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NRA doesn't like Australia's Gun Stats

davefoc said:
Caveat: I've hardly read any of this thread.

How do the US gun violence per capita statistics compare with the Australian gun violence per capita statistics?

It seems like a comparison might be useful, given the similarities between the US and Australia.

I looked around a bit trying to find an answer to my question without a great deal of success but I did find a statistic that said that US gun death rate was 10.2 per hundred thousand and the UK death rate was .25 per hundred thousand. But the US is a country of immigrant hot heads whereas the UK is a country of calm people that are happy where they were born, so maybe that's a more important factor than gun ownership. So a comparison with Australia might control for that factor since I believe that Australia consists of the descendants of criminals from England and the indigenous people.
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My apologies to everybody concerned. It was late and it seemed funny when I wrote it. It clearly was taken more seriously than I intended and now people have made posts noting that I was a jerk and I was wrong, which is what happens I guess when you are a jerk and you are wrong.

Still I am curious about how the gun deaths stack up between the three countries. And since the UK has so many less gun deaths than the US does that translate into more murders and more suicides by other causes or do less guns just translate into less deaths? I am pretty sure the per capita murder rate in the UK is less than that of the US. Is gun ownership the principal difference?

I know from watching a lot of Inspector Morse episodes that the British are always having affairs and killing each other over them and then killing more people to cover up from the murders caused by the affairs so I guess the must translate into quite a few murders?
The last paragraph is my sad attempt at another joke.:)


ETA: It was interesting that the percentage of immigrants in the UK was higher than in the US.
 
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davefoc said:
My apologies to everybody concerned. It was late and it seemed funny when I wrote it. It clearly was taken more seriously than I intended and now people have made posts noting that I was a jerk and I was wrong, which is what happens I guess when you are a jerk and you are wrong.
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Dave, Dave, Dave. Dave. David: The first rule of being a jerk is never admitting that you were wrong. Now act like a self-respecting OC resident and tell these euro-trash Australians to go cry in the arms of their gay lovers.
 
davefoc said:
Still I am curious about how the gun deaths stack up between the three countries. And since the UK has so many less gun deaths than the US does that translate into more murders and more suicides by other causes or do less guns just translate into less deaths?
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The U.S. suicide rate is 12.5/100,000 per annum
The U.K. suicide rate is 11.8/100,000 per annum

So more or less the same. There are of course a wide range of factors influencing suicide rates and ease of killing oneself is just one of them. That said, when the U.K. switched from town gas to natural gas, the suicide rate dropped and stayed there.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC478945/

davefoc said:
I am pretty sure the per capita murder rate in the UK is less than that of the US. Is gun ownership the principal difference?
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It's very, very complicated. The U.K. is probably a much more violent society (although inter-jurisdictional comparisons are difficult) but the murder rates (often used as a comparison because there is less variation in definition) are much lower.

The U.S. intentional homicide rate is 4.7/100,000 per annum
The U.K. intentional homicide rate is 1.2/100,000 per annum

The U.S. gun homicide rate is 3.6/100,000 per annum
The U.K. gun homicide rate is 0.04/100,000 per annum

So taking guns out of the picture the rates are very similar but that could just be coincidental. There are huge differences between the U.S. and U.K. which IMO means that the U.S. residents are more likely to take matters into their own hands rather than relying on law enforcement to sort things out.
 
The Don said:
The U.S. suicide rate is 12.5/100,000 per annum
The U.K. suicide rate is 11.8/100,000 per annum

So more or less the same. There are of course a wide range of factors influencing suicide rates and ease of killing oneself is just one of them. That said, when the U.K. switched from town gas to natural gas, the suicide rate dropped and stayed there.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC478945/



It's very, very complicated. The U.K. is probably a much more violent society (although inter-jurisdictional comparisons are difficult) but the murder rates (often used as a comparison because there is less variation in definition) are much lower.

The U.S. intentional homicide rate is 4.7/100,000 per annum
The U.K. intentional homicide rate is 1.2/100,000 per annum

The U.S. gun homicide rate is 3.6/100,000 per annum
The U.K. gun homicide rate is 0.04/100,000 per annum

So taking guns out of the picture the rates are very similar but that could just be coincidental. There are huge differences between the U.S. and U.K. which IMO means that the U.S. residents are more likely to take matters into their own hands rather than relying on law enforcement to sort things out.
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Plus Americans are more likely to use guns in confrontations. Gun shot wounds are more deadly than other weapons. So more people die.
 
Beware of making direct comparisons about rates of violence between the UK and the USA - different parameters are used in each country to define violence. In the UK, shouting at someone is counted as a violent attack if a complaint to the police is made. Also in the UK, robbery is lumped in with violence statistics even if there was no violence involved in the actual crime.
 
Agatha said:
Beware of making direct comparisons about rates of violence between the UK and the USA - different parameters are used in each country to define violence. In the UK, shouting at someone is counted as a violent attack if a complaint to the police is made. Also in the UK, robbery is lumped in with violence statistics even if there was no violence involved in the actual crime.
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The above is not the case in Scotland. Shouting alone is a breach of the peace or Sec38 and is not included with crimes of violence.

Robbery here is robbery, or assault with intent to rob if not property is gained, either way violence or a threat of violence is needed. I think a threat of violence by having a knife pointed at you certainly counts as a crime of violence.

Looking at all sorts of measures of violence, the UK tends to come above the USA. It does suggest the UK has more violence, even if much of it is low level. The point being in one area the USA is miles ahead of the UK and that is homicides.
 
Nessie said:
The above is not the case in Scotland. Shouting alone is a breach of the peace or Sec38 and is not included with crimes of violence.

Robbery here is robbery, or assault with intent to rob if not property is gained, either way violence or a threat of violence is needed. I think a threat of violence by having a knife pointed at you certainly counts as a crime of violence.

Looking at all sorts of measures of violence, the UK tends to come above the USA. It does suggest the UK has more violence, even if much of it is low level. The point being in one area the USA is miles ahead of the UK and that is homicides.
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From Wikipedia:

The reported US violent crime rate includes only Aggravated Assault,[citation needed] whereas the Canadian violent crime rate includes all categories of assault, including the much-more-numerous Assault level 1 (i.e., assault not using a weapon and not resulting in serious bodily harm).[41][42] A Canadian government study concluded that direct comparison of the 2 countries' violent crime totals or rates was "inappropriate".[52]
It should be noted that France and the U.S. do not count minor violence,[citation needed] such as punching or slapping, as assault, whereas Austria, Germany, and Finland do count such occurrences.[53]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Violent_crime
 
It's possible. For obvious reasons it's difficult to estimate the number of illegal weapons. That said, just because there are those that break the law doesn't in and of itself imply the law(s) shouldn't exist.
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My bad.
I believe Australia' gun laws are appropriate for Australia and that the implementation of those laws has been successful.

However, Australia and the US have very different ideas about the purpose of laws and the purpose of government. It is also quite possible (although I have no qualified evidence) that the US has more nutjobs per capita than Australia. Both these factors will be among the very many reasons why lawfully rounding up guns in the US will be one or two orders of magnitude than rounding up guns in Australia was.
 
Yeah, I agree. There's a pretty huge difference between the two nations as far as this topic goes, so is difficult to extrapolate experience between the two. In my opinion the US is past the point of no return.
 
Nessie said:
Plus Americans are more likely to use guns in confrontations. Gun shot wounds are more deadly than other weapons. So more people die.
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From my experience of being out and about in both countries, the UK has a lot more drink-fueled petty violence and scuffles.

What I don't know is whether the lack of guns in UK society prevents these scuffles from escalating to murder or whether the presence of guns in US society means that there are fewer scuffles for fear of being shot. I suspect the former but I can understand how supporters of gun ownership and use claim the latter.

As you say, use of guns does mean that it's more likely that a confrontation will end in the death of one or both parties.
 
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