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Your ideas are so bizarre that I thought it might be worth doing a bit of investigation, specifically around this one claim: > instead of gun violence, there a

by jen20 4y ago

Your ideas are so bizarre that I thought it might be worth doing a bit of investigation, specifically around this one claim: > instead of gun violence, there are frequent stabbings According to [1], in 2020/21 there were 235 homicides involving a knife or other sharp instrument in England and Wales. Because of the ability of COVID lockdowns to influence those numbers, let's wind back to 2017/18* - incidentally the highest recorded - at 281. By contrast, per the FBI [2], 72.6% of the 15129 recorded homicides used a firearm - that is approximately 10983. Per Wolfram Alpha, the population of England and Wales in 2017 was 58.3 million, and the population of the USA in 2017 was 325 million - meaning the UK had approximately 18% of the US population. Clearly, you are _VASTLY_ more likely to be murdered by gun violence in the US than by knife crime in England or Wales. Notice this only covers gun violence and not other types of homicide - even the rate of knife crime in the US is higher than the UK, as others have subsequently pointed out. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/978830/knife-homicides-in-england-and-wales/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/978830/knife-homicides-i... [2]: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/expanded-homicide https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-... * The UK records April->March for such figures, the US seems to report calendar year. 2017 was a high water mark for both countries.

buscoquadnary 4y ago
I hate it when people compare the US to any other country, except possibly Russia, or the EU as a whole. Here's the thing first off the US is more multicultural than any other nation on earth, most other countries have had one ethnicity/nationality in it for 100s of year. The US by contrast has always has a mix of different cultures and backgrounds coming into it, from the Irish to the Italians, from the Slavic people's to the current influx of Latin America migration. This may not seem like a big deal but there are differences between cultures and having a heterogeneous cultures results in places where they will come in conflict. 2nd the United States is a group of states that are united. This isn't like simply administrative divisions, there are clear and distinct separations and lines of authority between different levels of administration, so much so that going from Illinois to Florida has such a wide gulf in laws, policies and enforcement that it is more like comparing France and the UK than Scotland and Wales. Finally the size, the US is big, huge in fact. It's so big that there are numerous states within the US that could fit multiple European countries in them with room left over. All in all this comparison on gun deaths or really any other metric between the US and any other country except from Russia or the EU is like comparing an SMBs closet "data center" to an AWS data center, they are totally different discussions. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
- jen20 4y ago
  OK, I'll humour you for a minute since I'm waiting for CI... (I am from London and live in the US, and do not agree it is more multicultural, but OK, whatever). Let's take a single state: Texas. Population in 2017 was 28.29 million. Per the CDC [1], there were 3513 gun deaths in Texas that year. I believe this includes suicides, so let's take a conservative rate here and assume that 40% were homicides and 60% were suicide (I believe that this is over-estimating suicide). So, 1405 gun-related homicides in Texas that year. But, Texas only has around half the population of England and Wales. I'm sure you can do the rest of the math yourself. But, maybe Texas isn't to your liking because it's so big by land area - so let's also look at Alabama, which is approximately the same size. 1124 gun related deaths there per [1] in 2017, and conservatively assuming 40% of those were homicides, that is approximately 450. However, the population of Alabama was less than _just Greater London_ - only 4.87 million people. But, maybe Alabama isn't to your liking either because it's conservative. So let's look at New Jersey - only just larger than Wales by land area, and substantially smaller than England, but trending "liberal" by US standards. In NJ, there were 478 firearm-related deaths in 2017. Again if we conservatively assume 40% homicide, that's around 191 - finally a state where the absolute number is less than knife-related deaths in England and Wales! But, one where the population was only 8.8 million... None of these include knife crime in the US, either. While you can make all the excuses you like for this, the numbers don't look very good regardless of how you cut (or shoot) it. [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/...
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    It’s the cultural angle the troubles me more. The US has more cultures so they fight. That doesn’t seem a good argument. I’m a bit baffled by the way you calculate gun murders. You get a number of gun deaths and guess the number that were murders. I tried searching and could only find the combined value that you have used. Why is this?
    - jen20 4y ago
      I fundamentally disagree with your analysis - most areas of the US are not remotely diverse in culture compared to London. The way I estimated gun murders was by taking a guess at around 40%, on the basis that conservatives (likely to be pro-gun) claim that 6 in 10 gun deaths are suicides, and they likely over-count. By a "combined" value do you mean for England and Wales (which is because that is the reporting authority), or for gun deaths overall (which is because that is what is reported by the CDC - I'm sure this is broken down elsewhere but I only had a few minutes)?

by jen20 4y ago

buscoquadnary 4y ago

I hate it when people compare the US to any other country, except possibly Russia, or the EU as a whole. Here's the thing first off the US is more multicultural than any other nation on earth, most other countries have had one ethnicity/nationality in it for 100s of year. The US by contrast has always has a mix of different cultures and backgrounds coming into it, from the Irish to the Italians, from the Slavic people's to the current influx of Latin America migration. This may not seem like a big deal but there are differences between cultures and having a heterogeneous cultures results in places where they will come in conflict. 2nd the United States is a group of states that are united. This isn't like simply administrative divisions, there are clear and distinct separations and lines of authority between different levels of administration, so much so that going from Illinois to Florida has such a wide gulf in laws, policies and enforcement that it is more like comparing France and the UK than Scotland and Wales. Finally the size, the US is big, huge in fact. It's so big that there are numerous states within the US that could fit multiple European countries in them with room left over. All in all this comparison on gun deaths or really any other metric between the US and any other country except from Russia or the EU is like comparing an SMBs closet "data center" to an AWS data center, they are totally different discussions. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

jen20 4y ago
OK, I'll humour you for a minute since I'm waiting for CI... (I am from London and live in the US, and do not agree it is more multicultural, but OK, whatever). Let's take a single state: Texas. Population in 2017 was 28.29 million. Per the CDC [1], there were 3513 gun deaths in Texas that year. I believe this includes suicides, so let's take a conservative rate here and assume that 40% were homicides and 60% were suicide (I believe that this is over-estimating suicide). So, 1405 gun-related homicides in Texas that year. But, Texas only has around half the population of England and Wales. I'm sure you can do the rest of the math yourself. But, maybe Texas isn't to your liking because it's so big by land area - so let's also look at Alabama, which is approximately the same size. 1124 gun related deaths there per [1] in 2017, and conservatively assuming 40% of those were homicides, that is approximately 450. However, the population of Alabama was less than _just Greater London_ - only 4.87 million people. But, maybe Alabama isn't to your liking either because it's conservative. So let's look at New Jersey - only just larger than Wales by land area, and substantially smaller than England, but trending "liberal" by US standards. In NJ, there were 478 firearm-related deaths in 2017. Again if we conservatively assume 40% homicide, that's around 191 - finally a state where the absolute number is less than knife-related deaths in England and Wales! But, one where the population was only 8.8 million... None of these include knife crime in the US, either. While you can make all the excuses you like for this, the numbers don't look very good regardless of how you cut (or shoot) it. [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/...
- lostlogin 4y ago
  It’s the cultural angle the troubles me more. The US has more cultures so they fight. That doesn’t seem a good argument. I’m a bit baffled by the way you calculate gun murders. You get a number of gun deaths and guess the number that were murders. I tried searching and could only find the combined value that you have used. Why is this?
  - jen20 4y ago
    I fundamentally disagree with your analysis - most areas of the US are not remotely diverse in culture compared to London. The way I estimated gun murders was by taking a guess at around 40%, on the basis that conservatives (likely to be pro-gun) claim that 6 in 10 gun deaths are suicides, and they likely over-count. By a "combined" value do you mean for England and Wales (which is because that is the reporting authority), or for gun deaths overall (which is because that is what is reported by the CDC - I'm sure this is broken down elsewhere but I only had a few minutes)?