Military History | How To Make War | Wars Around the World Rules of Use How to Behave on an Internet Forum
Weapons of the World Discussion Board
   Return to Topic Page
Subject: USA #1 in arms ownership! Makes you feel Proud!
RockyMTNClimber    8/28/2007 6:02:37 PM
The right of self defense is universal. UN should mandate all nations allow their citizens access to gun ownership! Check Six Rocky ht**tp://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-08-28T174254Z_01_L28348938_RTRUKOC_0_US-WORLD-FIREARMS.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2 By Laura MacInnis GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said. U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said. "There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people," it said. India had the world's second-largest civilian gun arsenal, with an estimated 46 million firearms outside law enforcement and the military, though this represented just four guns per 100 people there. China, ranked third with 40 million privately held guns, had 3 firearms per 100 people. Germany, France, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil and Russia were next in the ranking of country's overall civilian gun arsenals. On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38. Continued... France, Canada, Sweden, Austria and Germany were next, each with about 30 guns per 100 people, while many poorer countries often associated with violence ranked much lower. Nigeria, for instance, had just one gun per 100 people. "Firearms are very unevenly distributed around the world. The image we have of certain regions such as Africa or Latin America being awash with weapons -- these images are certainly misleading," Small Arms Survey director Keith Krause said. "Weapons ownership may be correlated with rising levels of wealth, and that means we need to think about future demand in parts of the world where economic growth is giving people larger disposable income," he told a Geneva news conference. The report, which relied on government data, surveys and media reports to estimate the size of world arsenals, estimated there were 650 million civilian firearms worldwide, and 225 million held by law enforcement and military forces. Five years ago, the Small Arms Survey had estimated there were a total of just 640 million firearms globally. "Civilian holdings of weapons worldwide are much larger than we previously believed," Krause said, attributing the increase largely to better research and more data on weapon distribution networks. Only about 12 percent of civilian weapons are thought to be registered with authorities.
 
Quote    Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title     Newest to Oldest
Pages: PREV  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16   NEXT
Jeff_F_F       9/7/2007 1:59:26 PM
Here some interesting stats from http://mglv.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html reporting on this study of injury rates per crime committed with a weapon:
 
 
Of all violence with a weapon, the crimes committed with blunt objects/other weapons were the most often associated with victim injury (36%). Twenty-eight percent of the crimes with knives/sharp objects and 15% of crimes with firearms involved injury. Offenders armed with knives accounted for 6% of all violence but 24% of all serious injuries — having inflicted serious injury on about 1 in 8 of their victims. About 1 in 15 victims of offenders using a blunt object/other weapon and 1 in 22 victims of offenders with a firearm sustained serious injury.
 
Quote    Reply

paul1970       9/10/2007 8:27:22 AM

NOTES

2. A single case of homicide is counted for each act of murder or culpable homicide irrespective of the number of perpetrators or victims.
 

Paul, you need to read not recite....



I already replied to this. I asked you to look at the whole document that you pasted it from....
 
if you did this then you would see the context it was in... ie cases being investigated... 1 case with several victims...
 
you would also see that they counted victims seperately from the crimes... 
 
this basically means that you misrepresented the whole document to reinforce your point...
 
now you are either misrepresenting on purpose or accident... but it doesn't matter which because the simplefact is that the UK does not count the way you say it does as you could also see if you read the 2 pdf's that I linked...
 
Paul

 
 
Quote    Reply

paul1970       9/10/2007 9:01:48 AM

I looked myself and found what the government say is recorded and posted it for you to look at...............................

  

so does this mean that you didn't bother to read the two pdf links I posted that basically counter your assertion? these links being current official documents rather than what you posted????????

so you either posted without viewing these official home office pdfs that actually do tell you what is counted or have viewed them and have ignored what they say in favour of your "research paper".....  which is not clear what department or what end statistics it is counting....  without seeing the whole paper you do not know the relevance to your discussion.

 

basically you have posted something incomplete just because it backs up you already formed opinion. you have not attempted to critique it before citing it.

you have then either not bothered to check the counter I put..... and posted.... poor.....

or you have checked and still gone with your original point.....  even poorer.

  

please read the pdfs and aknowledge that your assumption was actually wrong and that we do not count in the way you have described.

 

  

Paul.
 

Of course I looked at your PDF's of the "British Crime Survey". They looked more like slick marketing brochures than the dry government reports Dr. Malcom referenced in her work. I invite Strategy Pagers to review both data sets and come to their own conclusions about which research is valid. I and others have presented the clear proof you asked for with original sources. Also above you will find BBC reports heralding the BS being shoved by the UK Gov't about how safe things are! Here is a letter from a parent of a murdered child:


Extract from letter by David Davis, shadow home secretary, to Jacqui Smith, home secretary, August 24, 2007


Dear Jacqui, We are all concerned at the rising tide of violent crime that has manifested itself this week in a spate of shocking killings, including the tragic death of young Rhys Jones. You told GMTV this morning that “statistics aren’t a help but gun crime is down”. That is an extraordinary claim.


According to Home Office figures, gun crime (excluding air weapons) has almost doubled since Labour took office. The annual crime figures, released by the Home Office in July, suggest a 13% decrease on the previous year, which neglects the 18% increase in firearm homicides.


However, perhaps most telling is the massive increase in gun violence, disclosed on 25 January of this year (Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2005-06, Home Office). Buried at page 36 . . . we find [that] . . . gun-related killings and injuries (excluding airguns) have increased by over fourfold since 1998.


In light of this information, your claim that gun crime is down is both inaccurate and misleading. One clear fact on gun-related violence is that if you don’t count it, you won’t be able to tackle it. Your predecessors opted for spin over substance. I hope that is a path you will avoid and would be grateful for an explanation of what action you plan.


Yours sincerely, David Davis



Your own Government produced the report showing that during one 18 month period your murder rate rose 18% and violent crimes went up 29% . The sources are there to prove your silly body count scheme too. If you are too lazy to go back and look through Dr. Malcom's work that is your business. Your scheme to sieze private property instead of fight the source of crime has been failing for a hundred years.

 

Check Six

 

Rocky



those PDFs were not the crime survey.... they are the actual statistics and what gets recorded.......
 
how can you have managed to confuse what they are???? accident or by
 
Quote    Reply

paul1970       9/10/2007 9:47:57 AM






Banning guns is not logical or reasoned. It is a kneejerk reaction made on an emotional level.



perhaps the gap was 10 years because we had so few legal gun owners to start with..... perhaps it will be another 20 years or longer before the next killing spree....     or there may never be another killing spree with a legally held gun.

if you have more legal guns then I bet you that the gap between killing sprees will be far less....   I don't want them every year....



and yes.. few overall people are affected but banning gun ownership is an easy fix.

 

what is not logical about banning gun ownership if your goal is to prevent more guin deaths?????

 

I have no problem with people going shooting in gun clubs (I used to be in gun club and military) and organised events... just don't keep the guns at home where they can all of a sudden be used outside of their purpose.


 

Yes, perhaps... and perhaps salamanders spontaneously generate out of mud.  After all, it would be logical since they were observed emerging from it.  Banning gun ownership *IS* logical if your goal is to prevent more gun deaths.  The problem is that it is *flawed* logic.  Part of why it is flawed is because it is based on many wrong and/or poor assumptions, at least some of which I have ennumerated below. I will speak from the point-of-view of the situation in America. I understand your mileage may vary in other countries that are much further down the gun-banning road than us, and so I acknowledge there is some room for debate on at least that aspect. 
 

1) Not all gun deaths are created equal. Killing isn't wrong, as long as the right people are being killed. Homocide in self-defense is a *good* thing for society and is to be fostered, not prevented. Of the approximately 15,000 firearms-related homocides annually, about 1000 are by law enforcement and 2000 are by victims in self-defense. 

 

2) Banning gun ownership does not equal eliminating gun ownership. Criminals are not going to give up possession of their firearms. Especially note that it is *already* illegal for convicted felons to have guns to begin with, and yet the large majority of violent crime (and I assert, firearm-related crime) is committed by repeat offenders (previously convicted felons). They will still have their guns after the ban, and still use them to commit violent crime at levels close to or even exceeding that which is already being committed (something like about a million armed robberies and rapes). 

 

3) Firearms are used to successfully defend victims from other violent criminal acts far, far more often than are used by criminals to commit murder. Banning firearms (which previously observed would vastly disproportionately disarm the innocent victims rather than the violent criminals) would greatly reduce this important and laudable number. 

 

4) Not all firearms-related murders would *not* have happened in the absence of firearms. Of course, there's no way to say any specific crime would not have happened (you can't prove a negative), but murder did not begin with the invention of firearms. At best it would only reduce murder rates. At worst it would increase murder rates, since after a ban the law-abiding would be deprived of their most effective means of defense. Victims use firearms on the order of more than a million times each year to defend themselves from armed robberies, rapes, and attempted murders, while murderers "only" murder about 12,000 victims a year using firearms. Given the criminals will still be armed and committing on the order of a million or more violent crimes using firearms, the murder rate could easily be unaffected or even rise. 
<
 
Quote    Reply

Jeff_F_F       9/10/2007 10:34:01 AM
"when I went to New York over a decade ago I was advised to carry 40-50 dollars in a wallet that I could hand over to a mugger in case I was attacked as it was not worth getting killed over as the mugger WOULD be armed and might actually have a gun (again, any stats on % of muggers who are armed with guns???? rather than knives ect  ). this rather presuming that the mugger was not intending to kill in the first place and would run off after getting the cash.....   :-)"
 
And just over a decade ago (in the early 90s) when new gun control laws were being debated it was noted that the UK had greater gun control than the US and *lower* violent crime rates than the US. Those new gun control laws produced a huge political backlash though and the result was a new government which reduced gun control and 37 states passed "shall issue" laws making it easier to get concealed carry permits. If my understanding of the UK side of this story is correct about this time the UK finished its movement toward a total ban of all firearms.
 
The question is whose stats to use. I tried to find the clearest, most unbiased numbers available and also the most uniform from nation to nation. Obviously national crime data aren't uniform because each nation has their own standards for data collection. I don't really trust national stats from either country because the people to record those stats obviously have an ax to grind and might prefer to see crime reported as lower to show that they are doing their jobs. I tend to prefer UN stats. The UN is a major proponent of gun control world wide and certainly isn't going to skew things to make gun control look bad. The sources fo the stats are as follows:
 
2002 UN Murder Stats from crime from  >
 
England
                  1989   1992   1996   2000
Assault   =  1.9%   3.8%   5.9%   6.1%
Sexual    =  1.1%   2.1%   2.0%   2.7%
Robbery  = 0.7%   1.1%   1.4%   1.2%
Murder (2002) = 0.0020%

United States
                  1989   1992   1996   2000
Assault   =  5.4%   4.7%   5.7%   3.4%
Sexual    =  4.5%   2.3%   2.5%   1.5%
Robbery =  1.9%   1.5%   1.3%   0.6%         
Murder (2002) = 0.0056%
 
These percentages are percentage of the population victimized in each category. The ICVS data does not include murder because murder is too rare to be represented accurately in a victimization survey of this sort. The UN data used is national crime figures but UNICRI compares national crime data to WHO data reported by doctors to correct for reporting issues, so it should be pretty close.
 
Quote    Reply

Jeff_F_F       9/10/2007 10:35:16 AM
...oops, that last note about WHO cross-referencing refers specifically to the 2002 murder data.
 
Quote    Reply

RockyMTNClimber    Paul Reply, The Numbers...   9/10/2007 11:09:59 AM
Hello again Paul,
The actual numbers are below from your own home office records. These are facts not spin. This is important because as you say above politics gets into these things and fogs the argument terribly.
 
The numbers are compelling. As soon as your nation banned guns in the home violent gun crime spiked! You have to accept this Paul because it is the fact. Fortunatly your crimes have trended back down but they remain 160% of what the were before. Again Paul this is fact. You may not like the fact but it remains fact none the less. This information tends to support the broad criticizims that your own media and citizens have to the British Crime Survey.
 
The remainder of your argument against my points are vacant since you appear to be just getting personal in an discussion you are factually incorrect about.
 
I appreciate the opportunity to introduce you to these facts and strip away the facade that others are trying to keep covering those facts.
 
Check Six
 
Rocky
 
 
h***ttp://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/hosb0207.pdf
Table 2.01 Crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in which firearms (including air weapons) were reported
Total offenses:
1995             13,434
1998             13,874
2003             24,094
2005            21,521
 
 
 
Quote    Reply

RockyMTNClimber    Barbaric New York & UK   9/10/2007 11:48:06 AM
Paul,
This has been explained above in earlier posts but I thought you would like to hear someone else explain it. This piece is from Reason.com and was printed in 2002 during the height of your gun crime violence. As demonstrated above, the crime rate is still 160% higher than your pre-ban numbers. New York has some of the highest crime in the US. It also is very restrictive in gun ownership. Like DC it attracts criminals because the populace is unarmed. Your own experience in New York shows that mugging is just wel-fare/dole by other means!
 
What these jurisdictions have done is take away an individual's right of self defense in favor of the criminal's desire to take what he wants. This is a barbaric and self defeating stance by western governments. Experiences in jurisdictions that allow more liberal carry laws in the US show consistently lower crime rates.
 
Check Six
 
Rocky


ht****tp://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html
.....Historically, America has had a high homicide rate and England a low one. In a comparison of New York and London over a 200-year period, during most of which both populations had unrestricted access to firearms, historian Eric Monkkonen found New York's homicide rate consistently about five times London's. Monkkonen pointed out that even without guns, "the United States would still be out of step, just as it has been for two hundred years."

Legal historian Richard Maxwell Brown has argued that Americans have more homicides because English law insists an individual should retreat when attacked, whereas Americans believe they have the right to stand their ground and kill in self-defense. Americans do have more latitude to protect themselves, in keeping with traditional common law standards, but that would have had less significance before England's more restrictive policy was established in 1967.

The murder rates of the U.S. and U.K. are also affected by differences in the way each counts homicides. The FBI asks police to list every homicide as murder, even if the case isn't subsequently prosecuted or proceeds on a lesser charge, making the U.S. numbers as high as possible. By contrast, the English police "massage down" the homicide statistics, tracking each case through the courts and removing it if it is reduced to a lesser charge or determined to be an accident or self-defense, making the English numbers as low as possible.

The London-based Office of Health Economics, after a careful international study, found that while "one reason often given for the high numbers of murders and manslaughters in the United States is the easy availability of firearms...the strong correlation with racial and socio-economic variables suggests that the underlying determinants of the homicide rate are related to particular cultural factors."

Cultural differences and more-permissive legal standards notwithstanding, the English rate of violent crime has been soaring since 1991. Over the same period, America's has been falling dramatically. In 1999 The Boston Globe reported that the American murder rate, which had fluctuated by about 20 percent between 1974 and 1991, was "in startling free-fall." We have had nine consecutive years of sharply declining violent crime. As a result the English and American murder rates are converging. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and the latest study puts it at 3.5 times.

Preliminary figures for the U.S. this year show an increase, although of less than 1 percent, in the overall number of violent crimes, with homicide increases in certain cities, which criminologists attribute to gang violence, the poor economy, and the release from prison of many offenders. Yet Americans still enjoy a substantially lower rate of violent crime than England, without the "restraint on personal liberty" English governments have seen as necessary. Rather than permit individuals more scope to defend themselves, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government plans to combat crime by extending those "restraints on personal liberty": removing the prohibition against double jeopardy so people can be tried twice for the same crime, making hearsay evidence admissible in court, and letting jurors know of a suspect's previous crimes.

This is a cautionary tale. America's founders, like their English forebears, regarded personal security as first of the three primary rights of mankind. That was the main reason for including a right for individuals to be armed in the U.S. Constitution. Not everyone needs to avail himself or herself of that right. It is a dangerous right. But leaving personal protection to the police is also dangerous.

The English government has e

 
Quote    Reply

paul1970    UK stats...   9/10/2007 12:57:49 PM
on the hunt for recent info
 
recent government report specifically into gun crime in UK.
ht*p://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/hors298.pdf
 
stats for homicides and guns.
 
Homicides, England and Wales
Year Total
Homicide
Total
Firearms (1.)
Shotgun Sawn-off
Shotgun
Pistol
1991 725 55 25 7 19
1992 681 56 20 5 28
1993 675 74 29 10 35
1994 727 66 22 14 25
1995 753 70 18 10 39
1996 679 49 9 8 30
1997 753 59 12 4 39
1998 (2.) 731 49 4 7 32
1999 761 62 6 13 42
2000 850 73 12 2 47
2001 858 97 20 1 59
2002 1045 81 20 3 40
2003 858 68 7 4 35
 
Quote    Reply

RockyMTNClimber    Question for Paul   9/10/2007 2:48:41 PM
Thank you for your post Paul. As you can see UK Murders are up since the ban of firearms. That report is contained within my link listed above and it is from your own Gov't's Home Office statistics. My link of course looks at all gun crimes not just murder. I invite Strategy Pagers to go there and see them for themselves.
 
Question: If gun private gun ownership translates into more gun crimes why is it that gun crimes in the UK are up 160% over pre ban gun crime numbers? 
 
Answer: There is no correlation between private gun ownership and crime.
 
Check Six
 
Rocky
 
Quote    Reply
PREV  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16   NEXT



 Latest
 News
 
 Most
 Read
 
 Most
 Commented
 Hot
 Topics