Rankings of causes of death are useful for a rational allocation of attention (I attempt to divert attention away from errorists with 'em).Originally Posted by slapout9
This specific video on the other hand has a strong smell of propaganda and partiality.
Here ya go Fuchs. A Wall Street Journal article quite soberly written. 98,000 annual deaths in the US from preventable medical mistakes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...334441352.html
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
As Fuchs says proper ranking is important to support an efficient allocation of ressources. I remarked how little homicides are actually comitted with the vast arsenal of firearms dispersed in Western countries. Still far far more then by terrorists but overall we have surprisingly peaceful societies, at least compared to the some in which our ancestors lived.
In this context the graphics I posted show that for some reasons gun homicides dropped a great deal roughly twenty years ago. Almost all of it is due to fewer killings done with handguns in bigger cities, especially the biggest, with both the victim and shooter relative likely to have a criminal record. From a police and political point of view curbing this type of homocide should be the 'easiest' to target for obvious reasons. In this case focused gun control and police/government action can be quite efficient.
It is much more difficult to curb the type of shooting which has restarted the debate about gun laws. Far fewer dots to connect, no links to typical criminals. Health care and social support are of great importance. A low amount of firearms per capita makes it obviously much harder for such mentally disturbed persons to do such terrible things, but in a country like the US simply the vast amount of firearms in circulation makes it very difficult that moderate laws reduced that risk by a significant degree. (Especially since the most commone homicide weapon is a simple, run-of-the-mill handgun which works well enough without some easily banable evil feature.) The harsh UK approach on handguns must have consumed very considerable public ressources. Maybe somebody with knowledge on it could step in.
Last edited by Firn; 01-11-2013 at 01:43 PM.
... "We need officers capable of following systematically the path of logical argument to its conclusion, with disciplined intellect, strong in character and nerve to execute what the intellect dictates"
General Ludwig Beck (1880-1944);
Speech at the Kriegsakademie, 1935
The focus on 'assault weapons' is probably a cultural one.
"Team pro AR-15" appears to have in part a mindset that the a powerful government if powerful against its people, not for its people. They seek to weaken this government by making themselves more powerful, albeit hoarding mere rifles is clearly an illusory attempt at it.
The less extreme part of "Team pro AR-15" seems to have simply developed a huge affection for warlike and automatic weapons, and the area of convergence seems to be the market for the 'tacticool' equipment that flooded the arms market after the appearance of the picatinny rail (and thus the realization that guns can be pimped by laymen, too). Same for "hello kitty" or generally pink-themed AR-15s.
Team "counter AR-15" doesn't see an actual use for such weapons except killing people. They don't have an affection for the guns and seem to prefer the modern European view that in a civilised country the individual gives up his armament (so for example doesn't carry a dagger when he enters a bar as was usual only 200 years ago even in European metropolises). They bet instead on being safer when others aren't armed to the teeth because the state has a monopoly on force and almost-monopoly on firearms. A conversion to this state is probably hopeless with about 200 million firearms in private hands, but the least tolerable threat -the 'assault weapons' - is a logical target for an at least partial implementation.
They don't stare at their own (non-existing)AR-15 as provider of security, but are scared by the others' AR-15s as sources of insecurity.
There also seems to be a rural-urban divide, with rural people having good reasons to not trust the timely reaction of government security officials in case of emergency and having good practical uses for firearms (hunting, self-protection against animals). Urban people meanwhile have emergency services ~ 5 minutes away (or could at least), not going hunting much but experiencing a lot of firearm-empowered crime (on their TV screen).
___________
I wonder why the U.S. got the crime and firearms thing so wrong. I've yet to hear about rural Frenchmen placing much emphasis on having semi-auto spitzer bullet carbines (and they're got some really lonely places!).
Quite the same goes for Canada; they don't happen to have such a huge conflict either as far as I know.
Fuchs:
That is not such a bad analysis. I would add that one of the reasons for the popularity of the AR-15 in the US is that it is fun to shoot. People take it to the range and enjoy shooting it. One of the reasons they discovered that it is fun to shoot was the 'assault weapons ban' of the mid-1990s. As soon as it was suspected that limits of some kind would be placed on ARs, they flew off the shelves, just as they are doing now. People who had a mild interest in owning and shooting the weapon bought it because they figured it was then or never. The same thing is happening now I am sure. So the irony of trying to limit that type of weapon is that it increased the sales initially and then the quality of the product insured that sales would continue to grow. If they had never put limitations on it, many of those people's mild interest would have remained a mild interest instead of being transformed into a purchase.
The rural-urban divide is more than that. It is a very large cultural divide also. The divide that you missed is the divide between the South and the rural states and the Northeast, the West Coast and the states dominated by huge cities like Illinois.
People in the country, I believe, who have weapons for self defense are mostly concerned about defending themselves against humans. Dangerous animals just aren't that widely distributed in the US.
Very good point about people being frightened by what they see on TV.
You know Fuchs, you were doing so good but then the supercilious Euroweenie escaped. Myself, I wonder how Europe got the government, political, economic thing so wrong, since most all of the Americans have ancestors who came from Europe because life there really sucked.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
Kind of, but we also kind of evolved
Canadians, Australians and Kiwis are not known for the same problems as Americans from the U.S..
So I DO wonder what went wrong and why. Out of curiosity.
As far as I am concerned, my life would not change if there was a gun rampage in a school in the U.S. every day. I have curiosity, though. News from foreign countries feeds my appetite for learning just as does history.
So what did go wrong?
I think this will be my last post on this thread, which has been quite an interesting journey:
1) After looking up the UK laws concerning guns and knifes I know now that I could risk up to 4 years in prison and a fine of 5000 pounds if I carry my Swiss Huntsmen knife in public with no good enough reason. Length over 3 inches and a lockable blade too. Sounds rather harsh for my taste, just like in case of the mere possession of handguns in the UK.
(At 18 we stayed with our schoolclass in Berlin for a couple of days and I even entered the Bundestag with Swiss Army kife in the rucksack. IIRC the officer/guard asked us to pass through the metal detector and I said before that I had an Army knife and if I could leave it there. Until I saw the sign I actually forgot about it. Asked why I need one I said well, to cut salami and so forth.Somehow sometimes you think that, well, you are just a harmless guy and not look upon you from the other side.
Of course I got it back )
2) The gun laws are quite a legal maze around the world, within entities like the EU and Italy. For example in some areas of Italy boar hunting is mostly done with 12' slugs, increasingly often with semi-automatic shotguns. This goes especially for driven hunts in the macchia. That makes perfect sense considering the distances, the lack of complicated game ID and the fact that many are well used to the gun by birding. In my region slugs are completely banned for hunting and we are considered as hunters in an 'alpine environment' a species apart.
Homicides comitted with hunting/ long firearms are indeed very rare. Handguns are clearly the weapon of choice and no doubt the organized crime makes it's impact felt also in this statistic. If we discount the dead connected to it suddendly knifes and tools are used almost as often as guns.* (The mafia makes up for roughly half of the body count!). It does sadly not surprise me that a southern region like Campania leads even in absolute numbers.
*Meno omicidi di Mafia, ma cresce l’allarme criminalità comune. Con 128 vittime (155 nel 2007) il 2008 è l´anno in cui la criminalità organizzata ha fatto meno vittime negli ultimi 30. Ma è allarme criminalità comune, che ha ucciso 135 volte. Dal 2000 al 2008 l´aumento è stato del 25,7%. Un terzo delle vittime della criminalità comune (45 casi) è stato ucciso nel corso di una rapina o di un furto. I pensionati sono le principali vittime (17 omicidi), seguiti da operai e braccianti (14).
Arma da fuoco fa più vittime. Il 53,2% delle vittime (317) é stata uccisa con un´arma da fuoco; seguono le armi da taglio (142 casi) e quelle improprie (55). Il killer è un uomo nove volte su dieci; la vittima un maschio in tre casi su quattro.
Most from this link.
P.S: My grand-grandfather who worked in US gold mines was according to my paternal grandma entrusted by his comrades with their single revolver, sleeping with it under the pillow while sharing the whole room with his fellow countrymen. He was the biggest of the bunch and said to be quite fearless. On day he was attacked by a robber which clearly misjudged his man as he was choked and handed over to a police officer. Of course I don't know if the weapon was illegal and carried on that occasion. Certainly America was considered to be a violent country at that time. Back in Europe in the nick of time for the great war he was thrown into the meatgrinder and was picked more dead the alive from a wagon headed to the pits. All healed more or less apart from a leg. After seeing him in this state his mamma remarked in the typical dry humour of that area: "at least you will remain now at home" ...
Last edited by Firn; 01-11-2013 at 08:16 PM.
... "We need officers capable of following systematically the path of logical argument to its conclusion, with disciplined intellect, strong in character and nerve to execute what the intellect dictates"
General Ludwig Beck (1880-1944);
Speech at the Kriegsakademie, 1935
Well I should hope so. You Euros started out pretty low what with two world wars and two of the most murderous political systems/regimes in history...and that's only in the 20th century.Kind of, but we also kind of evolved
There now that we've traded cheap shots...
Nothing went wrong. Things have been going right, over the long term.
http://thepublicintellectual.org/wp-...Stylized-2.png
http://thepublicintellectual.org/201...-crime-puzzle/
So American murder rates have been decreasing over the years as have European rates. The article above states that the drop in violent crime in the US was not as fast or consistent as it was in Europe after 1850. One of the reasons for that should be obvious, in 1850 and for a long time after there was still a frontier in the US. There wasn't in Europe.
As for the short term problem, the most important thing in my view is the utter collapse of the black family in the US since in the second half of the 20th century. That has gone very wrong. "Between 1950 and 1996, the percentage of Black families headed by married couples declined from 78 percent to 34 percent." "Between 1950 and 1980, the proportion of Black households headed by never-married Black women increased from 3.87 to 69.77 per 1,000." ( http://www.americanvalues.org/html/consequences.htm This is a press release. You'll have to read the report to find the quotes I cited. My computer won't let me link directly.) Being a product of a single mother family is the best single predictor for social pathology.
That has resulted in these stats for 2011. There were 12,664 murder victims. Of those victims 5,825 were white, 6,329 were black and 510 were other or unknown race. ( http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...e-data-table-1 ) Blacks make up about 12% of the US population.
So that is what has gone wrong in the recent past, the collapse of the black family has resulted in a murder rate in the black community that is wildly disproportionate with the rest of the US.
Last edited by carl; 01-11-2013 at 11:40 PM.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
Colt Firearms used to have an advertising slogan that said "The Gun You Grew Up With" that was and is pretty true. Look at how many people were exposed to the M-16 because of the draft in the 60's and early 70's, then when the civilian version became available this same large market was already well trained with how to shoot and maintain it, it was a natural purchase selection.
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