come on Australia, is this the best representative of your country you can come up with? You really have no concept of how different the different parts of our country are. I'm sure nearly 100% of people in Chicago, Detroit or Compton would be afraid to walk to through their back yards at night without a gun, but that covers a very small amount of the country.
America doesn't live that way. It must be the weird people you hang around with online who are so timid and frightened. No one around here worries about walking in the back yard at night. The crime rate here would make anyone in Sydney or London sick with envy. There was a car stolen in town a few weeks ago, first time in 5 years. Such a terrible place to live.
EDIT: Side note.... hey look! Somalia is way under the US!!!
First of all, whether it is intentional or not, the aggregate outcome still results in the same thing: a lot of death.
Furthermore, even when you look at intentional rate, pretty much all of the developed world is still significantly below America. Look at your own data.
Sure, compared to third-world countries like Sudan that are one step from anarchy, we look great! But is that really the standard to compare against for the richest country on the planet?
So how is my argument "destroyed?" Your link confirms the exact same trend as my graph! So I guess it IS about guns...
Come back when you actually have a well thought-out argument to explain - again - why the USA is a statistical outlier in gun homicides compared to the rest of the developed first-world nations.
You're usually a reasonable guy, so I'll give you a reasonable answer.
Thanks... I'm all ears.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SamBarrow
1. Culture. It's undeniable that America has a violent culture. Why? I don't know, might have something to do with #2. But we are some violent mofos, in general.
2. History. See post 2. Our recent history (last couple hundred years) is more violent than most of the countries on your list. This also plays into the next on my list.
3. Demographics. Denmark, Estonia, etc. are not culturally divided. They do not have large swaths of people completely isolated from mainstream society, millions of people in poverty, immigrants, descendants of slaves who have still to this day not reached absolute equality. Take states with similar demographics to Europe, you'll see similar crime rates. I hate to play this card for the millionth time, but do check out the gun laws in Vermont.
4. Size. It is much more difficult to control larger borders, larger populations, etc. with gun laws. This also plays into the cultural segregation and isolation that creates friction.
5. Stricter drug laws. Our drug laws create huge criminal enterprises. Usually, when you have criminal enterprise, you get a little bit of violence along with it. Or so I've heard.
6. The availability of guns (bear with me). Obviously, more guns = more gun crime - relative to total crime. But really, this discussion is a stupid one if we're focusing only on gun violence, and this point only has relevance in that case, so it's stupid too.
I fail to see how death by gun is inherently worse than death by knife.
Your statistics are not very meaningful for that reason, and also because you're lumping together a huge country into one bar on your chart, while ignoring the fact that within that country, there are 50 states and hundreds of cities, many with different gun laws. I will also add that many of the cities that contribute huge portions to that bar on your chart have gun laws similar to those of Europe (not as strict, but much more strict than most low crime areas in the US). DC, Baltimore, Chicago, just those 3 make up probably 1,000 of those murders alone.
Some of your points are taken, and some leave me rather unconvinced.
So the history of violence... I dunno. I guess if we could make a clearer statement as to the how/why, then I'd buy it. But most of the world has a violent history - European history is covered in blood; the last two world wars were started and primarily focused there, and that was still relatively recently.
Size - not convinced on this one either. More telling than size to me would be some measure of the scaling of societal enforcement systems and structures across the nation - large country, larger/more systems for enforcing regulations - especially for a nation as rich as this one. I guess the size could make a difference, but it seems like there would be other factors that play a larger limiting role in the reduction of homicides.
As for demographics, I think this one may be the most convincing. This has been my leading theory, other than gun control. On one hand, those nations in aggregate do actually represent a fair amount of cultural and socioeconomic diversity. You have the gypsies as a notorious underclass in Central and Eastern Europe, and you get a lot of North African immigrants to the South. But by most measures of economic inequality, America is a high outlier, a distinction that it actually shares with many less developed countries. Most of the developed world has much rates of inequality (gini coefficient). But I'd point out that if inequality drives more of this kind of violence, then that suggests that the "socialism" in Europe and other areas of the developed world really has a positive effect in terms of a more peaceful society overall less prone to things like a classroom of kinds shot to death.
As for the fact that we're looking only at guns... it's interesting to point out that even if you just look at overall homicide rates, America is still a statistical outlier to most of the rest of the developed world. USA has somewhere around 5 homicides per 100K; most of the first-world nations have less than a third of that. But sure...getting killed with something other than a gun sucks, too.
First of all, whether it is intentional or not, the aggregate outcome still results in the same thing: a lot of death.
Furthermore, even when you look at intentional rate, pretty much all of the developed world is still significantly below America. Look at your own data.
Sure, compared to third-world countries like Sudan that are one step from anarchy, we look great! But is that really the standard to compare against for the richest country on the planet?
So how is my argument "destroyed?" Your link confirms the exact same trend as my graph! So I guess it IS about guns...
Come back when you actually have a well thought-out argument to explain - again - why the USA is a statistical outlier in gun homicides compared to the rest of the developed first-world nations.
US most guns per capita...bottom half of intentional homicides per capita....
Conclusion???
a LOT of other countries are killing a LOT MORE people with a LOT LESS guns...
Does a developed nation civilians life have more value than a non-developed civilians??? If not, then cool...let's ban guns.
If not, how about we stop sending drones into middle eastern nations schools and killing their kids?
Little more clear now?
Yes, it's clear to me that you're comparing the wrong things.
You really should compare a first-world nation like the USA against other first-world nations. It's ridiculous to compare us to Libya, Somalia, Mexico, Sudan... Really? These are poor nations that barely have functioning social order!
If you look at the USA compared to other prosperous developed nations, you find that we have the most guns per capita and the highest rates of homicides - guns or other, for that matter.
That's the proper comparison that merits discussion - not something along the lines of Seattle vs. Mogadishu, where they have anarchic warlord factions stirring up chronic civil war.
One of the problems is our mistreatment of blacks for over three and a half centuries has resulted in a very high homicide rate among that demographic group.
This is a very straightforward inquiry. All I want is for someone to give me a well-reasoned and evidenced explanation as to why this chart looks the way it does with respect to the USA.
This compares the United States to other developed nations, which is the appropriate comparison, not to nations that have civil unrest or semi-functional/poorly developed social systems. There are nations that have higher rates of gun violence than we do, including Mexico and Brazil. But if you want to include them, go ahead - still, look at how many nations are to the left on the chart.
As you prepare your answer, note several things:
1. Crime in the USA has been on a downward trend, but even so, you can look at any data source on any website, and you will find clear, unmistakeable evidence that tells you that the USA as a huge statistical outlier in the developed world terms of gun deaths. And we've developed a world-wide reputation for the kinds of gun massacres that occurred yesterday.
2. Notice Switzerland, Finland, and Israel on the chart - they all have relatively widespread gun ownership but much lower homicide rates. They also have much tighter gun control laws than we do.
3. Notice, too, that these are many of the "liberal lifestyle" countries that are oftentimes derided for implementing "socialism."
4. The USA is among the top most heavily armed, if not the most heavily armed, nations on the planet. If more guns are the differentiating factor to make us safer, then we should be among the safest countries on the left-hand side of the chart, along with Switzerland, Finland, Israel, and all of the other nations off to the right with increasing bar sizes.
5. Finally, note that the USA has much more liberal gun control laws than all of these nations.
But let's play devil's advocate and start with the premise that gun control is not the primary differentiating factor that explains this chart. Let's be open to other explanations. What other rational, evidence-based reasons are there as to why this chart looks the way it does? Serious answers are appreciated.
I would say they have less gun related fatalities because they have less guns around. I'm sure the island Australia has more shark attacks per year than land-locked Switzerland has. I don't quite understand your question. You specifically say you want to rule out the one most logical reason for the statistics, and then ask for a rational explanation of the statistics. That doesn't make sense to me.
What I suspect you're trying to do is put pro gun people on the defensive. If that's the case, then your whole approach is off because most pro gun people never claimed that guns weren't dangerous in the first place, just that we have a constitutional right to own them. If that's not what you're trying to do, then I don't see any point in trying to explain a situation while specifically excluding the blatantly obvious explanation for that situation.
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But is that really the standard to compare against for the richest country on the planet? 
