The crime rates used for Australia and the US in the ChronWatch.Com article are not comparable.

Compare, for example, the very low 3.19/1000ppl figure from the FBI records for 2001 to the 7.57/1000ppl figure from the Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems from 1998-2000. This is mostly because the FBI record is for aggravated assault, while the Australian study deals with all assault, including attempts and threats.

Likewise, the figure used for the rate of rape in Australia is in fact the amount of victims of sexual assault, including "rape, sexual assault, sodomy, buggery, oral sex, incest, carnal knowledge, unlawful sexual intercourse, indecent assault, and assault with intent to rape." The FBI figure is for forcible rape, which is a far more limiting category. I could not find comparable figures for rape for the two countries on a quick glance.

How surprising that a pro-gun site would misrepresent statistics to bolster their arguments.
(As do anti-gun sites, in similar measures.)

Oh good, a survey where the questions asked of both nations are the same.

Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems

All statistics given are for the year 1999 (the most recent that both countries have statistics for). The units are crimes per 100k people.

Completed homicides
US: 4.55
AU: 1.81
US leads by 2.51x.

Total recorded assaults:
US: 805.21
AU: 706.69
(there is also a category labelled "major assaults" that there is no information for, for Australia)
US leads by 1.14x.

Total recorded robberies:
US: 147.36
AU: 118.98
US leads by 1.24x.

Total recorded burglaries:
US: 755.29
AU: 2,188.08
AU leads by 2.90x.

Total recorded rapes:
US: 32.05
AU: 74.23
AU leads by 2.32x.

From this source, we can glean that your odds of getting killed in the US are significantly higher than in AU. Your odds of getting assaulted or robbed are similar, although the US is slightly worse off (it'd be nice if they included statistics for "major assaults" in Australia). Your odds of getting raped or having your home burgled are significantly higher in AU than in the US. It'd be nice if we could get numbers that would show the trend of the last 7 years or so... do you know of any more recent surveys?

This picture is certainly more favorable towards Australia's rate of crime than the earlier one, but it hardly qualifies as being "massively lower than that in the US."

Just looking at crime rates, it absolutely doesn't. For example, according to the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute in 2002, 30.1% of Australians had been victimized by crime (robbery, burglary, attempted burglary, car theft, car vandalism, bicycle theft, sexual assault, theft from car, theft of personal property, assault and threats), while in the US the figure was 21.1%.

However, as NationMaster says, "Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence." For example, according to the same UN study you quoted, Finland had 101.5 total crimes/1000ppl per annum, while Colombia had 4.987.

Maybe Columbia is just a very safe country.



Broad crime statistics tell us nothing about the effectivness of any firearms ban. Specific crime statistics can.

From the US Buearu of Justice
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/wuvc01.txt
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/hvfsdaft.txt
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/fidc9397.txt
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/intimates.htm

• Armed robberies were more likely to be completed, resulting in loss of property, than unarmed robberies. Higher completion percentages occurred for robberies committed with firearms than for robberies with knives and other sharp objects or blunt objects/other weapons. Robberies committed with knives and unarmed robberies were completed at similar percentages.

This makes sense. People are more likely to give up their property for people who are armed and most likely to give up their property for people who are armed with guns. However, I should point out that property loss is least possible damage resulting from crime.

• For the 9-year period beginning in 1993, the percentage of rapes/sexual assaults that was completed did not vary significantly depending on the offenders' possession of a weapon. About 71% of rapes/sexual assaults involving no weapon were completed; of such assaults with a weapon, 67% were completed.

Weapon bans don't stop rape. An armed rapist is only 4% more likely to complete the crime than an unarmed rapist is.

• 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. About half of victims of robbery by offenders armed with
  blunt objects/ other weapons sustained an injury during the crime.
  
• About a third of victims of robbery by unarmed offenders (36%) and offenders armed with knives or sharp objects (31%)sustained injury during the victimization.
  
• Offenders armed with any weapon other than a firearm inflicted a serious injury during about 1 in 7 robberies that they committed.
  
• Victims of robbery by offenders armed with blunt objects/other weapons were more likely than victims of robbery by offenders armed with a firearm to be attacked without a prior threat.
  
• Victims were injured in a third of all assaults by offenders armed with blunt objects/other weapons. Less than a third of assaults by offenders armed with guns or knives resulted in injury (13% and 26%, respectively). Victims of offenders armed with a knife or sharp object were the most likely to sustain a serious injury; 12% of such offenses resulted in serious injury.

As counterintuitive as this may sound an assault victim is less likely to be injured when the perpetrator has a gun. Enigma thinks that a criminal carrying a cucomber instead of a gun is funny. It isn't. It isn't because a criminal with a cucomber is more likely to bludgeon someone senseless than a criminal with a gun is to shoot someone.

A knife is more likely than a blunt object to cause a serious injury but less likely than a blunt object to cause an injury overall according to this study. However on must note that any knife wound is catorgorized as a 'serious injury' by this survey. So a small cut is just as likely to be considered serious as a thrust through a major organ is.

• Serious injuries include gunshot or knife wounds, broken bones, loss of teeth, internal injuries, loss of consciousness, and undetermined injuries requiring 2 or more days of hospitalization.
  
• Minor injuries include bruises, black eyes, cuts, scratches, swelling, chipped teeth, and undetermined injuries requiring less than 2 days of hospitalization.

• Offenders fired their weapon in 17% of all nonfatal handgun crimes (or about 2% of all violent crimes). In 3% of all handgun crimes, the victim was wounded. The offender shot at but missed the victim in 14% of all handgun crimes. Victims did not report if offenders had tried to hit the victim or missed intentionally.

As we can see, the chances of actually being hit by someone who chooses to shoot is realitivly low.

• Between 1993 and 2001, about 61% of all victims of violent crime reported taking a self-defensive measure during the incident. Most used nonaggressive means, such as trying to escape, getting help, or attempting to scare off or warn the offender. About 13% of victims of violent crime tried to attack or threaten the offender. About 2% of victims of violent crime used a weapon to defend themselves; half of these, about 1% of violent crime victims, brandished a firearm.
  
• 38% of the victims defending themselves with a firearm attacked the offender, and the others threatened the offender with the weapon.
  
• A fifth of the victims defending themselves with a firearm suffered an injury, compared to almost half of those who defended themselves with weapons other than a firearm or who had no weapon.

• A weapon was used in 91% of these crimes. In 4% of the homicides, the offender used a means such as strangling, punching, and kicking. Information about the weapon used was unavailable in 5% of all homicides.
  
• Seventy percent of homicide victims were killed with a firearm. Handguns were used in 56% of all homicides.

There is, of course, the issue of homocide to address. I'll say that if you want to kill someone a gun is the best choice. However, if you want to kill someone you will find a way. It is unfortunate that there isn't a more detailed statistical breakdown of homocide trends.

• 28% were killed because of an argument
• 19% were killed during the commission of another crime, including 11% during a robbery and 7% during a drug law violation
• 7% died as a result of a juvenile gang killing.
  
  
• Stranger 13.9%
• Spouse 6.9%
• Other family 7.8%
• Boyfriend/Girlfriend 4.4%
• Other Acquaintance 32.6%
• Relationship undetermined 34.4%

These statistics tell us that you are most likely to be killed by someone you know because of an augument. Most murders are heat-of-the-moment things. In these cases removing access to weapons results in a dramatic reduction the likelyhood of homocide. However, homocide is rarely the first indicator of a potential for violence. The homocide rate between domestic partners has droped dramatically in the US because of a change in the way domestic violence is handeled by police. Applying similar techniques for violence between aquaintainces could reduce the homocide rate even more.


In closing. Give all criminals guns. They probably can't hit the broad side of a barn according to these statistics. A 3/17 hit ratio doesn't exactly inspire fear.

If I'm reading your statistics right, Hyzmarca:

If you're robbed by someone with a blunt instrument, 50% get injured. 36% for unarmed robbers, 31% for knife-wielding offenders, 14% for gun-wielding offenders.

If you're assaulted with a blunt object, the odds of injury are roughly 33%. Knives, 26%, guns, 13%. The serious injury rates are amusing by definition, since "knife or gunshot wounds" automatically qualify as a serious injury.

The odds of being injured defending yourself from a crime with a firearm are roughly 20% (down from roughly 50% if you're unarmed or have some other weapon).

----------------

Statistics can be made to say all sorts of things, but what I glean from this is that the only time that defending yourself from a crime with a firearm increases the chance of you being injured is when your attacker also has a firearm (which makes sense... you may have just started a gunfight with someone who wasn't originally planning to shoot you). This increase in the rate of injury is 6-7%. The increase in the rate of injury trying to defend yourself against a gun-wielding criminal if you do not have a firearm is 36-37%.

Against any other kind of assault or robbery attempt, we see a drop in injury rates ranging of 6% to 30% when the victim defends themselves with a firearm. The only situation in which trying to defend yourself with something other than a firearm does not lead to an increased rate of injury is defense against robbery with a blunt object, where the injury rate is already 50%.

It seems reasonable to assume that the injury rate would be higher among people who chose to defend themselves (by any means) partially due to the fact that they chose to defend themselves once it became apparent they were going to be hurt, or had already been injured. A logical leap from that point would be that the same population that is choosing to defend themselves would see a higher level of injury even if they didn't defend themselves, but we have no statistical evidence to figure out how much of an increase that might be.

It's always a situational call, but the numbers indicate that the only situations where you're more likely to get injured defending yourself with a firearm than taking any other action are the situations where your attacker also has a firearm... and you've always got the option of not drawing your own weapon if the situation looks bad.

Gentlemen, I applaud your search fu. I haven't seen people back themselves up with data like this in quite some time. Kudos.

And I wonder if there's any way we can publicly shame the British government for the farcical practice of "knife amnesty"?

A few random observations without conclusions.

The USA is a big place with a wide range of living conditions within it. Giving an average homicide rate is a little meaningless when we don't know the distribution curve behind it. I.e. If there were 10 homicide in a thousand in California and 1 in an thousand in Minnesota, is it useful to say that the average is 5.5 in every thousand? For purposes of comparison with another country it probably isn't appropriate. For example, if the living conditions for most of Australia more closely approximate Minnesota than they do California, then a country wide comparison of homicide rates is very misleading. The statistics would mean that if the homicide rate were the same, then Australians are four times more likely to shoot you. My point of course isn't that this is true, but that blanket comparisons are probably misleading.

Taking before and after snapshots of crime statistics and drawing conclusions on them is very dangerous as it's not easy to attribute the cause. For example, in 1995 the Attorney General's office was prophesying soaring crime rates and epidemics of violence based on rising crime rates. In fact, violent crime began to plummet shortly thereafter dropping to 50% by 2000. This was popularly attributed to gun control laws, tougher policing and other "didn't we do well" factors. In fact, there's now a pretty unassailable explanation for it which is that it comes down to Roe vs Wade in 1973 when abortion was legalised and began to become more acceptable and accessible. A lot of the people who would grow up to become criminals simply weren't born. Poor single and teenage mothers who were most likely to go for an abortion had also been most likely to have children who grew up to be criminals. Oddly enough, this more statistically supportable explanation never really got the same government and academic publicity that the other explanations had. My point of course isn't that the before and after statistics are wrong, but that drawing a definite conclusion based on them, especially at this poor level of detail, is a really bad idea.

The amusing part about comparing California to Minnesota, aside from living conditions, is that there are stricter gun laws in the first as opposed to the latter.

There is no direct correlation of course. You'd need to use comparable locations with different laws in effect.

Cucumber bludgeoning, sure, but I bet you could kill someone pretty easily by cramming whole cucumbers down their throat.

~J

I'd be willing to bet those are lower than morningstar deaths as well, but only because I know some pretty stupid LARPers that might accidentally kill each other with medieval weapons, but very few chefs that would kill someone with cucumbers.

*ponders the effective crime if he was to induce fatal intestional blockage with a cucumber.*

I think I need an Eddie to James translation manual?

Thanks!

Nah, knives being made illegal won't neessarily change crime statistics such that more people get hurt. It'll almost definitely change the statistics, but trying to say how is a fool's errand at best, unless an in depth study of knives across the centuries and responses to their bannings is made. And even that won't be gauranteed to be accurate.

I seriously see banning knives as being on the same level as banning screwdrivers, hammers, and pieces of pipe. There's a point at which things become ridiculous, and a knife ban is already past that point.

I feel obligated to point out that pretty much any law-abiding citizen in the state of Washington can carry a gun should he apply for the permit, and we don't have roving bands of youths mugging people for money with sharpened screwdrivers...

Most bans for the sake of safety are silly if the object being banned can be gotten legally. If you ban knives in a country where every knife not owned by the government is illegal then you'll probably see a drastic reduction in the number of knifings. Bannign knives when you can walk to the department store and buy one won't change a thing except to increase the penalties for knife related crimes.

I disagree.

~J

As usual, very eloquent.

He was no more eloquent—look at it, all he says is "let's make assault, murder, and robbery illegal instead of making the tools illegal". Nowhere does he back that up, or even explain why assault, murder, or robbery should be illegal in the first place.

~J

LOL. If you need an expanation for that you're in serious need of help.

He does have a point. No evidence has been presented to suggest that the legal status of these activities has any impact on their prevalence. Massive amounts are spent investigating and punishing these crimes. There must by some justification for that expenditure of resources other than principal.

Robbery and murder by definition are criminal acts. If they were not illegal, they wouldn't be murder or robbery, they'd be killing and taking. Assault is different, but that's why we've (at least here in America) defined "criminal assault" as a seperate entity.

Luckily, since they already are crimes, I can leave it up to the detractors to prove something if they want to, saving me a rather lenghty explanation that will be picked apart at leisure because there's no such thing as a post about opinion that escapes at least one person's wrath on Dumpshock.

I say we legalize everything. The crime rate will drop to zero overnight!

John Campbell, hero to the prolitariate crime watcher and bane of trial lawyers everywhere.

Oh good lord, James, they were kidding

For a bunch of guys role playing criminals who regularly kidnap, rob, and shoot people, we sure do care about what the laws should be defined as in order to keep the general public safe.

[/didn't read topic]

As a guy who carries a gun, I sure do care about the specifics of doing so, in order for me to not spend time in jail

I'm actually a big fan of dictionaries. I do, however, despise the corruption of words, particularly for emotional appeal. As such, regardless of what dictionaries happen to print, I deny the legitimacy of the modern popular meanings of certain words (in particular, "predator" and "hacker" rile me).

~J

You love dictionaries except when they disagree with you? LOL

The definition of predator that you disagree with isn't the modern definition, it's the ancient latin definition. Praeda predates predator by quite a while, and predator, even back into the 16th century, was used in more than animal contexts. You're well within your rights to have the opinion that the word is used wrong, but it isn't a new usage you're disagreeing with.

I'm not sure what your problem with hacker is, so can't comment on that.

There are a lot of definitions for hacker ranging from the criminal to the negligent to the skilled. You can be a hacker and break into things, a hacker because all of your code is "hacked together" (i.e. without design). You can be a hacker because your hack code out l33tly. The problem IMO withthe word hacker is that it isn't focused enough. But you can usually tell by the context what is meant (usually it's the criminal version).

Ah, I was misunderstanding your disagreement with predator. Feel free to disagree, but languages shift. This shift has already taken place. You can get annoyed by it or accept it.

You must have fits whenever the movie Hackers comes on TV.

Edit: Do you pummel players senseless when they want to play a Hacker?

Remind me not to try to make a character in your games. I prefer to avoid violence when possible.

The characters in Hackers were actual hackers. However, they were also crackers. The latter has a more narrow definition than the former in the context of electronics.

While 'hacker' refers to any enthusiest who creates or modifies software or hardware 'cracker' specificly refers to individuals who gain unauthorized access to computer networks or unauthorized use of protected software. The definitions of 'hacker' and 'cracker' may be further limited by requiring a certain level of skill or competence. In these cases 'hackers' and 'crackers' can be differientiated from 'script kiddes' who use techniques and software released by others.

Due to the broad definition of 'hacker' and the narrow definition of 'cracker' it is preferable to use 'cracker' when refering to individuals who gain unauthorized access to a computer or defeat software protections. Excluding 'script kiddies', all 'crackers' are hackers but not all 'hackers' are 'crackers.'

We can see the effects of fallacious usage more clearly by applying it to another group-subgroup combination.

The subgroup 'murderers' is a part of the larger group 'humans'

Most people would agree with the statement that all 'murderers' should be imprisioned or executed. Few people would agree with the statement that all 'humans' should be imprisioned or executed.