4 ms·

Mexico is a big country. There are places in Mexico where you can go random places alone, and places that it would be ill-advised. There are places in the US w

Mexico is a big country. There are places in Mexico where you can go random places alone, and places that it would be ill-advised. There are places in the US where you can go random places alone, and places that it would be ill-advised. There are places in the Baltimore metro area where you can go random places alone, and places that it would be ill-advised.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
That's true for every sufficiently-large section of the world. But different places have different statistical properties. Look, my grandpa took me shooting when I was young. I remember doing target practice under a bridge when I was like 7, using a freakin' magnum revolver of all things. It was next to a very small river, and someone further downstream was trying to fish. I asked gramps "Do you think he heard us?" and he laughed "I don't think anybody didn't hear us." That's the kind of culture I come from. I suspect in this thread there are at least three factions: the pro-guns, the anti-guns, and the undecideds. As someone who was raised from an early age to be pro-gun, I do see the merits. But it's important that we acknowledge the downsides. If, statistically, America is so screwed up that you need to compare to Brazil and Mexico before the numbers start looking sort of reasonable, there may be a correlation with gun ownership the way that smoking may be correlated with cancer.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  >> That's true for every sufficiently-large section of the world Well I think Mexico is a sufficiently-large section of the world that statements like "anybody who's visited Mexico knows not to go random places alone" should be called out, don't you agree?
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  I would say poverty has more to do with the murder rate than anything else. If you want to go and rob houses or join a gang, you'll get a gun, legally or illegally. This happens everywhere, not only where guns are legal. If you can't get a gun, you'll get a big knife or a baseball bat. The USA is rich in GDP per capita but has patches with poor people with little to lose. In many EU countries there is far less people with little to lose, even among the poor ones. Crime in EU is, similarly, disproportionally caused by those who have little to lose, eg. illegal immigrants.
  - philwelch 5y ago
    > I would say poverty has more to do with the murder rate than anything else. You'd be surprised. Historically, countries like Japan used to be much poorer than the US but still had very low murder rates.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - zepto 5y ago
    Murder clearance rate by police has more to do with murder rate. You are much more likely to get away with murder in the US (where clearance rates are 60% at best) than you are in Japan or the UK (where clearance rates are above 90%).
- philwelch 5y ago
  > If, statistically, America is so screwed up that you need to compare to Brazil and Mexico before the numbers start looking sort of reasonable, there may be a correlation with gun ownership the way that smoking may be correlated with cancer. Compared to Mexico and Brazil, the US numbers look fucking awesome. Compared to Greenland and Argentina, the US numbers look perfectly reasonable. Compared to France, maybe we look bad. But compared to Japan, even France looks bad. If I was trying to convince the French to reinstate the death penalty by pointing out that their homicide rate was 4-6 times as bad as Japan, and the French said “yeah but our homicide rate is 1/4 that of the US”, they would have a point. Single factors that map onto popular political controversies aren’t as big a factor as broader social and cultural factors. If you look at those factors, Japan is not a comparable country to France and France is not a comparable country to the United States.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    Basically your argument boils down to: The USA is substantially an undeveloped shithole full of corrupt/ineffectual law enforcement, barely functional or legitimate government, broke unemployed people incapable of solving problems peacefully with nothing to lose, and powerful thugs beyond the reach of the law, so we should feel great pride that we aren’t quite as violent and dangerous as places where the gangsters are the primary source of local force and the law enforcement / military are essentially gangsters themselves. I guess.... But on the flip side, the USA is almost incomparably richer than those countries (in natural resources, infrastructure, human capital, ...), has a much better developed and more legitimate set of public institutions, has a tradition of settling disputes via political/legal processes instead of gang warfare, and in most ways looks much more like wealthy industrialized countries than new developing-country slums. So, instead of giving up and patting ourselves on the back because it could always be worse, as an alternative we could, y'know, try to get the most desperate people access to basic essentials required for human flourishing, and aim to reduce the levels of violence and corruption over time, the way people have successfully done in many other countries around the world.
    - philwelch 5y ago
      > Basically your argument boils down to: The USA is substantially an undeveloped shithole full of corrupt/ineffectual law enforcement, barely functional or legitimate government, broke unemployed people incapable of solving problems peacefully with nothing to lose, and powerful thugs beyond the reach of the law, so we should feel great pride that we aren’t quite as violent and dangerous as places where the gangsters are the primary source of local force and the law enforcement / military are essentially gangsters themselves. No, it doesn't.
megablast 5y ago
This is the only metric you can find where these two countries are comparable?? The famous”some places you can walk alone, some you can’t” statistic??

sillysaurusx 5y ago

That's true for every sufficiently-large section of the world. But different places have different statistical properties. Look, my grandpa took me shooting when I was young. I remember doing target practice under a bridge when I was like 7, using a freakin' magnum revolver of all things. It was next to a very small river, and someone further downstream was trying to fish. I asked gramps "Do you think he heard us?" and he laughed "I don't think anybody didn't hear us." That's the kind of culture I come from. I suspect in this thread there are at least three factions: the pro-guns, the anti-guns, and the undecideds. As someone who was raised from an early age to be pro-gun, I do see the merits. But it's important that we acknowledge the downsides. If, statistically, America is so screwed up that you need to compare to Brazil and Mexico before the numbers start looking sort of reasonable, there may be a correlation with gun ownership the way that smoking may be correlated with cancer.

rufus_foreman 5y ago
>> That's true for every sufficiently-large section of the world Well I think Mexico is a sufficiently-large section of the world that statements like "anybody who's visited Mexico knows not to go random places alone" should be called out, don't you agree?
jokethrowaway 5y ago
I would say poverty has more to do with the murder rate than anything else. If you want to go and rob houses or join a gang, you'll get a gun, legally or illegally. This happens everywhere, not only where guns are legal. If you can't get a gun, you'll get a big knife or a baseball bat. The USA is rich in GDP per capita but has patches with poor people with little to lose. In many EU countries there is far less people with little to lose, even among the poor ones. Crime in EU is, similarly, disproportionally caused by those who have little to lose, eg. illegal immigrants.
- philwelch 5y ago
  > I would say poverty has more to do with the murder rate than anything else. You'd be surprised. Historically, countries like Japan used to be much poorer than the US but still had very low murder rates.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- zepto 5y ago
  Murder clearance rate by police has more to do with murder rate. You are much more likely to get away with murder in the US (where clearance rates are 60% at best) than you are in Japan or the UK (where clearance rates are above 90%).
philwelch 5y ago
> If, statistically, America is so screwed up that you need to compare to Brazil and Mexico before the numbers start looking sort of reasonable, there may be a correlation with gun ownership the way that smoking may be correlated with cancer. Compared to Mexico and Brazil, the US numbers look fucking awesome. Compared to Greenland and Argentina, the US numbers look perfectly reasonable. Compared to France, maybe we look bad. But compared to Japan, even France looks bad. If I was trying to convince the French to reinstate the death penalty by pointing out that their homicide rate was 4-6 times as bad as Japan, and the French said “yeah but our homicide rate is 1/4 that of the US”, they would have a point. Single factors that map onto popular political controversies aren’t as big a factor as broader social and cultural factors. If you look at those factors, Japan is not a comparable country to France and France is not a comparable country to the United States.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  Basically your argument boils down to: The USA is substantially an undeveloped shithole full of corrupt/ineffectual law enforcement, barely functional or legitimate government, broke unemployed people incapable of solving problems peacefully with nothing to lose, and powerful thugs beyond the reach of the law, so we should feel great pride that we aren’t quite as violent and dangerous as places where the gangsters are the primary source of local force and the law enforcement / military are essentially gangsters themselves. I guess.... But on the flip side, the USA is almost incomparably richer than those countries (in natural resources, infrastructure, human capital, ...), has a much better developed and more legitimate set of public institutions, has a tradition of settling disputes via political/legal processes instead of gang warfare, and in most ways looks much more like wealthy industrialized countries than new developing-country slums. So, instead of giving up and patting ourselves on the back because it could always be worse, as an alternative we could, y'know, try to get the most desperate people access to basic essentials required for human flourishing, and aim to reduce the levels of violence and corruption over time, the way people have successfully done in many other countries around the world.
  - philwelch 5y ago
    > Basically your argument boils down to: The USA is substantially an undeveloped shithole full of corrupt/ineffectual law enforcement, barely functional or legitimate government, broke unemployed people incapable of solving problems peacefully with nothing to lose, and powerful thugs beyond the reach of the law, so we should feel great pride that we aren’t quite as violent and dangerous as places where the gangsters are the primary source of local force and the law enforcement / military are essentially gangsters themselves. No, it doesn't.

megablast 5y ago

This is the only metric you can find where these two countries are comparable?? The famous”some places you can walk alone, some you can’t” statistic??