As much as I love your posts min. Homicide rates are determined by 1 murder per 100 000 people.
The US has 300 000 000 people living in it which cannot be compared to the UK.

Murder rate in the US: 4.2 and in the UK 1.2 so one might think you are right. But the average homicide rate in eastern europe and south america is higher than in the US and they have strickter gun control.

Less likely to be shot does not directly equate to "safer" unless the only criteria you're referencing is how many people get shot. Neither does a bare reference to the statistics address the majority of gun crime (which is not John Q shooting John Q). Lower access to firearms in the UK would predictably lead to fewer gun related crimes, but whether or not it leads to less crime...or a "safer" society...well.....

Laying aside the differences in what constitutes any given crime, or what constitutes a violent crime, the UN's reporting would seem to suggest that the UK has a higher rate of violent crime per capita than the US. Now, I don't think (like the gun lobby here in the US, for example) that the UK might have this issue because they dis-armed their populace, I would suggest that the lower population assigns a heavier per capita weight to any crime, and that our much larger "rural" areas compared to theirs further skew the results (not that these two are the only things operating...I'm sure there's a mountain of influences of crime rates in any given area). Even factoring in differences in law (and ignoring statistics about violent crime specifically) the total crime statistics put the UK right behind the US as number 2, with half as much crime (but less than a quarter of the overall population). That's some pretty simple math. On the other hand, the UK has less than half the homicides per capita that the US has. So, less likely to be murdered, less likely to be shot, but more likely to be the victim of a violent crime, and more likely to be the victim of any crime period.

-sourced from The Eighth United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (2002). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention, so theyre older numbers (but 5 years after the 1997 firearms act...) Others might criticize these numbers on other grounds entirely, such as corruption/lack of reporting or convictions..but if we're going to talk about relative safety I think we'll need to get some numbers somewhere, otherwise it just a war of assertions.

(the majority of the guns "laying around" in the US aren't "laying around" in the areas with the highest incidence of gun related violence btw...they're "laying around" in the "safest" parts of our country- not that I would go so far as to suggest a causal relationship in this either.)

Love y'all posters for sourcing/facts. Can't get enough of it.

Some questions to further this:

Does the density of population with respect to cities and rural areas for gun crime normalized to other violent criminal actions differ between the United States and UK?

I ask that to establish a baseline between rural and urban compared against countries.

My personal inclinations would indicate that the UK is, as a whole, more densely populated per square mile and thus more prone to criminal activity.

(November 26, 2012 at 4:14 pm)The_Germans_are_coming Wrote: As much as I love your posts min. Homicide rates are determined by 1 murder per 100 000 people.
The US has 300 000 000 people living in it which cannot be compared to the UK.

Murder rate in the US: 4.2 and in the UK 1.2 so one might think you are right. But the average homicide rate in eastern europe and south america is higher than in the US and they have strickter gun control.

Well if you're going to get all selective about it, lets look at Texas or Arizona. I imagine the murder rate in Texas is higher than eastern europe and south america combined, and that's only counting state sanctioned executions.

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(November 26, 2012 at 9:38 pm)Moros Synackaon Wrote: Love y'all posters for sourcing/facts. Can't get enough of it.

In fairness I should probably reveal that my figures come straight out of my ass.

@ Moros
Well, the UN has a new report out (and it's .xls, which is a first for them apparently) but I don't know if they track the data by those particular criteria, should be relatively easy to figure out if they do in xls format though. There are some heavily politicized claims with regards to rural crime in the uk (and the us)...doesn't instill me with confidence in using them as sources.

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-a...venth.html
(in case you get to it before me, i've got alot of buns in the oven atm, still need to do that farmpost, rl paperwork too)

(November 24, 2012 at 3:16 am)Chas Wrote: I wonder who, then, has ownership of my person and my safety? You?

yes

(November 26, 2012 at 4:14 pm)The_Germans_are_coming Wrote: As much as I love your posts min. Homicide rates are determined by 1 murder per 100 000 people.
The US has 300 000 000 people living in it which cannot be compared to the UK.

Murder rate in the US: 4.2 and in the UK 1.2 so one might think you are right. But the average homicide rate in eastern europe and south america is higher than in the US and they have strickter gun control.

Look carefully. Those are not murder rates. They are gun homicide rates.

So, you are saying we are supposed to equate ourselves with 3d world nations? Thanks, but no thanks.