
Gun homicides down dramatically, Americans unaware - gregrata
http://www.kltv.com/story/25635541/gun-homicides-down-dramatically-americans-unaware
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sportanova
I'm wondering how America went so awry with gun violence. Israel and
Switzerland have high rates of firearm possession, but a fraction of the
violence. Better training (military)? Less inequality? More homogenous
cultures?

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henrymercer
The disparity goes back over 100 years. Even in 1914, a city such as
Philadelphia had 10X the homicide rate of London. The best book I have read on
the subject is Raymond Fosdick's "Crime in America and the Police"
[https://archive.org/details/crimeinamericapo00fosd](https://archive.org/details/crimeinamericapo00fosd)
I think the reasons he points out in the 1910's still basically are the same
reasons the crime rate are higher today.

Edit: also, the best book I have read on the more modern problem of violence
and urban decay in northern American cities is "Devil's Night" by Ze'Ev
Chafets [http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Night-Other-Detroit-Vintage-
ebo...](http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Night-Other-Detroit-Vintage-
ebook/dp/B00EMXBZMI/)

~~~
sportanova
Interesting, at least the first chapter seems to say that it's due to having a
much more diverse population - is that pretty much the tl:dr?

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henrymercer
No there is more to it than that.

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pmorici
There was an interesting article posted a while back showing a strong
correlation between crime and the levels of lead in the environment most
notably from leaded gasoline. The theory is that the reason crime has been
dropping so much is because leaded gas was outlawed and it has taken the
better part of the past couple decades for those bad effects to wear off.

[http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-
li...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-
gasoline)

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scottkduncan
What a ridiculous article. Yes, in the context of rapidly declining crime
rates of all kinds, gun homicides are down.

And yet it's the specter of omnipresent crime that many Americans hold up as
the reason we need guns to keep us safe, ignoring all the statistics that show
overall gun deaths and gun suicides are far higher in the U.S. than any other
developed country.

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sp332
Countries with looser gun laws also have lower gun crime rates. So banning
guns doesn't seem to be the answer.

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hahainternet
Correlation does not equal causation.

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sp332
Lack of correlation is evidence of lack of causation.

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jessaustin
_...what you’re watching on the news, may be skewing your view._

This seems like an understatement.

~~~
Afforess
If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper,
you're mis-informed

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RazorCrusade
That's nice, but when almost every other civilized country in the world is at
less than 0.25 gun-related homicides per 100,000, we have a long, long ways to
go.

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ahomescu1
Why do people care about "gun-related homicides" so much? Homicide is bad
regardless of how it's done, I wonder how the US stands in overall homicides
versus other countries.

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RazorCrusade
I was just counter-pointing what the article seems to be touting as a huge
positive, specifically from the research they cite:
[http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2013/05/firearms_final_...](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2013/05/firearms_final_05-2013.pdf).
The "49% decline" is based on gun-related homicides per 100,000 people. I
never intended for that to be taken as "gun homicides are the only homicides
that matter". That's silly.

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ahomescu1
> I never intended for that to be taken as "gun homicides are the only
> homicides that matter". That's silly.

I didn't interpret things as extremely as that, I just feel that I don't think
the distinction really matters (as long as someone got murdered, I'm not sure
it matters whether it was by gun).

What also bothers me is that numbers on gun homicides feel to me like pro- or
anti-gun propaganda, which is annoying either way.

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EGreg
More people are at home. Less altercations. More surfing the internet. Just as
consumerism helped pacify people's urges (see Century of the Self
[http://vimeo.com/m/67977038](http://vimeo.com/m/67977038)) so the internet
did it even better:

Sexual urges - porn Entertainment - movies etc Education - wikipedia etc

People are more educated, more sedentary, richer and have more to lose

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adamconroy
Even if it has decreased by 49%, 51% of a big number is still a big number.

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zoloff1
So are we just getting better at keeping people alive or is the number of
people shot going down?

