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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gordon A. Langston who wrote (5368)	7/22/2001 12:29:08 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

you could eliminate murder by sufficient abortions The cause and effect appears not because there are fewer people overall, but because there are fewer unwanted children who get abused and get head injuries and grow up to be criminals. The anti-abortion forces like to gloss over the typical life of an unwanted child with their cute tesimonials "I didn't think I wanted another child but now it's soooo precious to me". TP

To: Gordon A. Langston who wrote (5368)	7/23/2001 8:37:32 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 93284

Here are some data of interest: International Homicide Comparisons [For international gun and non-gun homicide, suicide, and total violent death rates, see GunCite's International Violent Death Rates] International Studies In 1993 a Swiss professor, Martin Killias, published a study of 18 countries concerning gun ownership, homicide and suicide. He concluded there was a weak correlation between total homicide and gun ownership (total suicide rates were not significantly associated with gun levels). For a partial criticism of his study see Dunblane Misled where using the countries studied by Killias, these researchers found a much stronger correlation between firearm homicides and car ownership! More seriously, when the United States was included in the Killias study, a correlation between total homicide and gun ownership was found. When he excluded two countries, the U.S. (high gun ownership, high murder rate) and Northern Ireland (low gun ownership, high murder rate) the correlation was marginally significant. When only the U.S. is excluded the correlation disappears. (Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, p 253. Walter de Gruyter, Inc. New York, 1997.) Kleck concludes that "the homicide-guns study was not international at all, but merely reflected the unique status of the United States as a high-gun ownership/high-violence nation...Since the positive association Killias observed was entirely dependent on the U.S. case, where self-defense is a common reason for gun ownership, this supports the conclusion that the association was attributable to the impact of the homicide rates on gun levels." Using homicide and suicide data from a larger sample of countries, 35, (International Journal of Epidemiology 1998:27:216), Kleck found "no significant (at the 5% level) association between gun ownership levels and the total homicide rate in the largest sample of nations available to study this topic. (Associations with the total suicide rate were even weaker.)" (Targeting Guns, p 254.) Arbitrary Comparisons Between Countries The U.S. has a high gun murder rate, whereas a country like England with strict gun controls has almost no gun murders and a very low murder rate. Doesn't this show that gun control is effective in reducing murder rates? Not exactly. Prior to having any gun controls, England already had a homicide rate much lower than the United States (Guns, Murders, and the Constitution: A Realistic Assessment of Gun Control, Don B. Kates Jr.). Japan is another country typically cited (see Japanese Gun Control, by David B. Kopel). (Briefly discussing the difference in homicide rates between England and the U.S. is Clayton Cramer's, Variations in California Murder Rates: Does Gun Availability Cause High Murder Rates?) Gun control opponents can play similar games. The Swiss with 7 million people have hundreds of thousands of fully-automatic rifles in their homes (see GunCite's "Swiss Gun Laws") and the Israelis, until recently, have had easy access to guns (see this Jerusalem Post article for Israeli firearms regulations or a briefer summary here). Both countries have low homicide rates. Likewise this doesn't mean more guns less crime. The U.S. has a higher non-gun murder rate than many European country's total murder rates. On the other hand, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Mexico have non-gun murder rates in excess of our total murder rate. Incidentally in 13th century Europe, several studies have estimated homicide rates in major cities to be around 60 per 100,000. (Even back then, the equivalent of coroners, kept records.) There are many, many factors, some much more prominent than gun availability that influence homicide rates and crime in general. (See this excerpt from 1997 FBI Uniform Crime Report.) Due to the many confounding factors that arise when attempting international comparisons, this approach would appear to hold little promise for determining the influence of gun levels (or handgun availability) on violence rates. guncite.com

To: Gordon A. Langston who wrote (5368)	7/23/2001 8:40:55 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 93284

International Violent Death Rates International Violent Death Rate Table Discussion "U.S. Leads Richest Nations In Gun Deaths" - AP article originally featured in CNN interactive U.S. news "In 1996 there were over 34,000 gun deaths in the U.S." - Los Angeles Times, "Chicago Sues Gun Makers and Sellers", p 1, Nov. 13, 1998 "The United States leads the industrialized world in level of gun-related deaths." - 1997-98 National Gun Policy Survey of the National Opinion Research Center, p 2 (citing two newspapers and the United Nations Study on Firearms Regulation) "Gun death" statistics are frequently cited, in the manner above, to strongly suggest that guns are the cause behind the high violent death rate in the U.S. As in the case of the Los Angeles Times article, no mention is made that over half of those violent deaths are suicides. The CNN article mentions gun homicides and gun suicides, but fails to show us the total violent death rate of other countries, not just gun deaths. For example, in Japan, where gun ownership is rare, its total suicide rate is higher than our total suicide rate. Combining gun suicide and homicide deaths creates a sensational comparison with other countries, but only clouds and distorts the many factors actually behind violent death rates. Looking at only gun deaths, it is easy to get the false impression that, because of guns, the United States is the most violent country on earth. Rather than being the "league leader" in violent death rates, as the sensational and misleading media reports suggest when focusing exclusively on guns, though the U.S. is still high, its violent death rate is not orders of magnitude higher than other countries. (See also international homicide comparisons.) The "gun death" statistic is seldom referenced within its proper perspective and context. Also rare is the article that mentions the number of lives saved through defensive gun use and that our homicide rate is at a thirty year low and still declining guncite.com