You are correct, I did not really counter your argument, I merely responded to the contents of your links. Please let me explain my train of thought to you, so you might see, why I did that:
When following your links (I take the first one as an example), first there are the number of total crimes and I could not imagine how you would count that and what kind of crimes such a broad statistic would include. Everything from speeding to murder? Obviously, that might depend heavily on local laws. And as another poster pointed out, maybe some types of crimes are more likely to be reported in one society than in another. But thats a whole different story and I only wanted to point out, why I retreated from comparing total crime numbers to murderers.
Your first link immediately goes on to quote homicides, and there I had one easily comparable crime, which would be defined equally in probably all societies. So I easily compared those.
Also, especially the gunowners link refers most prominently to homicides. So mostly the contents of those links made me post my answer...
And, by the way: I definitely prefer a society where things were stolen from me 5 times and I were killed 0 times, to one where I only lose 1 item to theft while being killed in the process... but that kind of argument is quite inflammatory, so I should immediately apologize for it:-)
Well... how about checking some official and non-propaganda sites? I was really wondering (as a european feeling possibly overly safe at home?) wether these statistics might actually be true. Go check for yourself:
A little more difficult to understand might be the official german site (as its in german...), but easy enough: the word "mord" means "murder", and the number of cases for 2002 in the table is cited as 873. As we have 80 Million people in Germany that amounts to a rate of 1.1 per 100.000. So the US has nearly 6 times the murder rate of that in germany. Here is the link to the official german statistics (the BKA is the german version of the FBI): http://www.bka.de/pks/pks2002/p_3_01.pdf
Btw. the table on the top of the page includes the number of attempted homicides in red, the number of sucessul ones in blue. Without so many guns available, obviously (and luckily) most murder attempts are doomed to fail.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct, I did not really counter your argument, I merely responded to the contents of your links. Please let me explain my train of thought to you, so you might see, why I did that:
When following your links (I take the first one as an example), first there are the number of total crimes and I could not imagine how you would count that and what kind of crimes such a broad statistic would include. Everything from speeding to murder? Obviously, that might depend heavily on local laws. And as another poster pointed out, maybe some types of crimes are more likely to be reported in one society than in another. But thats a whole different story and I only wanted to point out, why I retreated from comparing total crime numbers to murderers.
Your first link immediately goes on to quote homicides, and there I had one easily comparable crime, which would be defined equally in probably all societies. So I easily compared those.
Also, especially the gunowners link refers most prominently to homicides. So mostly the contents of those links made me post my answer...
And, by the way: I definitely prefer a society where things were stolen from me 5 times and I were killed 0 times, to one where I only lose 1 item to theft while being killed in the process... but that kind of argument is quite inflammatory, so I should immediately apologize for it :-)
Oops... right you are. And this in my first post to /. ---> eternal shame ;-)
But I suppose one could get the idea, and the relation 6.1 to 1.1 stays the same however one might interpret my 100.000 ...
Well... how about checking some official and non-propaganda sites? I was really wondering (as a european feeling possibly overly safe at home?) wether these statistics might actually be true. Go check for yourself:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/hmrt.htm which is from the US department of justice and claims the murder rate in the us for 2002 is 6.1 cases per 100.000.
A little more difficult to understand might be the official german site (as its in german...), but easy enough: the word "mord" means "murder", and the number of cases for 2002 in the table is cited as 873. As we have 80 Million people in Germany that amounts to a rate of 1.1 per 100.000. So the US has nearly 6 times the murder rate of that in germany. Here is the link to the official german statistics (the BKA is the german version of the FBI): http://www.bka.de/pks/pks2002/p_3_01.pdf
Btw. the table on the top of the page includes the number of attempted homicides in red, the number of sucessul ones in blue. Without so many guns available, obviously (and luckily) most murder attempts are doomed to fail.
Phew. So I can still feel safe here ;-)