5 ms·

Do you think it's intellectually honest to compare countries with very, very low rates of firearms access to a country where firearms are available to anyone wh

Do you think it's intellectually honest to compare countries with very, very low rates of firearms access to a country where firearms are available to anyone who wants one? You're comparing the USA, which has about 100k shootings per year, 36k deaths involving guns of which 33% (~12k) are homicides, to the UK which has 50-60 cases of homicide involving a gun per year. The fact is that the US police are far, far, far more likely to encounter a suspect with a gun in the course of their duty than the UK police are. 38 US police officers were shot dead in the line of duty last year. The UK had 3. They're not equatable.

whymauri 6y ago
By all means, suggest a better country to draw a comparison with.
- toasterlovin 6y ago
  Unfortunately, the US is incomparable (in the neutral sense of the word) when it comes to most socio-economic issues. There literally is no other country that is similar to the US across more than one or two important factors.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    It would seem more appropriate to compare each US state with another country of similar statistics.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    USA is very comparable to Brazil in every sense except perhaps GDP. For now.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - toasterlovin 6y ago
      Yeah, but GDP is one of the most important socio-economic factors there is. Which makes drawing analogies between the US and Brazil not very useful most of the time. And even race, where I think the comparison is most apt, there is an important difference, in that the US has more ethnic diversity among its elite class. I believe Brazil's elites are almost entirely descended from European Catholics, whereas the US elite class has been split between WASPs and Jews for at least 100 years and is now being cracked open quite rapidly by people of East Asian and South Asian descent.
mdorazio 6y ago
Ok, how about if we compare to Canada? It sits at 9.7 per 10 million people.
shwoopdiwoop 6y ago
Sounds like severely limiting access to guns in the US would be great place to start then.
- kilo_bravo_3 6y ago
  Shh. Don't say that. The crazies will come out and tell you about if we do that we'll end up a totalitarian wasteland like Sweden or New Zealand or something like that.
  - rabuse 6y ago
    It's not crazy to understand that limiting firearm access to law abiding citizens will provide an upper hand to criminals who couldn't care less about breaking laws, with the number of firearms currently in the U.S.
    - mitchdoogle 6y ago
      This is the kind of thing that gun advocates like to tout as "a priori" knowledge. However, "criminals" respond to incentives just as all people do. You need to make the incentive to not own a gun stronger than the incentive to own a gun. Weak gun laws currently make it very easy to obtain a gun without any permits or background checks. There's also a false dichotomy between law-abiding citizens and criminals. Anyone who has always been law-abiding can commit a crime, and if they own a gun, there's a much higher chance that someone is killed as part of that crime. There's a much higher chance they kill someone accidentally, and that someone is often a member of their own family. And a higher chance that they will successfully commit suicide. These are all facts when comparing gun owners to non-owners.
      - agensaequivocum 6y ago
        The government should disincentivize persons from owning guns no more than it should disincentivize persons from voting, from associating, or from speaking, etc.
  - deleted 6y ago
nullc 6y ago
> 38 US police officers were shot dead in the line of duty last year. The UK had 3. The UK has a population of 66 million people. The US has a population of 328 million. The UK has 123k police, the US has 687k. They're not equal but I think you might be exaggerating the differences by comparing very differently sized countries.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
grey-area 6y ago
Yes I do. That easy access to guns on both sides is a big part of the problem. Militarised police and easy access to guns are IMO one of the biggest reasons for this discrepancy. It can be fixed, it just requires gradually tightening gun laws and changing police culture. There are also cultural issues - policing should be with the consent of the population, if you lose that trust and end up in an adversarial position, violence moves from the last resort to the first resort.
ric2b 6y ago
US police: 687k UK police: 123k US police killed: 38 UK police killed: 3 If the rate in the UK was the same as the US, 6 policeman would be killed when actually only 3 were killed (123*38/687). So in the US police are about twice as likely to be killed, yet they kill 500x more people. You're right, they're not equatable _at all_.

whymauri 6y ago

By all means, suggest a better country to draw a comparison with.

toasterlovin 6y ago
Unfortunately, the US is incomparable (in the neutral sense of the word) when it comes to most socio-economic issues. There literally is no other country that is similar to the US across more than one or two important factors.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  It would seem more appropriate to compare each US state with another country of similar statistics.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  USA is very comparable to Brazil in every sense except perhaps GDP. For now.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - toasterlovin 6y ago
    Yeah, but GDP is one of the most important socio-economic factors there is. Which makes drawing analogies between the US and Brazil not very useful most of the time. And even race, where I think the comparison is most apt, there is an important difference, in that the US has more ethnic diversity among its elite class. I believe Brazil's elites are almost entirely descended from European Catholics, whereas the US elite class has been split between WASPs and Jews for at least 100 years and is now being cracked open quite rapidly by people of East Asian and South Asian descent.

mdorazio 6y ago

Ok, how about if we compare to Canada? It sits at 9.7 per 10 million people.

shwoopdiwoop 6y ago

Sounds like severely limiting access to guns in the US would be great place to start then.

kilo_bravo_3 6y ago
Shh. Don't say that. The crazies will come out and tell you about if we do that we'll end up a totalitarian wasteland like Sweden or New Zealand or something like that.
- rabuse 6y ago
  It's not crazy to understand that limiting firearm access to law abiding citizens will provide an upper hand to criminals who couldn't care less about breaking laws, with the number of firearms currently in the U.S.
  - mitchdoogle 6y ago
    This is the kind of thing that gun advocates like to tout as "a priori" knowledge. However, "criminals" respond to incentives just as all people do. You need to make the incentive to not own a gun stronger than the incentive to own a gun. Weak gun laws currently make it very easy to obtain a gun without any permits or background checks. There's also a false dichotomy between law-abiding citizens and criminals. Anyone who has always been law-abiding can commit a crime, and if they own a gun, there's a much higher chance that someone is killed as part of that crime. There's a much higher chance they kill someone accidentally, and that someone is often a member of their own family. And a higher chance that they will successfully commit suicide. These are all facts when comparing gun owners to non-owners.
    - agensaequivocum 6y ago
      The government should disincentivize persons from owning guns no more than it should disincentivize persons from voting, from associating, or from speaking, etc.
- deleted 6y ago

nullc 6y ago

> 38 US police officers were shot dead in the line of duty last year. The UK had 3. The UK has a population of 66 million people. The US has a population of 328 million. The UK has 123k police, the US has 687k. They're not equal but I think you might be exaggerating the differences by comparing very differently sized countries.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

grey-area 6y ago

Yes I do. That easy access to guns on both sides is a big part of the problem. Militarised police and easy access to guns are IMO one of the biggest reasons for this discrepancy. It can be fixed, it just requires gradually tightening gun laws and changing police culture. There are also cultural issues - policing should be with the consent of the population, if you lose that trust and end up in an adversarial position, violence moves from the last resort to the first resort.

ric2b 6y ago

US police: 687k UK police: 123k US police killed: 38 UK police killed: 3 If the rate in the UK was the same as the US, 6 policeman would be killed when actually only 3 were killed (123*38/687). So in the US police are about twice as likely to be killed, yet they kill 500x more people. You're right, they're not equatable _at all_.