Murder Is Like a Disease (No, Really) 299
pigrabbitbear writes "With a homicide rate historically more than three times greater than the rest of the United States, Newark, N.J., isn't a great vacation spot. But it's a great place for a murder study (abstract). Led by April Zeoli, an assistant professor of criminal justice, a group of researchers at Michigan State University tracked homicides around Newark from 1982 to 2008, using analytic software typically used by medical researchers to track the spread of diseases. They found that "homicide clusters" in Newark, as researchers called them, spread and move throughout a city much the same way diseases do. Murders, in other words, did not surface randomly—they began in the city center and moved in 'diffusion-like processes' across the city."
one hypothesis (Score:5, Interesting)
If most murders are drug-related, this could be modeling the spread of drug markets by proxy.
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Or gang-spread by proxy.
Revenge killings? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does the study take into account gang culture and revenge killings?
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Did you read the article?
You must be new here!
I'd believe it (Score:2)
I'd believe it. I've seen enough mental illness up close and personal to believe that they are, against all reason, somewhat contagious under the right circumstances.
this isn't news to me. I read a book! (Score:4, Interesting)
Murderer's Anonymous (Score:2)
Most human problems result from human behavior (Score:5, Insightful)
I never really thought that was not understood.
We want to save money, for example. In business, we want to lose less money so, in food production, they add preservatives or use ingredients with longer shelf lives. The consequence of this falls to the consumer and back to society as a whole as it deals with increases in health problems such as diabetes. The "blame" is on the individual but also on society but also on the suppliers who make these decisions... because they want to save money.
We want to earn a living, as another example. When the establishment doesn't wish to allow outsiders to participate in the market, markets of other colors are born and developed.... you know, like grey and black markets. ALL markets of all colors and tones require defense and enforcement. The white markets are supported, defended and enforced by the established government. The other markets use other means and most often, by gangs and the like.
The development of organized crime which I described above also has other negative impacts on society. Among these are the glorification of the lifestyle in art. We see it every day through our comical portrayal of pirates [the high seas, wooden ship variety] and we see it in more modern ways as well. But the crimes against people afftected by unregulated (and even regulated) killing and other violence takes its toll on the hearts and minds of the people who live among these events. As death and killing becomes more frequent and more expected, the notion of defending one's self with deadly force becomes increasingly more acceptable. And the very definition of "defense" also twists itself into convenient shapes to suit the motivations and interests of those doing the killing and violence.
We have all sorts of behaviors which require regulation. The restriction or limitation of market participation, for example, leads to crime. We saw it in alcohol prohibition. We saw it in religious freedom restrictions. We see it today with more contemporary drugs. But we are also seeing it in other markets as well. The content publication industry finds itself incredibly threatened by digital technologies in that there is no medium to hold the content and therefore they aren't exactly a publication in the classical sense of the word. But nevertheless, we see the same patterns... government support, defense and enforcement. And it most certainly stems from the few trying to hold onto their territory and to prevent others from participating in the markets they have controlled.
To say murder is "like a disease" is to fail to see the over-all pattern of human behaviors... the causes which lead to effects which lead to more causes and more effects. Of course that comparison begins to break down somewhat when you determine which disease(s) murder is most similar to and which it is not though the generalities tend to hold true. But the root cause of both disease and of murder is human behavior and human nature.
Human nature is best overcome by law and regulation. It is really as simple as that. If someone says "what about God?!" Then you are simply saying "religious law" instead of just law.
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I think you are seeing and missing my point at the same time.
Some law is used to advantage a few and harm the majority while others serve to help everyone work together and get along. Identifying the differences is key to establishing and maintaining a good working rule of law and of civilization.
Religious pacification is another approach to combating human nature but it doesn't effectively address the notion that one or more people may disagree with the practice. Religion is essentially and always will b
It's almost as if.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Man, I wish it was my job to gather pointless stats of the obvious.
The 2nd Amendment could help cure this disease (Score:2)
Periodically Legalize Murder (Score:2, Funny)
Some people are just asking to be killed and the only thing keeping them alive is this silly law that says you can't kill them. I think that maybe every 10 years or so we should just legalize murder for a month or two. Let's give everyone the opportunity to go out and whack somebody. I'll bet that 99.99% of the people who get killed will be people that the world will be better off without.
Okay... why does this... (Score:2)
Murder is the symptom, not the disease. (Score:3)
Come on... this is Criminology 101 - Crime and criminal actions are the symptoms of anger, hopelessness, unmet expectations, and the lack of accessibility to comfort reasonable to the actor.
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Of MSNBC's race card.
There are white gangs too, lol
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Bend over and get ready for the royal shoeing. You're right, but you're Not Allowed To Say That Around Americans.
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Say what? That people kill people with guns? Of course you can.
What we object to is trying to makes laws designed so criminals can have guns but normal people can't. Those don't make sense, and they don't work.
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It isn't that so much as...if you don't want them in your country, fine, but it really is none of your business if we want to continue to allow them here.
For the most part, gun laws only affect the law abiding citizen, the one you don't have to worry about owning a gun.
But really....if you don't live here, then its just really none of your business, right? Why are you concerned about it..?
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worth noting that Newark, New Jersey already has pretty strict gun control laws. They just don't work. It's the same story for any US city with high murder rates, and always has been. Very strict (often unconstitutional) gun laws, zero benefit.
If anyone actually cared about solving high murder rates and other violent crime they'd deal with issues of poverty. But that's a hard problem without an easy, obvious legislative fix. That's not the sort of difficult message that gets people [re]elected. Voters want to hear that you've got a complete fix, on paper, that will make their problems go away, at no cost to them.
It's little more than security theater as a political game, with unfortunate side effects.
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But there are WAY more law abiding citizens, should we limit their rights just because a much lower number of the population are criminals or nuts?
I mean, we are already doing more and more to base our laws and society catering to lowest common denominator as it is....
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Funny)
I always find it hailarious that you in the states cite the ability to own firarms as something that keeps you safe when your obscenely high murder rate points to the opposite in my opinion.
Many years ago, I visited the NRA office in Washington DC. They quoted a lot of statistics about other countries that had high gun ownership rates and low murder rates. My take-home message was that Americans shouldn't be allowed guns (and possibly sharp objects) until they are a bit more civilised, but I don't think that was what they were intending.
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Funny)
And hypocritically, you have to check your GE Minigun at the desk!
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Funny)
...And why does there need to be an NRA and not a NRPGA? Why did God give us the right to own rifles but did not give us the right to own rocket propelled grenades? After all, if you outlaw RPGs, only outlaws will have RPGs. And what about the NICBMA? To remind us that intercontinental ballistic missiles don't kill people, people kill people!
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Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:4, Interesting)
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Wait. Unrifled artillery is civilian-legal?
So I could get a T-72 tank [wikipedia.org] with a smoothbore 125mm gun [wikipedia.org], and it would be legal to keep armed?
Man, if only those things were street-legal...
NRPGA (Score:3)
...And why does there need to be an NRA and not a NRPGA?
I'm glad you continued your comment after this line. I read "NRPGA" as a merger of the National Rifle Association and the Pro Golfing Association and immediately wondered:
The possibilities are fantastic!
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I am going to take this joke seriously for a moment.
RPG's and ICBM's are much more indiscriminate than firearms. Their use in self defense is dangerous to innocent bystanders. A bullet fired from a gun goes (mostly) in a straight line, a line that can be made to intersect only the intended target more often than not. I would note that the indiscriminate use of a firearm is still a crime. Firing wildly into the air without regard to where the bullets fall recklessly endangers everyone within several hundred(
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Considered? Certainly.
I would probably even allow the RPG in some cases (most likely requiring a rigorous safety test before purchase). But an ICBM? Nope, there isn't a way you can use an ICBM without harming innocent civilians.
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There's no NRPGA because it's not illegal to pretend to be a troll or hobbit. ... and because they'd have to compete with the already existing RPGA [wizards.com]...
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Insightful)
Many years ago, I visited the NRA office in Washington DC. They quoted a lot of statistics about other countries that had high gun ownership rates and low murder rates.
Did they say anything about correlations with other crimes? I've got a pet theory that most gun homicides are drug related and that if we took those out of the totals, the stats for the USA wouldn't be all that different from those in other countries.
But, so far, I haven't been able to find anywhere on the web that breaks down the number of gun homicides in a way that would lend itself to that sort of analysis. I've got a pet theory about that too - that the stereotypical NRA crowd is also big-time pro-war-on-drugs and the anti-war-on-drugs people are stereotypically anti-gun. So the two biggest groups on both sides aren't interested in seeing their pet causes in contradiction.
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:4, Insightful)
unless you're libertarian... but I doubt we'll find any of those around here.
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There are a lot of libertarians around here.
I myself am a libertarian in every aspect except tax/social service policy, which is unfortunately where most libertarians tend to focus their efforts.
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, that's the problem with stereotypes, isn't it? They have such little basis in reality.
While I'm not a member of the NRA, I've been around guns and owned guns all my life. My dad gave me my first shotgun when I was 12. Over the past 40-some years I've managed to collect a couple of pistols, 5 shotguns and 3 rifles without really thinking about it. I think I'm pretty typical of any guy who grew up in a rural area in a country with halfway sane gun laws.
I was also taught that the War on Drugs was a joke. My dad was a member of the Minnesota branch of the National Education Association (teacher's union for those outside the U.S.) and his district's perennial delegate to the annual state convention. He spoke in favor of a resolution backing the legalization of marijuana in the early or mid '70s. (The motion passed, by the way.)
He said then that the war on drugs (which was just heating up at the time) was a waste of resources. He didn't see the point in criminalizing an activity with such a demonstrably small impact on society. Instead, he advocated legalizing it and treating it the same as alcohol or tobacco.
His attitude was a fairly common one then, and I think still is up here in Upper Midwest. We like to party and we like our guns. Those of us who have been raised around guns know the two don't mix. ;-)
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Funny)
Which lets me post one of my favorite quotes (although I can't remember who to attribute it to):
"Computers have enabled more people to make more mistakes, faster than any other human invention - with the possible exception of Tequila and Handguns"
or something to that effect :P
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Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Informative)
I've got a pet theory that most gun homicides are drug related
You aren't the only one. In recent years Baltimore City [wikipedia.org] tried that approach. Here is one article I found on the subject:
Baltimore’s Crime Drops As War On Drugs Becomes War On Violence [newsone.com].
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disputes arising from the sale, distribution and possession of illegal drugs which cannot be settled in court.
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Informative)
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If you really did visit, you would have known that they're located in Fairfax, Virginia (I used to drive by it every day for many years). That may be nitpicking since the two locations are relatively close, but then maybe you should compare the difference in murder rates between those locals. You'll notice a very significantly higher rate of murder in Washington, where there was for many years a prohibition on handguns.
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that they're right.
I'm a Brit, and a strong supporter of the firearms laws we have here that limit the spread of guns (as in making sure the legal owners secure them and keep track of them so that they aren't "lost" into the black market). This only works because we have a low level of gun ownership to start with.
In the US the situation is radically different, and not just because of the culture. There are almost as many guns as people there, with such a vast number untracked that disarming the entire country is simply not going to happen. If you tried to apply our laws to their country, all it would achieve is to annoy the legal owners of firearms without making the slightest difference on the availability of guns on the black market.
Once you already have so many weapons around, the damage is already done. It's too late to stop it. At that point, you might as well accept reality and let people try to defend themselves against it.
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all it would achieve is to annoy the legal owners of firearms without making the slightest difference on the availability of guns on the black market.
You make it sound as if smuggling weapons into the UK was somehow difficult.
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You make it sound as if smuggling weapons into the UK was somehow difficult.
It is.
A lot of the "gun crime" that happens here is with nonfunctional replica firearms, because the criminals can't get their hands on anything that actually shoots.
When a "real" gun turns up, it's quite often a replica that has been rebuilt in somebody's garage. Guns confiscated by the police are quite commonly pathetic things with no rifling, barrel much shorter than it appears from the cosmetic replica exterior, and which have to be dismantled after a single shot to reload.
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It is.
How is that possible? An island country, complicated coast, lots of boats around... If an improvised large RC sub arrives to some secluded cove at the Isle of Lewis, launched from a yacht innocuously sailing miles away, with a few handguns and boxes of ammo in a watertight compartment, who's going to notice? Is everyone in the UK constantly being trailed by a bobby or what?
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I can't claim to be a shipping expert, but one of the reasons might be that our island is surrounded in many places by sandbanks and shallows of various sorts. This means the relatively few places that are deep enough for a sub to approach also tend to be well-policed shipping lanes ending in harbours and ports (or maybe estuaries which tend to have inconveniently large towns built on them).
Not to mention that we had this thing a while back where German U-Boats kept trying to sneak up on us, meaning there
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I can't claim to be a shipping expert, but one of the reasons might be that our island is surrounded in many places by sandbanks and shallows of various sorts.
Oh my. I'm talking about an object that is less than half a foot in the vertical dimension. I'm not talking about captain Prien trying to sneak up on you in a Type VIIB U-boat.
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Also, if there is little or no market, there is little or no incentive to try to smuggle an item into a country. It is demand driven really. Why take tremendous risks just to increase your stockpile of items you can't sell ?
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Are there no machinists?
Cutting a rifled barrel and building a simple firearm are not exactly complicated.
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:4, Funny)
Are there no machinists?
Have you even driven a British made automobile ?!
No. There are no machinists in Great Britain.
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I am sure there is a way to make a gun with flakey electronics and that leaks oil.
I bet lucas can do the first for a nominal fee.
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I'd still like to get a Boys anti-tank rifle one day (rechambered for .50 BMG). I got to use one in WWII reenacting (live fire contest with real ammo, not blanks) and it was sweet! My buddy won't sell me his, though. Keeps it in a state museum. FWProblems and all that.
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something about "lucas prince of darkness"
and "brits don't enjoy drinking warm beer, lucas makes refrigeratos"
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Are there no machinists?
Cutting a rifled barrel and building a simple firearm are not exactly complicated.
Chances are the typical criminal lacks that specialized skills in general (and machinist skills in particular.) It's not tongue-in-cheek, there is a deficit of education and skills among typical criminals. That's the type of statistics that pop up in all countries.
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Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:4, Informative)
Violent crimes, including violent crimes with guns, has been on the downward trend for decades in the United States. And during those decades gun laws have generally gotten *less* strict in that more and more states are legalizing concealed carry and some are even allowing open carry. Also, gun ownership is up. So, gun ownership and ease of purchase is either largely unrelated to gun violence or has a negative correlation. Generally, gun shot wounds, particularly from hand guns, are not fatal and the patient recovers. Of course that's not what makes the news. I don't have the statistics handy but something around 10% of hand gun shot victims die. Obviously we don't want anyone to die, but this isn't like a huge plague of death or something and things are getting better, not worse.
almost as many guns as people?! (Score:2)
In the US the situation is radically different, and not just because of the culture. There are almost as many guns as people there,
Yeah, bullshit. [citation required].
I love it when Europeans speak about our country - it doesn't take them long to open their pieholes before they show themselves to be profoundly ignorant. Like when Jeremy Clarkson gets up and talks about "fat americans" - except we have a lower obesity rate than the UK by a wide (pardon the pun) margin.
Gun ownership in our cities is extremel
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You're inferring a unanimity of opinion that doesn't actually exist. Only a vocal minority of Americans think guns keep them safer. I'm American and I can't imagine a scenario where I would want a gun in my house.
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I think you under estimate this so-called minority.
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If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
It should be obvious that if nobody was allowed to have a gun, then gun packing criminals would be able to target anyone who doesn't look like an undercover police officer. Just the possibility of someone having a gun probably makes them more cautious. I might not have a gun, but I would not like to advertise to the world that I do not have a gun. I might have one, or maybe not. If someone stops by your house and asks you to sign a petition against gun owner
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In the hurricane belt, you can be cut off from law enforcement for several days, even weeks. Criminals do exploit this, and often it is the public who ends up detaining them until the police are able to get there.
I've been through several of these (Andrew was the worst) and I would not want to be unarmed when they come through.
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So when the invader comes you have to go get the gun out of the safe before he shoots you? I hope you remember the code under that kind of pressure!
By the same logic, a panic room would be much more effective.
You don't put guns in the gun safe. You booby trap the gun safe for when they beat the code out of you.
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So when the invader comes you have to go get the gun out of the safe before he shoots you? I hope you remember the code under that kind of pressure!
And that is why people, even gun owners, should have more than a gun, say blunt objects that can be used as melee weapons, discretely placed across your home. I have my gun locked away (I have to, I have kids), but I also have things specifically located across home (where my kids can't reach, but that my wife or I can): a machete, a hand-ax, several rattan sticks (long enough to reach out, but short enough to use indoors), two carpet knives (plus a whole bunch of pointy-edgy tools in my home office/compute
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I suspect that in practical terms, a 'new' way of looking at violence yields nothing of any use. Oh there will be studies and commissions and pundits and people who write well reviewed books on Amazon that are variously touted on The Daily Show but as always it will suffer the same myopic failure of every other First World Problems Study.
As opposed to say South Africa, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Algeria or Pakistan which have murder rates that make the US look like Yoga class.
But you go right along and sc
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The state of New Jersey requires one to have a permit to own firearms, and an additional permit to purchase a handgun. One needs to obtain a new permit for each handgun, there is a fee, a fingerprinting process.
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Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Insightful)
what obscenely high murder rates? your popular perception has little to do with reality. rates are down, and have been going down for years. crime, including homicide, in the US is at quite possibly the lowest point in the country's entire history.
but dont let that stop you from making your stupid american comments for an instant +5 insightful.
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what obscenely high murder rates? your popular perception has little to do with reality. rates are down, and have been going down for years. crime, including homicide, in the US is at quite possibly the lowest point in the country's entire history.
Nearly but not quite - according to FBI uniform crime reporting data, the preliminary figures for 2012 homicides are around 4.2 per 100,000, which almost matches the lowest figures recorded [infoplease.com] - 4.0 in the late 1950's. While definitely trending in the right direction, it is still "obscenely" high compared to other comparable western democracies - which vary around 1 per 100,000.
Just as an example, the last time the UK homicide rate was as high as it is currently in the USA was at the end of the 17th century. [warwick.ac.uk]
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You are correct that the rate of homicide has been falling steadily since the 70s. This is not just a US trend though, its been occurring in Europe and other places as well. The end result is that the US still has very high murder rates compared to other countries. For example, you are 21 times more likely to be murdered as a resident of the United States than you are as someone from Hong Kong. You can go to this Wikipedia page and sort by column to see where the US places: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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Or it could be that places in the Northeast have the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. That means that non-criminals don't have guns, while the criminals do.
What country do you live in, what are your gun laws, and what is your murder rate?
Or maybe you're just karma whoring with your anti-America comments.
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At least not immediately. And I think that while it's a compelling theory, I could also see it being the case that more legal guns contributes to more illegal guns through several pathways: theft, continued glorification of guns in societ
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What, haven't you heard!!!!1 The only reason anything bad things ever happen is because there is not enough guns.
Any sane government would distribute AK47s and RPGs to every man, woman, and child in its jurisdiction. And then they could fire all the police and military and have a crime rate of absolute 0 and be impossible to invade.
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And then... These new guns dissolve into sea-foam after three or four uses?
I think you greatly overestimate the difficulty of getting a gun in the US.
You can literally pick one up during your lunch break, if you have a clean record. If you don't have a clean record, you need to go through all the trouble of buying from a show, or a third party (ie, private resale) rather than a licensed deal
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Of MSNBC's race card.
Its more likely this is actually modelling the passage of a new batch of guns through the criminal underworld.
I always find it hailarious that you in the states cite the ability to own firarms as something that keeps you safe when your obscenely high murder rate points to the opposite in my opinion.
Except that the criminals committing murders ALREADY aren't allowed to own firearms here. So banning guns would help how? Well, it would make life safer for criminals I guess.
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Most shooting deaths are suicides or "accidents" (most of those accidents are also suicides)
When New York City had a gun ban in the 1800's, its per capita murder rate was much higher than it is today.
Murder rates in the US are highest in areas where gun control restrictions are present, often going up after those restrictions are put in place, and going down after they are lifted.
America has a murder problem, but it is unrelated, or inversely related to the relative legality of firearm ownership.
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Consider gun ranges. Everyone is armed, yet no one is killed.
The problem is the image guns have; (my opinion respectfully disagrees with yours, unlike many gun nuts who get pissed off at statements such as yours) many people see them only as dangerous and tools to destroy. I see them as dangerous and tools to protect as well. Guns are so entrenched in American culture (what little culture we have) that they are quite ubiquitous. Gun control efforts simply remove guns from law-abiding citizens, and those w
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Insightful)
Of MSNBC's race card.
Its more likely this is actually modelling the passage of a new batch of guns through the criminal underworld.
I always find it hailarious that you in the states cite the ability to own firarms as something that keeps you safe when your obscenely high murder rate points to the opposite in my opinion.
Check Vermont, you fucking idiot. It has quite possibly the most relaxed gun laws in the country, and is always in the top 5 states for least amount of crime, and usually top 3 for least amount of murders.
That pattern goes far beyond Vermont, too. Look at the Brady Campaign rankings of states by gun laws, and you see an almost perfect correlation between strong gun laws and violence. The states with the least restrictive laws have the least violence. Now, that could be because places with lots of violence react by passing strong gun laws, but the studies on the effect of shall-issue concealed carry laws (laws that require the state to issue concealed carry permits to anyone who doesn't have a criminal record) shows a fairly clear and consistent, if small, decrease in the crime rate when more guns are on the street in the hands of law-abiding citizens.
My guess is that the explanation for the results of this study is gang warfare, a cycle of revenge killings fed and funded by the illegal drug trade. But I've believed for years that the biggest thing we could do to reduce violence in this country is to end the useless, ineffective and counterproductive war on drugs, and I like guns (I'm a concealed carry instructor), so it's not surprising that my view tracks closely with my opinions.
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The only thing your correlation shows is that low population density means low crime.
Places with low population have high gun ownership and few gun laws. Places with high population had high crime so they instated tough gun laws.
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The only thing your correlation shows is that low population density means low crime.
Places with low population have high gun ownership and few gun laws. Places with high population had high crime so they instated tough gun laws.
Not true. If you look at cities by size and correlate them with violence you see that big cities in states with little gun control have lower crime rates, for one thing. There are various other measures that dispute your claim.
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Arrange by population density not total population.
Please list these other various measures.
Before you get too defensive, I am a gun owner in a state with very restrictive laws that came about because we had very high crime rates in the city that hold most of the states population. Even compared to most of the world that city has a very high population density.
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't the U.K. have a "knife crime" problem. Hence the seemingly ridicules laws about carrying edged weapons?
I carry my Buck Knife (3" blade) everywhere with me. It's a tool. But I believe that could land me in jail in the U.K.?
Please confirm or refute.
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't the U.K. have a "knife crime" problem. Hence the seemingly ridicules laws about carrying edged weapons?
I carry my Buck Knife (3" blade) everywhere with me. It's a tool. But I believe that could land me in jail in the U.K.?
Please confirm or refute.
If it lock, yes. All fix blade are banned, they consider a locked blade to be the equivalent of a fix blade. Slip join are fine, under 3 inch. eg: Laguiole, sak, spyderco uk.
IANAL. If you travel, buy a knife locally and ask the shop owner about local custom eg: It may be legal but inappropriate. A locally brought knife also make a great travel souvenirs.
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So... No dirks, daggers, sword canes, etc? I suppose my 16" WWI bayonet is right out, along with my Vietnam era Gerber, my Roman gladius (is sharp; I have the scars), my Italian rapier (not fencing type foil), and WWII k-bar?
I know that it's unlikely I could keep my gun collection in any other first world country but didn't know edged weapons were so controlled. Do chefs have to have a special license now or is everyone moving to straight razor one of knives that just flip around and such, for cooking?
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I'm asking a question first about the knife violence and second about the laws. That's what all the "?" are for.
Chill out.
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He asked about knife crime, not knife murders.
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Not really...it is just a bit more intimate doing it with a knife....
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Yes this makes perfect sense. Look at all the places that ban handguns like Chicago, DC, and London. No murders going on there, that's for sure.
There are far fewer murders in London than similar sized cities in the US. This quote has lots of stats that all seem fairly accurate even though it is a shit source:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100128231404AAGurXl [yahoo.com] (I would find a better one but my lunch break is nearly over, so don't really have time)
Not sure about Chicago but the difference is that in Chicago you can just bring a gun into the city from outside as there is no border to speak of so it is probably still pretty easy for a cri
Re: (Score:2)
Would a pot dealer in Chicago get an extra 5 years on his sentence just because the police found a unloaded gun in the back of a drawer somewhere when the raided him like in the UK?
Maybe not in Chicago because the Pot dealer is often a police officer.
There are states that had a mandatory sentencing laws along the lines of "use a gun, go to jail", like California before it descended into whatever you'd call it now. But the Dems have been able to repeal many of those laws under the guise of reducing prison cr
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Not sure how the English do it, perhaps the criminal organizations are more corporate?
There are more ways to threaten and carry out violence upon a person than to point a gun at them.
Re:Careful you don't run afoul (Score:4, Interesting)
/me shakes head in disbelief.
I've lived in many countries, including the US, and ambition in "welfare states" is not lower: you get born with a fixed amount of ambition and your social circumstances have only a small effect on it.
What is lower in "welfare states" is misery.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Or rather, the way American culture deals with economic downturns.
How else would you explain why Greece (which undeniably had a much worse economic crisis) has a lower murder rate than the USA?(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)
Realistically though, I doubt murder rate can be so easily explained. There are many factors involved, one of which is economics.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How else would you explain why Greece (which undeniably had a much worse economic crisis) has a lower murder rate than the USA?
-Vastly smaller population
-More homogenous population/culture
-Different culture
-Lack of gangs and drug cartels from around the world
-Fewer people in poverty and smaller gap between have/have nots.
But we're all exactly the same right? Cause differences dont matter....
that said, it has nothing to do with an economic downturn or cultural response to it. you people are extrapolating string theory from someones random observation about apples falling. it's a simple study of one city, one with a traditionally hig
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Re:Who funds this stuff? (Score:4, Informative)
Is there no better use for research funding than to study the self-evident and report the obvious?
It is obvious to you that murder acts like a disease? What is self-evident about it?
There might be some use in this if it led to an accurate predictive formula for preemptive intervention, but I see nothing about that in TFA or the summary.
Did you even read TFA?
..so that police might potentially identify problem areas as they are emerging—or perhaps, one imagines, before they emerge./quote/ Sounds to me like it might lead to an accurate predictive formula for preemptive intervention.
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In the sciences, writers are expected to be truthful about the limitations of their conclusions.
This gives know-nothings the opportunity to quote them out of context and misinterpret those statements.
Re:Who funds this stuff? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's helpful to people planning morge, hospital, and police resources. Making sure that your manpower is ready for clusters of murders and have the tools to handle the dead, injured, and evidence is useful. It's also useful to the communities to realize and have hard numbers to back up their needs for containment of such dangerous events, and to help them innoculate against the outbreak spreading by education and community outreach.
CDC vectoring tools would seem to be potentially useful. What is the timetable of such "outbreaks" ? Are control efforts better spent on dealing on each outbreak, as it occurs, or on broader "innoculation" via employment programs and drug rehabiliation?