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But if the gun control laws were working then crime will go down, which it hasn't.

Yes it has. Crime in New York has fallen every single year since 1990. Violent crime is the lowest it's been for forty years.

On the other hand, combining this and this suggests that, if you took US crime statistics and imported it directly into Germany's population numbers, you would have approximately 380,000 violent crimes, of which slightly under 110,000 are committed with assistance of a firearm. Leaving 270,000 violent crimes if firearms vanished and so did every crime ever committed with use of a gun, while Germany actually, apparently, had around 211,000, as you said. Almost a 30% difference.

Perhaps the two countries are different in more than just population? Nah. Couldn't be.

Also, I'm not arguing that easy accessibility to guns doesn't also make some crimes more likely. (You'll notice that this debate started with someone making a claim that accidental gun-related deaths vastly outstripped any useful use of guns. This new point, whether guns are actually an improvement or not, is a point I haven't touched on before.) I do think that it's a net profit, but it's extremely hard to come up with meaningful arguments on either side due simply to the impossibility of a good test.

Are you on crack?

Lets look at the numbers:
There were 17,034 murders in 2006 in the United States. (source)
We don't know how many of these were gun related, and the same gun could be used for more than one death. But for the sake of argument (and to make you look just a little less like a moron) we'll assume that 17,034 different guns killed 17,034 people.

"The net of civilian guns made available for use is about 68.6 million guns over a 14 year period, for an average of 4.9 million guns per year." (source)
That's just how many new guns were made and given to civilians. That doesn't count the tens of millions of guns that were purchased years before.

So if, as you say, "95% of guns kill people illegally", then last year about 4,655,000 people in the U.S. died from being shot by a gun. Which is odd, because I thought there were about 17,000 people murdered... hmmm...

From my calculations, a very, very high estimate of the percentage of guns that are used to kill people is 0.34%, as in about 1/3 of 1%.

Statistically, I would be safer in any major European city than any major US city. Including the UK.

Let's take a look at a typical UK city, say, Manchester and compare it to a typical US city, say, New York, and a violent city, like Saint Louis. In Saint Louis, crime in 2006 was 14228.6 per one hundred thousand. In Greater Manchester, crime in 2005 was roughly 1110 per one hundred thousand, with a population around 2.55 million. (This information might very well be apples to oranges, but is police report to police report.) In New York, the number is 2,487.6 per hundred one thousand.

I'm having difficulty finding the exact US federal statistics for crime all over the US, but I imagine it's worse than in the UK. It's just safer there. And don't live in Saint Louis. Someone will kick your ass.

Maybe my use of plummeted is an exaggeration there is a correlation between crime and the cocaine epidemic, especially during the crack years.

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/

So even in the US you are more likely to die from smoking than be murdered.

And thats not taking into account the fact that not everyone smokes. The number of people who play violent video games is surely higher in most younger demographics.

That still leaves the US with a murder rate that is about five times higher than the UK after adjusting for the larger population. There is certainly not a major difference in the number of people playing violent video games. In fact back in the 80s the UK had more personal computers per head of population than any other country. Many of the top games come from the UK.

I am sure that you might be able to crunch the numbers and come up with some sort of effect due to violent games. But to say that violent games have a bigger impact than smoking is just utterly ridiculous. Smoking worldwide causes more deaths than 9.11 every single day. In fact smoking killed more people in the 20th century than all the wars of the 20th century combined. To use smoking as a comparison demonstrates a profound indifference to the facts.

Can you back that up with numbers? 'cuz I think you just pulled that "fact" out of your ass. Here are my numbers:

DC (2006): population 581,530; 169 murders => probability of death: 0.0003.

Iraq (2006): troops 168,530; 791 deaths => probability of death 0.0047.

In other words you would be 16 times more likely to be killed in Iraq than in DC. The data I used came from here, here and here.

Why? Either they acted correctly, in which case nothing should happen to them, not even a fine, or they used excessive force in which case negligent manslaughter charges and jail time would be in order.

>>> murder hasn't changed.

Watcha talking 'bout Willis? This, says murders in the USA peaked in 1993 at 24,530 and then has been on the decline ever since. (Along with almost every other Stat.)

Although waiting 5 days to buy a gun usually rules them out as last minute stocking fillers for the family at Christmas time.

Is the world really that much more dangerous?

No. Depending on the location and crime, the danger either peaked in the late 70's or the early 90's. Ever since then, we've been enjoying declining crime rates. The crime decline has been most positive in those urban areas traditionally seen as the most dangerous, such as San Diego and New York City.

Look at the per X inhabitants rates.

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
http://www.sandiego.gov/police/pdf/UCRrates50to200 6.pdf
http://samoa.istat.it/Eventi/sicurezza/relazioni/L angan_rel.pdf

To protect a few hundreds of innocents from McCarthy-like harassment, America shackled its intelligence services in the past, which appears to have contributed substantially to the deaths of several thousands (and billions of dollars worth of destruction) in 2001 alone.

Every time a news of shooting breaks out, I always wonder why the possession of firearms is not banned entirely in this country.

Well, first of all there's that pesky 2nd amendment. The people who signed off on it weren't interested in duck hunting, they'd just won their independence from Great Britain because they had guns. They saw firearm ownership as a bulwark against tyranny. Many Americans still think that way. If that seems foreign to you, you probably trust your government, an attitude that would seem peculiar to many Americans.

Washington D.C. has some of the country's strictest gun control laws, yet that city is pretty much a free fire zone. There's nothing like telling criminals that their victims don't have guns to encourage crime.

When people live in a country like Japan where it's almost impossible to get a gun, they resort to other means of destruction, like home made nerve gas. Every time news of a poisoning breaks out, I wonder why chemicals aren't banned entirely in this country.

"One in six American women are victims of sexual assault, and one in 33 men." http://www.rainn.org/statistics/index.html

"Approximately thirteen million people (approximately 5% of the U.S. population) are victims of crime every year. Approximately one and a half million are victims of violent crime." http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/

besides, in large urban centers and suburban areas Gun Control LOWERS crime rates, not increases them.

You mean like in Washington D.C.?

Or maybe you mean Chicago

Both cities have what is considered to be fairly draconian gun control laws by US standards. Both have violent crime rates well in excess of the national average.

Without these cameras this killer would probably be stalking the streets of Philadelphia today. With results like that, is there really a good basis for argument against these cameras?

In 2005, there were 16,692 murders in the United States. (link)

In 2005, there were 43,200 deaths due to car accidents. (link)

It has been shown that cameras increase car accident rates by between 7 and 24 percent. (link).

So, you tell me. With results like these, is there really a good basis for argument FOR these cameras?

Awards of 100% of real damages plus statutory punitive damages of $100 per victim per incident if negligence is demonstrated would do the trick real quick, I'd imagine.

Unfortunately, your imagination does not conform to reality. Punitive measures rarely have a dramatic effect on human behaviour.

This can easily be seen in actual data. Consider the death penalty.

North Dakota has one of the lowest homocide rates in the U.S. and has not had the death penatly since the 1930's. The homocide rate in Texas is ten times higher, and yet Texas executes people on a regular basis.

The rate of executions in Texas jumped from about 5 per year in the 80's to over 20 per year in the 90's, and this four-fold increase seems correlated with a ~20% drop in the homocide rate over the next decade, but no one who is arguing from the data, rather from their imagination, would suggest that increasing punitive measures is the best way to alter human behaviour. If a five-fold increase in killing convicted murderers brings about only a 20% drop in the murder rate, and yet making Texas more like North Dakota (but warmer!) brings about a ten-fold drop in the murder rate, an objective observer might suggest that we spend our resources figuring out what it is about North Dakota (or other north-central states, or Japan, or Canada, or Switzerland) that results in fewer people killing each other.

The data suggest that neither firearms ownership nor cultural diversity (Canada is one of the most culturally diverse nations on Earth, with criminal gangs drawn from the four corners of the globe all trying to set up shop here) nor punitive penalties are the most important differentiating factor.

And when one moves from the realm of individual to corporate malfeasence and negligence, it is more than clear that companies are willing to take enormous risks in the name of short-term profits as Merck did with Vioxx.

Ergo, whatever you might want to believe, the facts are pretty clearly in favour of punitive measures being a very poor way to influence human behaviour. They are sometimes necessary, but should be the last tool of social control that we reach for, not the first.

Awards of 100% of real damages plus statutory punitive damages of $100 per victim per incident if negligence is demonstrated would do the trick real quick, I'd imagine.

Unfortunately, your imagination does not conform to reality. Punitive measures rarely have a dramatic effect on human behaviour.

This can easily be seen in actual data. Consider the death penalty.

North Dakota has one of the lowest homocide rates in the U.S. and has not had the death penatly since the 1930's. The homocide rate in Texas is ten times higher, and yet Texas executes people on a regular basis.

The rate of executions in Texas jumped from about 5 per year in the 80's to over 20 per year in the 90's, and this four-fold increase seems correlated with a ~20% drop in the homocide rate over the next decade, but no one who is arguing from the data, rather from their imagination, would suggest that increasing punitive measures is the best way to alter human behaviour. If a five-fold increase in killing convicted murderers brings about only a 20% drop in the murder rate, and yet making Texas more like North Dakota (but warmer!) brings about a ten-fold drop in the murder rate, an objective observer might suggest that we spend our resources figuring out what it is about North Dakota (or other north-central states, or Japan, or Canada, or Switzerland) that results in fewer people killing each other.

The data suggest that neither firearms ownership nor cultural diversity (Canada is one of the most culturally diverse nations on Earth, with criminal gangs drawn from the four corners of the globe all trying to set up shop here) nor punitive penalties are the most important differentiating factor.

And when one moves from the realm of individual to corporate malfeasence and negligence, it is more than clear that companies are willing to take enormous risks in the name of short-term profits as Merck did with Vioxx.

Ergo, whatever you might want to believe, the facts are pretty clearly in favour of punitive measures being a very poor way to influence human behaviour. They are sometimes necessary, but should be the last tool of social control that we reach for, not the first.

Um, maybe you should check out the WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD.

Yes, one should. One would see countries like Switzerland and Israel where people have easy access to guns, and a murder rate much lower than in the U.S.

We Americans stab and bludgeon each other to death more than most other nations commit total muders.

In the U.S. firearms are used in only 71% of murders. With a base homicide of 5.6 per 100,000 people, that give 1.6 non-gun murders per 100,000.

According to stats here (a bit old, admittedly), that's more than the total muder rate in Denmakr, Austria, Switerland, France, England, Belgium, Japan, Sweden, Germany, Norway, New Zeland, Ierland, the Netherland, Spain, Greece, or Kuwait.

If all guns disappeared from the U.S. tomorrow, and we pretended that guns were never used defensively and that people wouldn't turn to other methods of killing each other, the U.S. would still have about two and half times the murder rate of Japan (0.62/100,000).

Our problem with violence does not rest in our guns.

Well, let's see. There have been over 16,000 murders per year inside the U.S. for the last 5 years. That means Americans have been killing 5x more Americans per year than foreign Muslims allegedly killed in 911. Americans killing other Americans never warranted a war on Americans. We managed to SUSTAIN OUR CONSTITUTION in spite of the fact that the crime rates were taking ~16,000 lives per year, AND that the deaths came from "our own people."

The bottom line of 9-11: 3030 terror deaths. The impact of that attack was distorted, or else they'd never have accomplished the whole "Heil Bush, Protect the Fatherland" thing.

If enough people get that 3,030 vs 16,000 into perspective, we can derail the police state's momentum.

According to the CIA world factbook, 78% of Americans characterize themselves as Christian of some sort or another (catholic, protestant, mormon)... perhaps more, since 10% are categorized as "other".

Jesus taught we should always forgive, love our enemies, and never retaliate for any thing, or any reason. Turn the other cheek. Those who live by the sword die by the sword, etc, etc. Christ's "war" was a spiritual war. Taking up violence or hostility for ANY reason IS LOSING A BATTLE in Christ's war. The battle is WON with prayer and righteousness in all cases. When a dead suicide bomber reaches heaven's gate, he's greeted as a terrorist. Do you think there are any terrorists in heaven? Or any megalomaniacal pseudopresidents with hundreds of thousands fighting in an unjust war for oil, while training to subdue an unwilling native population? Perhaps there are... in radical-militant heaven...perhaps in Bush heaven... but not in the Heaven I plan to go to.

War is against the very bedrock of Christianity.

From the CIA World Factbook: U.S. "Government type: Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition". Straight from the CIA world factbook. It looks like the administration should read up on the facts. Well, gee... wasn't Bush's own father head of the CIA for a while? Perhaps he could convey to president Bush the importance of maintaining _Traditional_ _American_ _Values_.

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/prin t/us.html
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

I had similar results. The Poisons Handbook link didn't work for me. I also added an essay on this whole documents matter.

The Al Queda Handbook
The Terrorist's Handbook
Dragunov Sniper Rifle Manual (et al)
Media and Government exaggerations

OK, here are the links so they can arrest us all:

http://www.disastercenter.com/terror/

http://www.capricorn.org/~akira/home/terror.html

www.thedisease.net/arcana/nbc/chemical/Mujahideen_ Poisons.pdf

http://kalashnikov.guns.ru/manual/english/svd/

Seriously, these things have been around for a VERY long time. Perhaps when a book comes out that makes it easy enough for any angry 14 year old kid to bring a city or state to its knees, maybe, but even then I doubt it. OK, so if you have a terrorist who is hell bent on doing something, maybe these books can be helpful to them. But being illegal? Lets get real here.

Be honest, how many of us reading this could write out much better terrorist textbooks if we were to put our mind to it? I know I could, and I am betting that most of us reading this could. As they stand these texts are very poorly thought out, very poorly designed, and not really designed to impliment. That makes them much less dangerous than say a driving manual.

Some reading material for you all:

The Al Qaeda Manual: http://www.disastercenter.com/terror/
The Terrorist's Handbook: http://www.totse.com/en/bad_ideas/irresponsible_ac tivities/168593.html
The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook: http://www.thedisease.net/arcana/nbc/chemical/Muja hideen_Poisons.pdf
The Dragunov Sniper Rifle Technical Description and Service Manual: http://kalashnikov.guns.ru/manual/english/svd/

Now don't go reading this stuff and getting yourself arrested.

I'm sure a handful of other people are posting it as I'm writing this, but here's a link to the Mujahideen Poisons handbook.

Also, the Al-Qaeda Manual (interestingly, this was distributed by the FBI)

The Dragunov sniper rifle manual

No luck searching for the RPG & Firearms handbook.

Quick google on the list goes:

al-Qaeda Manual = http://www.disastercenter.com/terror/
The Terrorists Handbook = http://www.capricorn.org/~akira/home/terror.html
The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook = http://www.thedisease.net/arcana/nbc/chemical/Muja hideen_Poisons.pdf
Dragunov sniper rifle = http://kalashnikov.guns.ru/manual/english/svd/

and....

RPG = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_propelled_gren ade

I didn't find the handbook though.

The poisons one is quite interesting. Has a poison to make from horse excrement...

You've got to be kidding! In theory, the readers, and by extension the posters, of /. are better educated than the run-of-the-mill sheep in this country, but I really doubt that now. Does anyone actually read stories like this, this, or this.

People, let's start using that grey matter for once. Yes, there are definitely people who would want to blow up planes, and yes, there are ways that it could be done. The War on Moisture isn't going to make anyone safer. Beyond the huge inconvenience and expense factor (read Schneier's Wired essay (I posted the link to his blog rather than the Wired article due to updates), a simple question of proportion should come in here. According to the US government's own statistics, fewer than 2,000 people were killed WORLDWIDE in 2004 by terrorists. Even if you add in the thousands of people killed on 9/11, you're still talking about 10,000 people, tops. Compare that to the number of people killed each year in car crashes (38,000 US fatalities in 2004), malaria (1,000,000 to 3,000,000 per year worldwide, mostly in Africa), or heart disease (276 out of ever 100,000 people in the US in 1996, or 22,800 in New York City alone). In fact, if the statistics are right, more people are hit by lightning each year (1 person out of every 600,000 per year, or 10,000 worldwide) than are killed by terrorists.

So, are you going to stop driving your car? Stop smoking/drinking? Stop taking romantic walks in the rain? (ok, so maybe not a good one on /.) Think of all the lives that would be saved if the billions of dollars that are being spent protecting us from push-up bras and shampoo were spent on finding a cure for malaria, or tuburculosis, or lung cancer, or AIDS.

Bah, the world is filled with nothing but sheep.

Wow. Are you really that ignorant?

Let's review what we know: Terrorists are 1) usually middle eastern

Wrong

2) always Muslim

Wrong

3) aged 15-35.

Wrong again

That's strike three, you're out. Thanks for playing!

We should give every adult who boards a plane a gun, that way the first terrorist to stand up and yell "allah ackbar" would get his brains splattered on the cabin ceiling and that would be the end of that.

Your "idea" (it's not even your idea, I've heard other morons spouting it before) is absurd. 400 cramped people, too much heat, screaming kids, travel stress & alcohol does not equal a sensible environment in which to introduce firearms.

(and despite what Penn and Teller's BullS*$T says, there is actually less crime in texas and that's why)

And yet again, Wrong. From the linked:

In the year 2000 Texas had an estimated population of 20,851,820 which ranked the state 2nd in population. For that year the State of Texas had a total Crime Index of 4,955.5 reported incidents per 100,000 people. This ranked the state as having the 8th highest total Crime Index. For Violent Crime Texas had a reported incident rate of 545.1 per 100,000 people. This ranked the state as having the 13th highest occurrence for Violent Crime among the states. For crimes against Property, the state had a reported incident rate of 4,410.4 per 100,000 people, which ranked as the state 10th highest.

Texas is, statistically, one of the more dangerous states. It seems they are also lacking an education system.

Open dialogue is quite clearly the most fruitful approach. Obviously, an idea is not a solution if it doesn't work, and pragmatism must reign. I feel somewhat presumptuous offering solutions since I am not an expert on this topic, but rather a long time, devoted amateur. What I am proposing is that people reconsider the facts.

Hezbollah is a frightening force, no rational person would argue that Israel should not have responded to Hezbollah's attacks. The question I propose is: what Israeli response would have most benefitted Israelis? Hezbollah attacked and kidnapped Israeli soldiers and launched and handful of rockets at Israel. Most of the world condemned this action, including Saudi Arabia. When Israel started attacking, most of the Arab world held back their usual criticism for a bit. Here was great opportunity to try something different.

Since the beginnings of Israel's offensive, almost 2000 rockets have hit Israel, and 52 Israelis (33 soldiers and 19 civilians) have been killed. Does anyone actually think that there would have been more deaths and more rockets if Israel had not attacked? It looks quite clear that this attack against Lebanon has actually contributed towards increasing Israeli deaths and increasing the damage inflicted on Israel.

"Forty-five Israelis were killed in Palestinian militant attacks in 2005, the Israeli internal security agency Shin Bet has reported..." "377 Qassam rockets" were launched towards Israel. "The main reason for the decline, Shin Bet said, was the informal truce observed by some Palestinian groups."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4574720.stm

To put this into perspective, Israel as a nation without the occupied territories has a population of about 6.2 million. Just over 500 Israelis (civilians and soldiers) have died from the current intifada, 2000-2005, in Israel, so about 85 people per year. So that's a murder rate of about 1.4 per 100,000 residents for Israel. There are roughly 400,000 Israelis in the occupied territories, and if you add in the Israeli deaths from the occupied territories, you get 950, or 158 per year. That makes a rate of 2.4 per 100,000 residents.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3694350.stm

Now let's look at U.S crime rates for 2000 (all in per 100,000 residents):

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm

California: 6.1
New York: 5.0
Georgia: 3.3
Oregon: 2.0
Connecticut: 2.9
Vermont: 1.5

So looking at murder rates, Israel is safer than Vermont. Including the occupied territories, Israel is still quite a bit safer than Connecticut or Georgia.

So why do Israel's much lower murder rates justify such drastic action? Fear is a powerful motivator, and I do not doubt that the fear of suicide bombers and Hezbollah attacks that people feel is real. So the question really is, who actually benefits from Israeli military attacks? I think that most of the 90+ percent of Israelis who support this current action do not. Throughout the world, fear mongering has proven to be a very effective means for politicians to gain and keep power, I don't think this works differently in the Middle East.

Some stats on Iraqi's living in fear:

Rough numbers from http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ indicate (using the maximum numbers, and considering the time period to be three years when it's really more like 3.5) put the death rate at 48.6 per 100,000 per year.

From http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/ (eh, it looks legit enough), the murder rate in the United states in 2005 was 5.5 per 100,000. In Washington DC in 2000 (the last year there was data for on that site), the rate was 41.7 per 100,000. In 1997, the rate in DC was 56.8 per 100,000. That's higher than in the "Civil war" state of Iraq. So in reality, Iraqis should feel _more_ safe than people who lived in the Capital of the Free World in 1997, and about as safe as people who live in DC today.

If you take a look here:
    http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

You'll see that crime as a absolute number peaked in the early 90's and has been going down. In fact, despite a 20% greater population, the absolute crime numbers are about where they were in the mid 80's. If you scale according to population, crime rates are down to where they were in the early 60's (if not mid 50's).

This is probably due to a lot of factors, one of which is the aging of the population in general.

Nonetheless, serious crime has been on a downward trend in the U.S. for about 15 years.

These anti-game activists keep saying that video games increase aggression and violent behavior. However I find that hard to believe considering US Crime Rates have in fact been decreasing since videogame began getting popular in the early 90s.

I don't really know where you got that Texas has a violent crime rate. According to this website http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/ Texas has a pretty high violent crime rate. You will have to actually do a little work and look at the statistics for every state. Texas doesn't have the highest, but it is still pretty high.

Tsk..Tsk...
Ok, to prove my point, i will use one of your own links.(though i could have used something from all of them)

From:
"United States Crime Index Rates Per 100,000 Inhabitants" http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

In 1960 there were 60.1 robberies Per 100,000 Inhabitants
In 2004 there were 136.7 robberies Per 100,000 Inhabitants which is more then double. Which is down from a few years before that but the amount per 100,000 Inhabitants has steadily increased when you look at the entire time line.

So sure, the pop-media can say crime is down from last year when you compare 2004 to the last few years. And, while this may give you and some others a warm fuzzy feeling that crime is under control, smart people who know better.

Now, when you compare crime today to what it was 20 or more years ago, the overall trend is up, and it is up in all catagories, even though crime has been decresing somewhat since around 1996.

So, why is this overall trend up? We have been discussing one of the reasons. Kids today are being desensitized to crime, death, murder, robbery and to each other. How? One reason is a bombardment of violence and sex in movies, on television and in games.

It is concerning how many people cannot make this correlation.

Oh, man, you've got it bad.

Look, see, there's this thing called PROPAGANDA.

So the government wants to expand its powers. Less of those nasty "rights" to get in their way when they want to pinch someone, for example, or maybe ridiculously long prison sentences for some poor schmuck who got caught with a pot cigarette. Whatever. Those in power want more of it. Now, how do they con the rest of us into letting them have more power?

Simple. First, they put a scare into rubes like you. OH MY GOD, they yell, POTHEADS ARE GOING TO EAT YOUR CHILDREN AND DO IT TO YOUR WIFE if you don't help us pass this here bill that allows civil forfeiture of property, etc, etc. And guys like you don't even apply reason to the conversation. You just bend over for The Man. In fact, you're so brainwashed you probably write your congressman ASKING him to curtail your civil rights.

And no matter WHAT they do or how far they go, your brainwashing is so complete that you feel frightened in your suburban, completely safe neighborhood. You think, at any moment a mob of crackheads and satanists could come crashing through the door and kill you! So you join the NRA and buy a huge arsenal of guns, collect knives, etc. All to ward off the imaginary crackheads who aren't knocking down your door. And nothing you do makes you feel safe, EVEN THOUGH THERE IS NO CREDIBLE THREAT TO YOU.

The sad part of this is, you really believe your paranoiac fantasies. Dubya LOVES guys like you. I bet you're not even bothered that the NSA has been spying on Americans for the past four years, without any legal right to. I bet "Extraordinary Rendition" is A-OK in your book. I bet you think that torture is just fine, because they only apply it to "those people", right?

People like you mystify me. You really do. How can you be so gullible, so easily brainwashed? Don't you understand you're just being used? Manipulated?

Sigh... Of course you don't.

Well, I don't have any hopes of snapping you out of it, so just for the hell of it, here are some more links with crime statistics. Of course, they don't agree with your delusions, so you'll yell about how they're just "liberal propaganda" or spout some other silly crypto-fascist bullshit like that.

Here goes:

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/tost_3.html#3_x
http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t3117.pdf
http://crime.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1 /XJ&sdn=crime&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ojp.usdoj.gov%2F bjs%2Fhomicide%2Fhmrt.htm
http://crime.about.com/od/stats/a/ucr2003.htm
http://crime.about.com/od/stats/a/fbi041214.htm

Now, go ahead and try to prove that the University of Albany is a liberal propaganda thinktank. I dare you. We could all use a laugh.

Terrorism, therefore, is worth mentioning in the context of civilian space flight - even if only as a political concept and not as a practicle concern.

Yup. Aside from a few airplanes in 2001, the building in Oklahoma in 1995, and the mostly failed WTC bombing in 1993 for less than 4,000 people have died from these things in over a decade.

Being that Americans kill each other at the rate of 10,000 to 20,000 a year http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm, it seems as though "terrorists" suck in comparison.

I look over my shoulder at the ATM, I have no worries on mass transit or sitting in my home or at work or driving to work.

If guns = crime why did the murder rate / crime rate in Texas go down after concealed carry was approved?

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/txcrime.htm

And please support you position that "you're close to Shia-law in the US"

Here are the links again right from my browser history: http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/07/28 /crime_stats040728.html http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Labour/LFS/ lfs-en.htm http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/feddal/r u http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/gdp_country_de sc.php http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/1999/06/think_01.h tml

Let me say that I enjoy the Canadian way of life myself, but let's look at some numbers:

Source: http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/gdp_country_de sc.php [worldfactsandfigures.com]
GDP per capita Canada: $29,700
GDP per capita USA: $37,800

Source: http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/1999/06/think_01.h tml [readersdigest.ca]
National average total taxation Canada: 48.2 %
National average total taxation USA: 41.4 %

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Labour/LFS/ lfs-en.htm [statcan.ca]
National unemployment rate Canada: 6.6%
National unemployment rate USA: 4.9%

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/040728/d040728 a.htm [statcan.ca] & http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm [disastercenter.com]
Total Violent crime per 100,000 people Canada: 963
Total violent crime per 100,000 people in USA: 466

By all of these measures you are better off in the USA.

[This may be a duplicate of a previous Anonymous Coward posting that I did not intend.]

Let me say that I enjoy the Canadian way of life myself, but let's look at some numbers:

Source: http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/gdp_country_de sc.php [worldfactsandfigures.com]
GDP per capita Canada: $29,700
GDP per capita USA: $37,800

Source: http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/1999/06/think_01.h tml [readersdigest.ca]
National average total taxation Canada: 48.2 %
National average total taxation USA: 41.4 %

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Labour/LFS/ lfs-en.htm [statcan.ca]
National unemployment rate Canada: 6.6%
National unemployment rate USA: 4.9%

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/040728/d040728 a.htm [statcan.ca] & http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm [disastercenter.com]
Total Violent crime per 100,000 people Canada: 963
Total violent crime per 100,000 people in USA: 466

By all of these measures you are better off in the USA.

[rant] I've played many games, and have gotten addicted to quite a few of them, my roommate and I spent an entire year playing games online together, we also hosted dnd games, and L5R games (another style of dnd game http://www.l5r.com/) and in the past 7+ years, none of my 20+ friends who have played dnd/l5r or anything with us have; committed suicide, tryed to re-enact, re-create anything that we've played out in our games. Now, that being said, I'm sure there were quite a few of us who have thought 'wouldn't it be cool to be able to blink, and turn invisible.' or something along those lines. But than again, who hasn't thought that. AND! to that end, why is it a games fault, look at tv, look at movies. I find it incredibly funny, and insulting as a gamer, that the most graphic/gory/destructive tv show is on every day, at least 3 times a day, on almost every single channel, News. My perspective on games, and their effects on people, is a rather simple one. It goes a little something like this.

A famous mom once said "I don't care what 'Jimmy' said, if little 'jimmy' jumped off a bridge, would you follow him, and jump as well."

sorry if anyone's name here happens to be jimmy. or jim, or anything like that, no reference meant

Now I'm sure almost everyone on these boards has heard this saying at least once, and can appreciate it's meaning. = just because so and so did that, what makes you think you can to.

I'm really quite sick of horrible parents trying to find an easy scapegoat for their own incapabilities.

Lets break something down here

car accidents attribute to the most deaths (aside from accidents, natural, and wartime) in the US (according to disastercentre http://www.disastercenter.com/cdc/ and yet parents/family members/relatives never seem to sue car manufatcurers (aside from when the car actually has a defect). MADD is trying to get stiffer penalties to alcohol makers when their product is found to be the cause of car accidents causing death, but that has so far failed, for a reason, it's not the manufacturers fault, it's the fault of the user.

However, when it comes to kids doing incredibly stupid things, if it can be even remotely related to a game they played, BAM instant lawsuit.

It seems that recently, lawsuits are fast becoming the replacement for good parenting. If a parent has a problem with their child, they immediately blame it on the most recent game that their child played.

I'm shocked that parents of dead soldiers aren't suing makers of games like America's Army, or Battlefield, or Counterstrike? I'm sure that's in the works somewhere.

Anyways.

I really don't see how a Game can force a child/teen/adult, person, to go out and do something incredibly stupid. It really makes you wonder, what happened to good ol common sense.

In the case of WOW vs. flying chinese child, I wonder. Where were the parents, where was the parenting that says, jumping off the balcony is not smart. Where were the parents saying "are you done your homework?" For that matter, where were the parents when this kid bought the game, ignoring the fact that the game is intended for teens (yeah I know T=13 plus) but still, I wonder if the parents know anything about the game, aside from the fact that it's made by that american company that they're suing...???

I'm really quite appalled that soo many parents are turning to the courts to help back them in their failures to parent properly. [/rant]

Where are the good ol days when babysitters were real, cute girls, that every kid loved having over, just for a chance to "cop a feel" not games, or TV that "implants bad thoughts in childrens heads"

I really must ask the question. If games are soo bad, why do so many parents turn a blind eye when their kids go out and get them??? OOPS I forg

Not to minimize katrina, but:

I believe last time I looked there were approx 1400 deaths due to Katrina...lets double it in case I missed some massive updates recently:
If we look at general natural disasters in the past century alone, Katrina wouldn't even make the list
There are still at least 14 atlantic tropical cyclones (hurricanes) ahead of Katrina in the last 230 years.

But why let a little thing like facts get in the way of a good trolling...

Bear in mind that most of the reduction in murders, from what I understand, can be attributed to better emergency practices which cause assault not to become murder because the victim doesn't die.

I'm amazed with the number of comments in this article that no one's really picked up on this.

I find it hard to agree that this teaches that "it's OK to diss people because they are a woman, they're a different colour or they're from a different place." is accurate.

The common argument against this is that did playing super mario brothers make us all want to jump on and throw turtles around? Did playing tetris make people obsessive about placing blocks in tightly packed configuration? If you played Monopoly as a child are you bound to end up trying to corner a market in your adult life? It's obvious that the things we do as a child have affects upon who we become when we're adults. What isn't clear is what effect playing a violent video game will have on the developing mind. Maybe it causes more violence, maybe it causes LESS evidence (as it serves as an outlet), or maybe it's just a wash... We really need multiple case studies in order to judge this, and I don't believe we have these multiple case studies.

Now let me come back to some specifics on Hillary's comment. First I think if killing a prositute is a diss on all women, isn't jailing prositutes also a diss on all women? I mean after all in both cases an external party is depriving the women of her rights to treat her body as she wishes. Is Hillary for legalized prostituion as well?

Next I haven't heard of any overtly racist portions of GTA or other equally popular games. I think it would have made a pretty big stink if there were racist elements to the games, so I'm not sure where this comes from. I would say the US public has a pretty low level of tolerance for overt racism and you usually hear about it when it occurs anywhere in mainstream media.

Finally, we're allowed to discriminate against people from a different place. We can hate the French all day long for example (American Fries anyone?) and for the most part this doesn't spark outrage. We have a long history of hating different countries for different reasons. Russia, Cuba, etc... We hate the people of a country all the time. It's hating them for their race that's bad! And the US government continues to discrimate against those from foreign countries today. We see it overtly in the form of immigration laws and more recently in the treatment of people siezed during Bush's little war.

On a slightly different note I don't see why this is an issue for the federal government. Do you not want your kids to play GTA? Fine, don't buy them GTA. Oh, but one of their friends might have it! God forbid that as a parent you might need to get involved in your childs life, talk to their friends parents, or even have to say no to your child once in a while. This is just the government pandering to lazy parents who aren't willing to take responsibility for how they raise their children. The more the government does this the lazier parents are bound to become as their responsibilities (and along with those rights!) are taken away from them.

So to sumarize: No one needs to admit anything's true. Saying that without providing any facts is a really lame. Just like Hillary you're playing off the fears of people without any hard data. Where's the problem? As video games have become more and more popular crime rates have been going down. It seems to me that video games occupy teenagers time and cause crime to go down. Perhaps you could get your head out of your ass and admit that this is true.

Not all that unlikely. Think about it from another angle. If an individual or individuals enter a home when they know a person is likely to be there (at night for example) that person or those persons have a plan for dealing with the inhabitants of that home. It could be as simple as tieing them up while they rob the place, shooting them in cold blood, driving them to ATMs to empty their bank accounts and then killing them, or any combination of heinous things. About a month ago a few miles to my east a woman was the victim of a home invasion. She lived but will never be the same again (is any victim ever the same?). If a home invasion does happen to you, it's likely that you will be injured in some way or even killed. Maybe you've heard of our local serial killer, self-dubbed "BTK" for "Bind, Torture, Kill." It's been on CNN for some time now, America's Most Wanted too. He invades his victim's homes. Home invasions are not that uncommon. I heard testimony before the Kansas Senate FSA Committee last year from a Kansas House member on behalf of a woman in her district that had been the victim of a home invasion. This invasion wasn't for money. It was to rape the mother. The attacker told her he'd kill her children down the hall if she screamed or fought him. When you look at raw statistics take into account that home invasions are listed in many different categories including but not limited to burglary, violent offences, aggravated assault, forcible rape, and murder. There isn't a category in the FBI's UCR for home invasions.

I'm also sure that the people who have been the victim of a home invasion would also disagree with your sentiment that it doesn't happen very often. I have a good example from you from the town in which I currently live. Have you ever heard of the Wichita Massacre. Yes, the name is a bit on the Hollywood-side but once you read the story you'll feel the title is quite justified. Only one person survived that night raped by the attackers and by her friends forced to rape her at gun point and after being shot in the head. That happened in a well-to-do neighborhood. Want to hear about another person who was the victim of another home invasion? Have you heard about Bridget Kelly? Her attacker only shot her 3 times in the back after robbing and raping her. I think there are some people who would disagree with you when you trivialize the number of people that are the victims of home invasions.

and

The modified consoles, some holding 15 or more games already copied to the hard drive, were on open display in the stores.

It doesn't sound to me as if the reporter knew what he was talking about. Unfortunately, that's the norm. They have deadlines, and they get in a lot more trouble for being late than for stupidly misleading us.

I'd guess that the arrests were for copyright violations, and not for the chipped xboxes, which were just the tool the ``criminals'' used.

It's still pretty sad to think that with real criminals, and real terrorists, able to go about their work unhindered, that our government is concentrating on these silly, artificial technicalities. The problem lies with our Congress, of course: it's the best legislature Big Money can buy.

Although the potential of infection of AIDS is scary, it's nowhere near as dangerous as it is hyped to be.

For years, AIDS has been used to categorize and victimize specific groups (mostly gay men and coloured people in general). This created a lot of hype and pushed AIDS to the top of the chart of [scary font] DeSeAsEs To FeAr [/scary font].

The truth however, is that AIDS still manage to kill a relative minority of people, compared to other deseases.

A quick chart from Canadian residents can be found here: StatCan. I use this chart because it was easy to consult but these numbers are quite in line with those for the US: CDC

To summarize, Cancer should be given the scariest font and perhaps even the blink tag too. It scores a whoping 27% of desease-related deaths in Canada.

Compare this with 0.3% (yes, "zero point three") for HIV infection.

Hearth deseases come in 2nd with 26% and then the numbers drop sharply to 7% for cerebrovascular deseases.

Suicides score a whoping 1.7%. Still far more than HIV.

If I worked for WHO, my recomendations would be these: screw responsibly and slack off on smoking and the super-sized fries. Enjoy life. Be happy.

I almost forgot to give you a link to some useful data. I wish they'd take the time to plug the most recent UCRs into their algorithms and calculate the most recent years. I just might have to do that myself.

There are those of us who see the world as it is though: depraved and getting worse everyday.

So, your perspective on life is through the eyes of a pessimist?

I just thought that looked like a cool link, sorry.

You can argue with me if you want, but you'll have to ignore the constantly rising murders, rapes, and other violent crimes, as well as the consequences of immoral acts such as the proliferation of STDs and teen pregnancy.

Oh, no, I won't argue with you.

I'll let the facts do it for me.

Murder: Peaked in 1980.
Rape: Peaked in 1992.
Other violent crimes: Peaked in 1993.

All have been on the decline ever since.

Just the other day I saw this immoral person handing out STDs and teen pregnancy on teh corner. I wanted to hurt them so bad. I was blinded by my hate. And for that I am sorry.

Revenue generation is indeed the true objective. Ticketing speeders is ostensibly done to reduce the number of speeders thereby saving lives. However, consider this: More lives could be saved by having fewer drivers on the road, no? By making driving tests more difficult, and by testing people yearly (how about those old grannies that crouch down so only their hands on the steering wheel are visible?) we could eliminate a lot of the dangerous drivers.

Now, this is total heresy, but we could go one step further -- if the goal is to "save lives" and all -- by banning personal automobiles altogether. After all, automobiles are the NUMBER ONE cause of death for people aged 5 to 44. We could replace them with public transport, and bicycles. There could be exceptions for people whose job requires the use of an automobile. Not only would lives be saved, but we could reduce the landfill, energy consumption, and pollution. But, NO! Personal automobile ownership is as American as baseball and apple pie (wasn't that a Chevy commercial some years back?)

Autogeddon Blues.

According to the CDC the average American has 1 in 3000 chance of dying from an accident per year. So people would live an average of 3,000 years, some much longer. Perhaps people would be more afraid of adventure, bad machinery, etc. if they thought it could kill them.

How do you know the drop was due to CompStat and not to Giulani's controversial law enforcement practices?
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm
http://politicalgraveyard.com/geo/NY/ofc/newyork.h tml

Let's do the math. What do we get out of executing a murderer? Deterrence. A high-end estimate is that each execution deters about 10 murders. (The highest estimate I've ever seen is 24 murders deterred per execution, but the closest thing to a consensus estimate in the econometric literature is about eight.) That's 10 lives saved...

Now, I'm no expert on these matters, but would there really be ten times more murders in america if capital punishment was substituted with life in prison?
That number sounds completely ridicoulous to me. I would probably put that number lower than 2 and closer to 1... without taking the time to compare all 38 states with capital punishment to those who don't it doesn't look like theres anywhere near a factor of ten difference between them.

this article looks like yet another example of the fact that 86.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot.