Gun Control thread (merged many)

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Oberon

That all depends on what is called 'violent crime'. The violent crime definition for UK police is different to that of the US police.

In the US, violent crime is reported as "murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault."
In the UK, violent crime is reported as “crimes against the person,” including simple assaults, all robberies, and all “sexual offenses”

So you don't classify murder as a violent crime? And you guys call us barbaric!

and Honestly, what your saying there is so similar, i think your splitting hairs.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

So you don't classify murder as a violent crime? And you guys call us barbaric!

Honestly, those are so similar, i think your splitting hairs.

The point is though, that the figures are misleading because there are more crimes that are classified as 'violent crimes' in the UK that go classified as something else in the US.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Oberon

The point is though, that the figures are misleading because there are more crimes that are classified as 'violent crimes' in the UK that go classified as something else in the US.

How i'm interpretting this is you actually have MORE then what was cited because you have those violent crime stats in addition to........ whatever else, while we just lump them all into one category.


Backtracking a moment, and putting most everything else aside, I think the guy in that video makes an undeniable point about large metro areas. That is where most of the crime occurs, and we do have more large metro's.

Where I live, crime is so rare, i have inlaw's that rarely lock their doors. The nickname of this area is "happy valley" because everyone here lives in a bubble so to speak, because nothing bad - never, or rarely happens here. (wheres I grew up in SoCal, and am not as oblivious to crime or bad people. I always lock my doors, and put stop sticks in the windows. Others, not so much.)

Again, that brings me to gun crime being a local problem, that should be handled by local law agencies. Which.. leads me to posting (again?).

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

How i'm interpretting this is you actually have MORE then what was cited because you have those violent crime stats in addition to........ whatever else, while we just lump them all into one category.

Not entirely sure I follow that line of thought. The reason we have more 'violent crimes' in that category are because we class crimes in that category that the US doesn't. So it's really the other way around, we lump them all into one category, including crimes that in the US aren't counted as 'violent crime'. For example, in the UK, all sexual offenses are classed as 'violent crime' not just forcible rape. Vehicle theft, purse snatching and bicycle theft are also classed as 'violent crime' (now you see why our officers are always stuck behind desks of paper).

Backtracking a moment, and putting most everything else aside, I think the guy in that video makes an undeniable point about large metro areas. That is where most of the crime occurs, and we do have more large metro's.

Where I live, crime is so rare, i have inlaw's that rarely lock their doors. The nickname of this area is "happy valley" because everyone here lives in a bubble so to speak, because nothing bad - never, or rarely happens here. (wheres I grew up in SoCal, and am not as oblivious to crime or bad people. I always lock my doors, and put stop sticks in the windows. Others, not so much.)

You certainly do have more large scale urban areas, and it cannot be denied that there is a higher rate of crime in urban areas than in rural areas. Around here, which is pretty rural but still a tourist hotspot, crime is also very low, we had a spate of break-ins by a drug addict looking to fund his latest fix, but they were mainly focused on commercial areas and the odd holiday home. If anything, around here, there are more traffic offences and related deaths than any real violence, although there are certain towns that are a bit rough, and it's usually the youth partaking in the crime because they can get away with it more. But I digress...

Now, if you compare the stats for property crime rates in the UK and US, you get the following picture (data from 2011):
US - just over 9,000,000
(http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...property-crime and http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...tables/table-2)
UK - +/- 2,124,169
(http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_263244.pdf - For some reason, Violence against the person and Sexual assault are included in the Total Property Damages section of this report, I removed them to get the figure I have displayed)


EDIT: And in the time it took me to research that, the discussion has ended. This is why I fail at maths! But anyway, there's no real axe to grind here, as you've probably seen in other threads I can argue both sides of gun control, and I fall probably somewhere in the middle of the argument (I do that a lot, I had this annoying habit of being able to see both sides of most disagreements) but I just wanted to correct a misunderstanding which is cropping up a lot in America at the moment.