KI4MVP
formerly LJ4MVP
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Where is this 88.82 number coming from?
That is total guns in the country divided by the number of people.
Where is this 88.82 number coming from?
That is total guns in the country divided by the number of people.
The rate of private gun ownership per 100 people
United States 88.82
United Kingdom is 6.72
The annual rate of firearm homicide per 100,000 population
United States 2.98
United Kingdom 0.03
the non firearm murder rate is roughly the same between the two countries
That is total guns in the country divided by the number of people.
The way you presented this statistic suggests that almost 9/10 people in the US are gun owners. I mean...just logically, I'd dismiss this as being ridiculous. If you're dividing the amount of people in the United States by the amount of guns, you're using an extremely misleading statistic. The large majority of guns in this country, I'd venture a guess, are owned by the same people. As in...gun collectors and hunters who never commit gun related crimes. Maybe if you wanted to provide a rate of how many hunters or self-proclaimed "collectors" have committed gun crimes...perhaps that would be useful to indicate the danger of those two groups of people.
But dividing the amount of people in the country by the amount of guns to suggest 90% of people in America are gun owners is ridiculous. And comparing it to Britain because they're "most similar" doesn't really make sense to me either. Similar how? English speaking? Culturally?
Each gun-related crime would have a constellation of factors attached to it (personality of the gun owner, previous threats, other weapons owned, how it was obtained) that should be considered to evaluate whether disallowing guns or further restricting them would reduce crime in the United States and more specifically, the crime in question. Analyzing whether the gun crime was gang related, committed by a gun collector, attached to a mass murder, accidental, etc etc would be much more helpful. Not dividing people in the US by the total amount of guns that have been purchased here.
You should know better than that and I think you probably do.
This isn't, in my opinion, a gun control issue in the first place. I believe, from the evidence that has been presented to me, that Jovan Belcher was severely depressed, and planned on taking his own life anyway. His girlfriend's murder was an additional act that, yes, was very selfish and unnecessary. Leaving a 3 month-old child parentless is a horrible act of violence and stupidity. Despite the depression I believe Belcher clearly suffered from, if his initial intention WAS to kill his girlfriend, then he had many ways to do so. If a professional athlete wants a gun, chances are, he will be able to acquire one.
Coming from someone who is severely clinically depressed and has had many of the same thoughts that Belcher likely had, I can honestly say that I believe this isn't an issue of his planning to kill Kassandra Perkins and then, out of panic, kill himself at Arrowhead. I believe it's the other way around. Bottom line for me is: I don't believe it's a gun control issue. I believe it's a depression issue.
if he didn't have a gun, his girlfriend very likely wouldn't be dead.
But if someone has the drive and desire to commit murder or mass murder, no amount of control is going to stop them from getting the weapons needed to do it.
KI, thank you for your posts. Unfortunately, it appears that you are out of your element on this topic. You make it clear that you are not in favor guns.
out of my element because i think it's a bad idea to make it easier for people to kill other people, which results in avoidable deaths? How many things like the Jovan Belcher incident or the dark knight rises theater massacre or the Virginia Tech shootings could be avoided if guns weren't so pervasive in our society. Delonte West in his mad motorcycle incident didn't get arrested because he was driving with all of those weapons, he got arrested because he was in the wrong state. People made jokes about the Arenas/Crittenton gun incident, now Crittenton is awaiting trial for murder. And the person he killed wasn't the person he intended to shoot.
I found the stat and didn't look into it's meaning until the question was asked. But pretty much the same thing can be said about the UK version of the stat, that people owning guns are likely to own more than one, so the actual percentage there is lower too.
Similar culturally except for the gun issue.
Do you have a better suggestion for a comparable country where there is strict gun control?
if he didn't have a gun, his girlfriend very likely wouldn't be dead.