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The BBC put some numbers on this a couple of years back. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34996604 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34996604

The BBC put some numbers on this a couple of years back. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34996604 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34996604 > The number of gun murders per capita in the US in 2012 - the most recent year for comparable statistics - was nearly 30 times that in the UK, at 2.9 per 100,000 compared with just 0.1.

kllrnohj 9y ago
That's a pretty textbook example of cherry-picked data. Why did they look at "gun murders per capita" specifically instead of just "murders per capita"? I don't know about you but I don't particularly care about how I get murdered just if I get murdered. If you look instead at murders per capita the US is still very high at 4.88 vs. the UK's 0.92 but clearly not "30 times higher" either.
BookmarkSaver 9y ago
Yes, but 30x a tiny number is still tiny. That isn't a reasonable way to determine "danger", it's a statistical fallacy. Like, the difference in traffic deaths between the US and UK is 10.6 to 2.9 per capita, which is under 4x. But the actual lethality difference is massive. It pretty much completely swamps the difference in gun murders (I'm treating this as a naive comparison to prove a point, not trying to dig into the particulars of these stats), but I don't here people making sanctimonious posts about an absolute hard-line refusal to moving to the US due exclusively to the dangerous driving culture. It's just psychological biases at play.
freedomben 9y ago
What about overall murder rate? How about murders with a different weapon like knives? Those seem like important statistics to have for a true comparison, but strangely is missing from the article you linked...
drak0n1c 9y ago
The UK and parts of Europe have suffered mass killings and terrorism with higher casualty rates per capita than mass killings in the US. Still, they are statistically tiny and do not automatically imply that it is not worth living in the UK or EU.

kllrnohj 9y ago

That's a pretty textbook example of cherry-picked data. Why did they look at "gun murders per capita" specifically instead of just "murders per capita"? I don't know about you but I don't particularly care about how I get murdered just if I get murdered. If you look instead at murders per capita the US is still very high at 4.88 vs. the UK's 0.92 but clearly not "30 times higher" either.

BookmarkSaver 9y ago

Yes, but 30x a tiny number is still tiny. That isn't a reasonable way to determine "danger", it's a statistical fallacy. Like, the difference in traffic deaths between the US and UK is 10.6 to 2.9 per capita, which is under 4x. But the actual lethality difference is massive. It pretty much completely swamps the difference in gun murders (I'm treating this as a naive comparison to prove a point, not trying to dig into the particulars of these stats), but I don't here people making sanctimonious posts about an absolute hard-line refusal to moving to the US due exclusively to the dangerous driving culture. It's just psychological biases at play.

freedomben 9y ago

What about overall murder rate? How about murders with a different weapon like knives? Those seem like important statistics to have for a true comparison, but strangely is missing from the article you linked...

drak0n1c 9y ago

The UK and parts of Europe have suffered mass killings and terrorism with higher casualty rates per capita than mass killings in the US. Still, they are statistically tiny and do not automatically imply that it is not worth living in the UK or EU.