re gun control was re we re mad as hell at the tv news jim de arras jmd cube handheld com wrote last year the us suffered almost wrongful or accidental deaths by handguns alone fbi statistics in the same year the uk suffered such deaths scotland yard statistics the population of the uk is about that of the us weighted for population the us has x as many handgun related deaths as the uk and no the brits don t make up for this by murdering x as many people with baseball bats you just can t compare this way all homicides must be shown per capita not just handguns the availability of them in the usa makes them the preferred murder weapon but ban them and some other weapon will step in as the favorite as a favorite sure as lethal not likely a study of violence in chicago produced this table percentage of reported gun and knife attacks resulting in death weapon deaths as percentage of attacks knives total attacks guns total attacks source firearms and violence in american life it might be contended that if gun murderers were deprived of guns that they would find a way to kill as often with knives if this were so knife attacks in cities where guns were widely used in homicide would be expected to show a low fatality rate and knife attacks in cities where guns were not so widely used like vancouver would show a higher fatality rate but the nat l commission on the causes and prevention of violence task force analyzed the data and found this not to be the case it appeared to them that as the number of knife attacks increased in relation to the number of firearms attacks which presumably happened where guns were less available to assailants the proportion of fatal knife attacks did not increase relative to the proportion of gun attacks in fact the reverse was true what was found was that most homicides did not show a determination on the part of the assailant to kill fatalities caused by knife tended to show a single mindedness on the part of the assailant to do grave physical injury multiple stabs wounds wounds concentrated about the head neck and chest etc most gun homicides did not show this pattern rather more fatal attacks were committed during a moment of rage and not the focused intent to kill the victim source report on firearms and violence then since england usa my ancestors left because of the oppression you must compare england before strict gun laws to england after strict gun laws to be able to draw any meaning at all england has essentially legalized drugs so there are no drug gangs battling for turf etc there if you drop out the drug related killings here the usa would look a whole lot more peaceful there are a lot of factors which make a difference actually i m not fond of making any kind of social parallels between europeans and americans there are more cultural beahvioral and economic differences between us than similarities i just sort of found myself backed into that corner over the last couple of weeks i don t think we could ever attain the low levels of european violent crime here in the us whether we banned guns or required every law abiding citizen to carry a loaded uzi on the other hand we can draw lessons from neighbors who are more culturally similar namely the canadians in fact an exhaustive seven year study has already been done of the respective crime rates of vancouver british columbia and seattle washington cities with roughly the same population urban economy geography and crime but with decidedly different approaches to gun control in seattle handguns may be purchased legally for self defense after a day waiting period a permit can be obtained to carry a concealed weapon the recreational use of handguns is minimally restricted in vancouver self defense is not considered a valid or legal reason to purchase a handgun concealed weapons are not permitted recreational uses of handguns target shooting collecting are regulated by the province purchase of a handgun requires a restricted weapons permit a permit to carry may be obtained in order to transport the weapon to licensed shooting clubs handguns transported by vehicle must be stored in the trunk in a locked box in short gun control but not unreasonably so both cities aggressively enforce their gun laws convictions for gun related offenses carry similar penalties the researchers studied all cases of robbery assault simple and aggravated burglary and homicides occurring in seattle and vancouver from to in defining the cases they used the same standard the fbi s unified crime report results during the seven year study the annual rate of robbery in seattle was found to be only slightly higher than that in vancouver burglaries occurred at nearly identical rates assaults were recorded in seattle versus in vancouver the risk of being a victim of a simple assault in seattle was found to be only slightly higher than vancouver and the risk of aggravated assault was also slightly higher however when aggravated assaults were subdivided by weapon and the mechanism of assault a clear pattern emerged although both cities reported nearly identical rates of aggravated assault involving knives and other dangerous weapons firearms were far more likely to be used in seattle in fact times as often over the seven year study homicides occurred in seattle per vs homicides in vancouver per after adjustment for differences in age and sex among the populations the relative risk of being a victim of homicide in seattle as compared to vancouver was found to be when homicides were subdivided by the mechanism of death the rate of homicide by knives and other weapons excluding firearms in seattle was found to be almost identical to that in vancouver virtually all of the increased risk of death in seattle was due to a more than fivefold higher rate of homicide by firearms handguns accounted for roughly of homicides involving firearms handguns were times more likely to be used in homicides in seattle than in vancouver the authors of the report also investigated legally justifiable homicides self defense only such homicides occurred during the seven year study of which were committed by police only cases of civilians acting in self defense occurrred in seattle and in vancouver only involved firearms after excluding these cases there was virtually no impact on these earlier findings this is i feel a very fair report one might even make the argument that it is biased against canada as a whole because vancouver reports annual rates of homicide two to three times that of ottawa calgary and toronto while seattle reports annual homicide rates only half to two thirds that of nyc chicago los angeles and houston critics of handgun control always argue that limited legal access to handguns will have little effect on the rates of homicide because persons intent on killing others will only try harder to acquire a gun or will kill by other means this report shows differently if the rate of homicide in a community were influenced more by the strength of intent than by the availability of weapons we could expect the rate of homicides by weapons other than guns to be higher in vancouver than in seattle however during the study interval vancouver s rate of homicide by weapons other than guns was not significantly higher than that in seattle suggesting that few would be assailants switched to homicide by other methods as well ready access to handguns for self defense by law abiding citizens was not endorsed in this report although seattle did experience a higher rate of firearm death for self defense these cases accounted for less than of the homicides in both cities during the course of the study period and as was reported seattle apparently didn t enjoy relief from any crime category over vancouver because citizens may legally arm themselves for self defense heavily quoted source handgun regulation crime assaults and homicide a tale of two cities john h sloan arthur l kellerman donald t reay james a ferris thomas koepsall frederick p rivara charles rice laurel gray and james logerfo stephen manes manes magpie linknet com manes and associates new york ny usa o o
