Crunching the Numbers

Great video

I ran similar numbers which got me to switch sides in the whole gun debate. Also he’s not noting the scandal where the Home Office of the UK was altering the number to make the violent crime rate look less than it really is.

h/t ENDO

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4 Responses to Crunching the Numbers

  1. Kristophr says:

    The new pravda is that Britain’s gun violence stats are lower than the US.

    This deftly ignore the fact that most of this “violence” is criminals in the US getting their asses shot off, and that Britain has one of the highest rates of non-gun violence in the world, as well as the highest home invasion rate.

    Hardly a surprise when you criminalize self-defense.

    • Rob Crawford says:

      What I like is the claim that citizens with guns won’t stop mass murders because it’s never happened — backed by “statistics” that conveniently define a “mass murder” as a number of killings HIGHER than the average that occur when a would-be mass murderer is met with armed resistance.

  2. Kristophr says:

    He did miss one point: That those urban ares in the US that generate the most violence have severe restrictions on firearm carry.

  3. Reputo says:

    He does have a couple of errors that need to be addressed.
    1. Comparison of crime statistics between countries is difficult and no law enforcement agency that I know of condones it. Namely because the laws defining the crime are different. Murder/homicide is about the only valid comparison that can be made (a dead body is a dead body). Legal defininitions (what people are charged with) and statistical definitions (what the national law enforcement gathering bodies ask to be reported) differ themselves, and then you try to compare England’s definitions with the US definitions. This is wrong. True murder is the one comparison that the media and most peopel report, however whether this is because it is the only valid one or because it is the one that fits their agenda is unknown. One example: in the US we have two types of assault: aggravated assault (a violent crime) and assault (usually a misdemeanor). In the UK, I believe they include all assaults as part of their violent crime. This is going to skew the statistics since there are far more assaults than there are aggravated assaults.
    2. The US does have 6 times more metropolitan areas over 250,000 than England/Wales. What he failed to mention was we also have 6 times the population. And we have about 50 times the land area. Their overall population is more urbanized and live at a much higher population density (even in their cities) than the US. Both of these have also been shown to be correlated with crime.
    3. Trends in crime rates can be compared. The video mentions that the US has had a 50% reduction in violent crime since 1992, but fails to mention what the trend in violent crime for the UK/England has been (hint: it hasn’t decreased by 50%).

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