Alphecca

Well let's see, in the US there are over 12,500 murders per year. In the UK there are 850. Now with the US having, what is it a pop' of 300M and the UK about 60M, that's a differential of 5 times. So the UK should have about 2500, so where are those missing 1650 murders in the dangerous UK?

Assuming that your numbers are correct, which I doubt they are, considering the manipulation of statistics you've done in the past, it's not a difference of 5 times.

12,500 / 300,000,000 * 100,000 = 4.17

850 / 60,000,000 * 100,000 = 1.42

So that's about three times as many murders in the US, not five, assuming those numbers you posted are even right. The US may have a high murder rate than the UK, but the difference is, while the US's murder rate has been declining, the UK's has been increasing. In time I won't be suprised to see them be about the same, and then the US drop below the UK's.

You also left out that the UK has higher rates of muggings, property crime, assaults, etc..

Well I'm not sure what stats I've manipulated in the past, in fact none that I'm aware of and when I was at school 300 divided by 60 is 5.

The stats that you've manipulated in the past would be here.

Yes 300 divided by 60 is 5, but the problem is you've assumed that there's a constant ratio between population and murder. Just because a population increases five-fold does not mean that the total number of murders will increase five-fold. It could be more or less.

Why exactly you would assume the murder rate of the US and UK to be exactly the same is a mystery to me. Try going back to school Dave and taking some stats classes.

There was no manipulation there, you obviously know the site, try it yourself.
I haven't assumed anything about population and murder, of course it could be more or less but population size is a good starting point, if a population goes up by 5 times most people would believe that most stats would go up by about 5 times. Any fool can see that the murder rate in the US is vastly higher than it is in the UK. So don't lecture me about going back to school.

Uh, if a population increases 500% it makes sense that the number would go up 500% even if the rate stayed the same.
Whatever: you're more likely to be murdered here (small number of occurences per 100k population) but less likely to be beaten (much larger number of occurences per 100k population).

Of course, it IS a UN report, and with selected input as well. But it does seem in line with previous reports comparing FBI stats to England (not Great Britain, just England) stats.

There was no manipulation there, you obviously know the site, try it yourself.Yes you did manipulate the stats, you left out countries to make the US appear worse. Why do you keep denying this?I haven't assumed anything about population and murder, of course it could be more or less but population size is a good starting point, if a population goes up by 5 times most people would believe that most stats would go up by about 5 times.Just because most people believe something doesn't make it true. Most people used to believe the world was flat, did that make it right?

There are a lot of factors that contribute to murder. Just because the population increases five-fold doesn't mean the number of murders will increase exactly the same. This is what you were trying to argue in your first post, that since the UK has 1/5 the population of the US, it should have 1/5 of the murders.

If the population goes up by 500%, the only way the number of murders will go up exactly 500% is if the rate stays exactly the same.Any fool can see that the murder rate in the US is vastly higher than it is in the UK.Vastly higher? Hardly. It's slightly less than three times. And the gap is closing. And of course you continue to ignore that the UK has higher amounts of the other crimes than the US.So don't lecture me about going back to school.I wasn't being serious then. I wrote that because of your little snide remark about when you were in school 300 / 60 is 5, as if I didn't know that.

Nice save Eric.

Appreciate it. I hadn't seen Dave's previous comments.

Thanks

Eric is the one who is being economic with the truth. The previous stats I quoted were not 'manipulated' as he keeps implying. They were constructed using either 'developed' or 'western' country filters to produce a sensible table, I can't remember which. Bogata is the most dangerous capital as far as I know but Columbia is hardly a good benchmark for the UK or the US. I'd also not really feel that a table would be useful if it compared the UK and the US to say Congo?
As to vastly - well OK but 3 x is is a hell of a lot higher whichever adjective you want to use.

All of this is debating past the point, which is that gun control, or gun confiscation does not cause a decrease in crime. In Britain, as gun control has increased, violent crime has gone up. This is a fact. This does not imply that gun control has caused violent crime in Britain to increase, only that gun control has not had the effect that it's advocates have touted, namely that effective gun control would reduce crime. It hasn't.
In the United States, as more laws allowing the carrying of firearms have been passed, violent crime has been decreasing. This does not imply that the free availability of firearms has caused this reduction in crime, but it does show that if firearms restrictions are reduced, it does not cause an increase in crime.
Finally, if guns cause crime, then why isn't Vermont the most crime-ridden state in the United States instead of the state with the lowest crime.
I think we have to look at other factors to explain the difference in murder rates between Britain and the United States.

presense of weapons has little bearing on murder rate.

Society and Culture has more bearing.
Why such a low rate in Swiss and Iraeli society, where virtually everyone is armed, yet societies right next door have much higher rates?

Why higher rates in England, Russia, etc with very low numbers of armed people?

Comparing stats between countries can also be difficult, since not all are gathered the same way.

Armchair staticizing, (ahem), is futile.

Tom

Except that Dave you didn't include all of the developed or Western countries, hence why it was manipulated.

And I still don't think it's a hell of a lot higher. It's just under three, and preliminary data for 2004 shows that murders in the US in 2004 compared to 2003 decreased by 3.6%.

who conducted these statistics?

Dave. maybe its that much bigger due to a stupidly larger population in the US?? if you actually work it out the amount of murders here in the uk per 2000 people is much larger

also you seem to be missing the point that the report was on "develpoed" countries so using countries such as columbia is making the report irrelivant to this topic