Define "murder culture" please. Unless you're going back to the whole discredited "we like violent video games/movies/music/etc., so we're one big murder culture" thing.
No, of course not. I've already expressed earlier in this thread that I do not feel that violence in the mass media has a significant impact on actual violence.
The cultural problems are below the level of pop culture here. They're deeper seated and more profound.
It is precisely these kinds of cultural problems I'd like to see more discussion of; that's what I'm aiming for here. The term "murder culture" is, indeed, rather a hyperbolic one; most of the kinds of factors I'm referring to aren't directly related to murder. Moreover, given the types of issues I have in mind, it's more about violence in general than murder specifically.
Perhaps what I have in mind is sufficiently described by the term culture of honor, which is one that has had prior usage in the literature; there are in fact studies indicating that there is indeed a correlation between cultures of honor and rates of violence (with the U.S. South being an example of this). Walker and I had a couple of posts in such a discussion over in the Guns! thread, although that discussion didn't continue further.
Regardless, I'll give a couple of examples of the types of things that I would argue might be aspects or correlates of the type of cultural problems I have in mind: 1) A strong bent towards self-reliance, with associated beliefs that the individual and not the greater society must protect the home and family (either by necessity, or as a matter of principle). 2) Excessive willingness to use lethal force when other reasonable alternatives are present. I'd expect that a typical symptom of this would be the presence of things like "stand your ground" laws, especially highly permissive ones. 3) A tendency towards revenge and/or support for the death penalty and harsh punishment of criminals. 4) Wide support for a strong military and of aggressive military actions, as well as a marked aversion to criticism of soldiers.
Even if I'm right about the existence of any such cultural factors, there is still a question of the relationship between societal problems and cultural attitudes, because the two are clearly intertwined. It may well be that societal problems (poverty being the most glaring) are the root cause and the culture is merely a consequence of those.
If we look at overall murder rates and not just gun violence, the numbers aren't that different. The US has a murder rate of 5.9 per 100,000 people. Switzerland has 2.9 per 100,000 people. So yeah, per 100,000 people, 3 more people are murdered in the US than in Switzerland.
That's still two times as many murders. Also, looking here, the numbers I see are 4.2 and 0.7 and so the difference, while still around 3 more murders per 100k per year, is a factor of 6.
For the sake of comparison, South Africa has the world's highest with a rate of 69 per 100,000, Russia has the highest in Europe with a rate of 29.7 per 100,000, and Mexico has the highest in North America at 11.3 per 100,000. Hell, Switzerland has a higher murder rate than Canada, which clocks in at 2 per 100,000.
It's true that 4 per 100k is a relatively small amount on an international scale, but the comparisons you give are very different to the U.S. and Switzerland when it comes to the general level of economic prosperity, which is strongly correlated with crime. Also, 4 murders per 100k per year still corresponds to over 10,000 murders per year, which is rather an unfortunate figure.
If we look at overall murder rates and not just gun violence, the numbers aren't that different. The US has a murder rate of 5.9 per 100,000 people. Switzerland has 2.9 per 100,000 people. So yeah, per 100,000 people, 3 more people are murdered in the US than in Switzerland.
That's still two times as many murders. Also, looking here, the numbers I see are 4.2 and 0.7 and so the difference, while still around 3 more murders per 100k per year, is a factor of 6.
The problem is when dealing with small numbers like that, "2 times as many murders" is still misleading. I mean, 2 murders a year is still double the number of murders as 1 murder per year, but it's not that much more in the grand scheme of things. Or to take it to an even more extreme, 0.6 is six times more than 0.1, so saying "six times more" sounds really bad, even though you're still looking at a value less than 1.
For the sake of comparison, South Africa has the world's highest with a rate of 69 per 100,000, Russia has the highest in Europe with a rate of 29.7 per 100,000, and Mexico has the highest in North America at 11.3 per 100,000. Hell, Switzerland has a higher murder rate than Canada, which clocks in at 2 per 100,000.
It's true that 4 per 100k is a relatively small amount on an international scale, but the comparisons you give are very different to the U.S. and Switzerland when it comes to the general level of economic prosperity, which is strongly correlated with crime. Also, 4 murders per 100k per year still corresponds to over 10,000 murders per year, which is rather an unfortunate figure.
I agree that 10,000 murders per year is an unfortunate figure, but then again, the United States has around 300 million people. That means that in any given year, only 0.003% of the population is murdered. Statistics show that, overall, you're not very likely to get murdered in the United States. For comparison, the odds of dying in a car crash come to 0.02%, or nearly an order of 10 more likely than being murdered. Granted, these are still tiny numbers. I mean, if you do the math out for the worst country on the list you provided, Honduras, over 7000 people die per year there. Does that make Honduras safer than the United States? Umm, nope, because the population is so much smaller and in fact 0.09% of the population dies of murder in any given year.
In addition, just using economic prosperity as a barometer/cause of violent crime also is an oversimplification of the problem. I mean, come on, Somalia, despite being probably the biggest hellhole on the planet, has a lower rate (although who knows how accurate those numbers are due to it being such a hellhole). It also fails to take into account many other factors associated with violent crime, such as the presence of organized crime, which may or may not be tied to economic hardship. I mean, you don't see many mafia hitmen living in cardboard boxes, for example.
One major contributing factor to the amount of violent crime in the US is the drug trade, something which Switzerland does not have anywhere near the same problem with for various reasons. In fact, if you look at the list you linked to, most of the high-ranking countries have serious issues with drug cartels and whatnot. I wonder what the murder rate in the US would be if the drug trade were removed from the numbers, just for the sake of comparison. If we break things down and compare the US against our neighbors, all of whom face similar issues with the drug trade due to proximity to sources in South America, we actually have a lower murder rate than any other country in the Americas except for Canada, Chile, and Argentina. For that matter, Bermuda, a country that's known to be pretty wealthy overall, has triple the murder rate of the US.
The problem is when dealing with small numbers like that, "2 times as many murders" is still misleading. I mean, 2 murders a year is still double the number of murders as 1 murder per year, but it's not that much more in the grand scheme of things. Or to take it to an even more extreme, 0.6 is six times more than 0.1, so saying "six times more" sounds really bad, even though you're still looking at a value less than 1.
The thing is, your choice of what is and is not a "small number" is a relatively arbitrary one. Either way, the point is that the U.S. has noticeably more violence than many other comparable countries, and this brings up a question - why?
I agree that 10,000 murders per year is an unfortunate figure, but then again, the United States has around 300 million people. That means that in any given year, only 0.003% of the population is murdered. Statistics show that, overall, you're not very likely to get murdered in the United States.
The point is that 10,000 murders is an equally tragic loss of life regardless of whether it's 10,000 out of 1 million or 10,000 out of 1 billion. The different types of figures serve different purposes; in short, the raw figure is a measure of impact, while the rate is a measure of risk.
It is not good enough to dismiss 10,000 murders per year on the basis that 10,000 is very small compared to 300 million, unless those 300 million people also make the costs of doing anything about it prohibitively high; I see little reason to believe that is the case.
In addition, just using economic prosperity as a barometer/cause of violent crime also is an oversimplification of the problem. I mean, come on, Somalia, despite being probably the biggest hellhole on the planet, has a lower rate (although who knows how accurate those numbers are due to it being such a hellhole). It also fails to take into account many other factors associated with violent crime, such as the presence of organized crime, which may or may not be tied to economic hardship. I mean, you don't see many mafia hitmen living in cardboard boxes, for example.
If I was arguing that lack of economic prosperity was the sole cause of violent crime, my earlier discussion would fail entirely because any kind of cultural effects would be moot. Obviously that's not the point I'm making, and I'm not sure how it is that you read it that way. However, what I am saying is that South Africa, Russia and Mexico are, on the economic front, poor comparisons to the murder rate in the U.S. I think you as a country can do much better than saying "well, at least we have a lower murder rater than Mexico", when in terms of, say, GDP per capita, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Israel, Western Europe, etc. are much more appropriate points of reference.
As for your point about Somalia, I don't see why you even brought it up. It's simply common sense that those statistics are unreliable in the extreme, and if you look in the table it quite specifically puts the count as "176+" - the plus sign is telling.
The former assault weapons ban failed. It stupidly focused on cosmetic nonsense like barrel length and stock size and was probably deliberately sabotaged by gun lobbyists.
I think the only things you need to focus on are theoretical max fire rate and magazine size, with the actual numbers up for discussion.
It was actually sabotaged by the fact that most of the people supporting it knew fuck all about guns, and the only thing that many of them had to go on was that guns "look scary and kill people". The congresswoman I spoke of before? I'm not even kidding when I said she literally didn't know one end of a gun from the other. I certainly wasn't kidding when I said she wanted to ban a list of 65 guns because they were "scary", and that's not my editorializing or saying it to insult, that's her stated reason for the guns on that list being there.
It wasn't some conspiracy, unless the collective noun for a group of Powerful idiots is a conspiracy.
Never assume conspiracy, when something is more than adequately explained by blatant and overwhelming incompetence that is trivially observable.
Every gun owner (or at least every male gun owner) in Switzerland is required to be in, or have been in, the national militia. Yes, basically, if you have a gun there, you had it as part of being in a "well-regulated militia." As such, you've received proper training in using your guns and so on. You are allowed to keep your service weapons after you retire from the militia, but only after you send it away to have any military-only features, such as fully automatic mode, disabled.
As a result, Switzerland has only 0.3 gun homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, as opposed to 4.2 per 100,000 in the US.
Can you show me somewhere official that says as such? I can't find any such regulation noted anywhere, it could be useful for future reference.
Also, it should be noted that the Czech republic has no such rules about being in a militia - if such a rule is indeed in place - and has rules just as loose as the US. And yet, their firearm murder rate is 0.02 per 100,000. And where are you getting that 4.2 for the US? Last I recall, it was closer to 3.16, and it's been on a downward trend.
Also, two countries with far more interesting laws are Sweden and Israel. But I'll get to that shortly, I've gotta run a few errands.
As a pure side note, using homicide instead of murder all throughout this thread is starting to annoy me. Homicide simply means "People killing other people", and in this case, with the qualifier that it's people doing each other in with firearms. Which includes cops shooting people, justifiable self defense cases, manslaughter, etc, etc. Any time someone kills another person, regardless of motive, reason, or anything else. Use whatever term you like, but be aware of what you're saying and which statistics you're using.
Either way, the point is that the U.S. has noticeably more violence than many other comparable countries, and this brings up a question - why?
I think I may have addressed this point later on by talking about issue with the drug trade, organized crime, and such. I'll go into more detail when we get to that part.
It is not good enough to dismiss 10,000 murders per year on the basis that 10,000 is very small compared to 300 million, unless those 300 million people also make the costs of doing anything about it prohibitively high; I see little reason to believe that is the case.
This goes into the whole "airline travel is dangerous" fallacy. Every time a plane crashes, hundreds of people die. Therefore, using this logic, airline travel is inherently dangerous and should be banned. However, overall, the total number of people dying in place crashes is tiny compared to the total number of people who fly. Therefore, if you look at the odds, airline travel is indeed quite safe. That said, this doesn't mean that measures shouldn't be taken to prevent plane crashes. Every time a crash happens, the various safety boards do thorough analyses and investigations of the crash in order to determine why it happened and propose new regulations to prevent it from happening again.
So yes, 10,000 murders per year in the United States is a big number at first glance. However, it's not so big when compared to the total number of people in the United States. Still, the ideal is to have zero murders per year (just like the idea is to have zero plane crashes per year), and efforts should always be undertaken to reduce the murder rate to as close to zero as possible.
I think you as a country can do much better than saying "well, at least we have a lower murder rater than Mexico", when in terms of, say, GDP per capita, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Israel, Western Europe, etc. are much more appropriate points of reference.
Well, you mentioned that the greater economic equality in Switzerland contributed to their low crime rate in an earlier post. Although, it's possible I misinterpreted that because the other countries I made comparisons too had significantly higher crime rates and more severe economic problems than either the US or Switzerland, and you may have been pointing out that those countries' issues make them invalid comparisons to the US and Switzerland. If that's the case, my bad for misunderstanding.
Although, to briefly go back to the whole economic issue by making a comparison based on per capita GDP, the US also has a lower murder rate than Bermuda, which has the highest per capital GDP in the world. It also is geographically close enough to deal with some of the same geographic issues that the US faces that the other countries you mentioned do not with respect to drug trafficking and such.
Heck, Italy, which currently ranks pretty low, had some serious violent crime issues not too long ago, especially on Sicily, during the hey day of the Mafia... and we're talking about not just mob thug one gunning down mob thug two there. There were cases of the Mafia blatantly assassinating politicians and law enforcement officials. Since then, they do seem to have cleaned up their act and the Mafia now mostly resorts to non-violent crimes, though.
Again, I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't reduce the murder rate in the US. I'm just saying that the US has various issues, economic, geographic, and so on that makes things somewhat different than even our economic peers. The best comparison we have is probably Canada, and even it has a higher murder rate than anyone in western Europe except for Belgium and Luxembourg. So while we are higher than our economic peers, we are lower than all of our geographic peers except for Canada, Chile, and Argentina. The geographic comparison is something that does need to be noted, as Western Europe, ANZAC, and Japan aren't exactly known to be major drug running corridors, whereas the US, due to its size and location, is. It would be very interesting to see a statistic for non-drug related murders in the US and compare it to our peers. My gut tells me that it would significantly reduce the murder rate in this country if we could just make it less attractive a place for drug cartels and their lower level dealers/distributors to do business.
Of course, I'm also in favor of getting rid of some of the other, more stupid, laws out there such as "stand your ground" laws and such that only lead to tragedy. While the total number of stand your ground cases that have appeared in the news has been relatively small, this is just such a ridiculous case that the laws should be abolished. It's akin to the airline regulation that DC-10s change the design of their cargo bay doors in order to prevent explosive decompression (which was an actual regulation passed in the 80's or so after several crashes were caused by poorly designed cargo bay doors).
As for your point about Somalia, I don't see why you even brought it up. It's simply common sense that those statistics are unreliable in the extreme, and if you look in the table it quite specifically puts the count as "176+" - the plus sign is telling.
I did explicitly mention that Somalia's statistics were quite probably inaccurate.
Every gun owner (or at least every male gun owner) in Switzerland is required to be in, or have been in, the national militia.
Can you show me somewhere official that says as such? I can't find any such regulation noted anywhere, it could be useful for future reference.
Also, it should be noted that the Czech republic has no such rules about being in a militia - if such a rule is indeed in place - and has rules just as loose as the US. And yet, their firearm murder rate is 0.02 per 100,000. And where are you getting that 4.2 for the US? Last I recall, it was closer to 3.16, and it's been on a downward trend.
Old stats from the first page that came up when I did a Google search for Switzerland's rates and noticed it had other countries' rates there as well. I think the stats were from 2004 or something like that. I probably should've searched harder for something more recent.
As a pure side note, using homicide instead of murder all throughout this thread is starting to annoy me. Homicide simply means "People killing other people", and in this case, with the qualifier that it's people doing each other in with firearms. Which includes cops shooting people, justifiable self defense cases, manslaughter, etc, etc. Any time someone kills another person, regardless of motive, reason, or anything else. Use whatever term you like, but be aware of what you're saying and which statistics you're using.
Well, the site I dug up specifically listed the rate as "murder," not "homicide." Manslaughter was listed separately, and murder committed by firearms (and youths, and various other categories) were called out into subgroups for comparison purposes. So even though the statistics I found may have been old, the source did at least break things up and not lump together all forms of homicide as a single statistic.
Switzerland has compulsory military service for all males. This is less a case of "you have to have served in the military to own a gun" and more a case of "we know you guys can handle a gun safely because you were all trained in the military." Guess I should've been more explicit. As for the general gun laws, they were on the appropriate Wikipedia entry.
Yes, I'm aware of compulsory service and their gun laws. But "Every gun owner is required to be in or have been in the national militia" has a completely different connotation to "Switzerland has compulsory military or civil service, and therefore every Swiss person who has a gun license has been in the militia" - It places it as a requirement for gun ownership, not a separate requirement entirely.
Not to mention, it's not actually true - Practically anyone over 18(also - conscription starts at 20, two years later, unless one is taking a prep course, which is not compulsory at all), who is psychologically fit and doesn't have a criminal record can obtain firearms if they so choose. It's possible to be a gun owner in Switzerland without any formal training or military service.
It is also not true that all Swiss males are required to serve in the military. Putting aside that more than 20% of Swiss citizens are found unfit for Military or Civil Service, it's not actually compulsory to join the military, It's only compulsory to face the conscription process and do your "National Service" - you can also serve in the Civilian Service to satisfy the requirement, and a great many do. How do you get into the Civilian service? Pretty much just say you don't want to join the Military, and in 90% or so of cases, your request is granted.
It's also becoming a more popular option with Swiss youths, because unlike the military option, it allows you to profit and benefit from your service, and you come out the other side with qualifications, and possibly even a degree - it's entirely possible to continue university studies while doing your Civil Service.
In addition, just using economic prosperity as a barometer/cause of violent crime also is an oversimplification of the problem. I mean, come on, Somalia, despite being probably the biggest hellhole on the planet, has a lower rate (although who knows how accurate those numbers are due to it being such a hellhole). It also fails to take into account many other factors associated with violent crime, such as the presence of organized crime, which may or may not be tied to economic hardship. I mean, you don't see many mafia hitmen living in cardboard boxes, for example.
If I was arguing that lack of economic prosperity was the sole cause of violent crime, my earlier discussion would fail entirely because any kind of cultural effects would be moot.
I found this most interesting. I've known about the "gunshow" private sale loop hole for a while, but I had no idea so many firearms were exchanged that way. That needs to be locked way down, which would mean federal registration and background checks for all firearm transfers.
Bermuda might have a higher GDP, but I think this then falls into the "wealth distribution" area of violent crime corrolation. That is: Bermuda has has more very rich people and fewer very poor people, but the gap between the rich and poor is more in line with the USA and other more violent countries.
In poor countries the violent crime is by the poor, and in countries with wealth disparity the violent crime I'd by the poor, despite a higher average wealth. In rich countries with less wealth disparity there aren't the downtrodden poor to commit the same rate of violent crime.
At least that is one way of looking at the statistic, not that I *have* looked at the statistics, nor am I trying to argue one way or the other on this issue.
Bermuda might have a higher GDP, but I think this then falls into the "wealth distribution" area of violent crime corrolation. That is: Bermuda has has more very rich people and fewer very poor people, but the gap between the rich and poor is more in line with the USA and other more violent countries.
In poor countries the violent crime is by the poor, and in countries with wealth disparity the violent crime I'd by the poor, despite a higher average wealth. In rich countries with less wealth disparity there aren't the downtrodden poor to commit the same rate of violent crime.
At least that is one way of looking at the statistic, not that I *have* looked at the statistics, nor am I trying to argue one way or the other on this issue.
Pretty sure I just lost a facebook friend (not a RL friend, so there's that) after an hour long debate in which she insisted that having a semiautomatic handgun for home defense made her kids safer while I quoted statistics and examples disproving her assertion.
My position on firearms has changed pretty dramatically this week, and sure, it's due to an event which by all rights is not statistically significant enough to have made a difference in my thinking, but viscerally and emotionally is far more than enough. So be it.
I don't think a full ban will happen in the US in my lifetime, but damned if we don't need to get rid of semiautomatics and large magazines, or at least stop selling them and offer cash incentives for the surrender of those already in circulation.
Keeping a semi-automatic handgun where a child can't get it keeps the child safe from misuse, but probably defeats the purpose of the handgun if its purpose is for home defense, as it'll take you valuable time to retrieve it.
It is not good enough to dismiss 10,000 murders per year on the basis that 10,000 is very small compared to 300 million, unless those 300 million people also make the costs of doing anything about it prohibitively high; I see little reason to believe that is the case.
This goes into the whole "airline travel is dangerous" fallacy. Every time a plane crashes, hundreds of people die. Therefore, using this logic, airline travel is inherently dangerous and should be banned. However, overall, the total number of people dying in place crashes is tiny compared to the total number of people who fly.
If I was saying that the 10,000 figure corresponded to a high level of danger or risk, you'd have a point. However, that's not what I was saying it all - I was simply saying that 10,000 is a tragic number of deaths per year.
If you focus solely on rates as opposed to the actual numbers, you can miss some useful lines of thought. For example, most of the costs of medicine are research costs, which are a one off expenditure. Consequently, the greater the total population, the more it makes sense to spend money on medical research, even on relatively rare conditions.
My point isn't that you're at high risk of murder by living in the U.S. - that would be ludicrous. That being said, a relatively low overall murder rate does not preclude there being certain outlier areas where the rate is very high, and such areas would also be the best place to expend effort.
I think you as a country can do much better than saying "well, at least we have a lower murder rater than Mexico", when in terms of, say, GDP per capita, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Israel, Western Europe, etc. are much more appropriate points of reference.
Well, you mentioned that the greater economic equality in Switzerland contributed to their low crime rate in an earlier post. Although, it's possible I misinterpreted that because the other countries I made comparisons too had significantly higher crime rates and more severe economic problems than either the US or Switzerland, and you may have been pointing out that those countries' issues make them invalid comparisons to the US and Switzerland. If that's the case, my bad for misunderstanding.
Yes, that's the point I was making.
Although, to briefly go back to the whole economic issue by making a comparison based on per capita GDP, the US also has a lower murder rate than Bermuda, which has the highest per capital GDP in the world. It also is geographically close enough to deal with some of the same geographic issues that the US faces that the other countries you mentioned do not with respect to drug trafficking and such.
A quick search tells me that Bermuda's violence problem is primarily gang-related, and so it's decent evidence of the greater point you're trying to make about the U.S.
However, while I agree that the drug trade is a significant cause of violence in the U.S., I'm not convinced that it fully explains the discrepancy between other advanced countries and the United States. For one thing, many of those nations have similar or even greater rates of drug usage; Australia is an example here.
Of course, drug usage is not the same as drug trafficking, but ultimately the drugs have to come from somewhere, and the networks that distribute those drugs are always illegal by necessity.
I would argue that in general, drug usage and the associated distribution is, by itself, not that strong a factor except when it is also combined with areas of concentrated, cyclical poverty - it is the two in combination that lead to significant problems. In general, I'd say that the greater factor behind drug-related crime, for the most part, poverty and not drugs.
As such, I don't feel that your argument that the geography plays a large role in U.S. violence is a particularly good one.
Keeping a semi-automatic handgun where a child can't get it keeps the child safe from misuse, but probably defeats the purpose of the handgun if its purpose is for home defense, as it'll take you valuable time to retrieve it.
I have always thought the same thing. They only way I would have kept a weapon in my house when my kids were young, would have been under lock and key. And as you said, that kinda defeats the purpose of having the weapon around for home defense.
Keeping a semi-automatic handgun where a child can't get it keeps the child safe from misuse, but probably defeats the purpose of the handgun if its purpose is for home defense, as it'll take you valuable time to retrieve it.
I have always thought the same thing. They only way I would have kept a weapon in my house when my kids were young, would have been under lock and key. And as you said, that kinda defeats the purpose of having the weapon around for home defense.
Even an unloaded gun works in home defense, it's called the intimidation factor. This factor is especially high when it comes to "scary assault style" weapons.
This point is being unintenionaly made by people who want to ban such guns.
Any trained person will tell you that you only ever point a gun at someone you intend to shoot. It's not only about trigger safety. Do you think every assailant is rational? You're at least as likely to provoke a charge as a retreat.
Any trained person will tell you that you only ever point a gun at someone you intend to shoot. It's not only about trigger safety. Do you think every assailant is rational? You're at least as likely to provoke a charge as a retreat.
This. An unloaded gun might intimidate some kid that decided, like Dane Cook, to just go on a B&E for kicks, and was a lot less savvy than he was. Otherwise what do you do if someone calls your bluff? Probably the best solution is to keep the firearm unloaded with the ammo in a place that is secret but close to the firearm. That way in an emergency you can load it but it is relatively safe when just in storage.
Any trained person will tell you that you only ever point a gun at someone you intend to shoot. It's not only about trigger safety. Do you think every assailant is rational? You're at least as likely to provoke a charge as a retreat.
This. An unloaded gun might intimidate some kid that decided, like Dane Cook, to just go on a B&E for kicks, and was a lot less savvy than he was. Otherwise what do you do if someone calls your bluff? Probably the best solution is to keep the firearm unloaded with the ammo in a place that is secret but close to the firearm. That way in an emergency you can load it but it is relatively safe when just in storage.
Or you could just get a dog. If your serious about keeping your family safe you shouldn't be keeping firearms with ammo anywhere near where kids can get at them. Kids have a way of finding out secrets. My little brother knows where the ammo is, and when I was his age I knew where my dad kept it, despite never being told.
Any trained person will tell you that you only ever point a gun at someone you intend to shoot. It's not only about trigger safety. Do you think every assailant is rational? You're at least as likely to provoke a charge as a retreat.
This. An unloaded gun might intimidate some kid that decided, like Dane Cook, to just go on a B&E for kicks, and was a lot less savvy than he was. Otherwise what do you do if someone calls your bluff? Probably the best solution is to keep the firearm unloaded with the ammo in a place that is secret but close to the firearm. That way in an emergency you can load it but it is relatively safe when just in storage.
Or you could just get a dog. If your serious about keeping your family safe you shouldn't be keeping firearms with ammo anywhere near where kids can get at them. Kids have a way of finding out secrets. My little brother knows where the ammo is, and when I was his age I knew where my dad kept it, despite never being told.
If you're going to bring a gun into your house you're resigning yourself to the fact that at any point a child could accidentally discharge it, to possibly tragic results. If you can't handle that fact even with mitigating factors don't buy a gun.
If you're going to bring a gun into your house you're resigning yourself to the fact that at any point a child could accidentally discharge it, to possibly tragic results. If you can't handle that fact even with mitigating factors don't buy a gun.
I'm not suggesting that one shouldn't buy a gun. Simply that expecting secrecy to keep your children safe isn't going to end well.As a parent, and as a gun owner, It's your job to provide as many "mitigating factors"as is reasonably possible.
If your justification for owning a gun is home defense then you need to ensure that having that gun there actually increases safety. That means taking proper precautions (IE a gunlock) and considering other security options. A big dog does a better job of discouraging home invasion than a gun, and your kids are moderately less likely to shoot themselves with the dog. I suppose they cold antagonize the dog into biting them, but that would be a worthwhile lesson all on it's own.
A gun for home defense raises the absolute chance of a member of your household being shot. The chance of the accidental discharge is higher than the chance of it ever being useful in a defense situation.
Comments
Perhaps what I have in mind is sufficiently described by the term culture of honor, which is one that has had prior usage in the literature; there are in fact studies indicating that there is indeed a correlation between cultures of honor and rates of violence (with the U.S. South being an example of this). Walker and I had a couple of posts in such a discussion over in the Guns! thread, although that discussion didn't continue further.
Regardless, I'll give a couple of examples of the types of things that I would argue might be aspects or correlates of the type of cultural problems I have in mind:
1) A strong bent towards self-reliance, with associated beliefs that the individual and not the greater society must protect the home and family (either by necessity, or as a matter of principle).
2) Excessive willingness to use lethal force when other reasonable alternatives are present. I'd expect that a typical symptom of this would be the presence of things like "stand your ground" laws, especially highly permissive ones.
3) A tendency towards revenge and/or support for the death penalty and harsh punishment of criminals.
4) Wide support for a strong military and of aggressive military actions, as well as a marked aversion to criticism of soldiers.
Even if I'm right about the existence of any such cultural factors, there is still a question of the relationship between societal problems and cultural attitudes, because the two are clearly intertwined. It may well be that societal problems (poverty being the most glaring) are the root cause and the culture is merely a consequence of those.
In addition, just using economic prosperity as a barometer/cause of violent crime also is an oversimplification of the problem. I mean, come on, Somalia, despite being probably the biggest hellhole on the planet, has a lower rate (although who knows how accurate those numbers are due to it being such a hellhole). It also fails to take into account many other factors associated with violent crime, such as the presence of organized crime, which may or may not be tied to economic hardship. I mean, you don't see many mafia hitmen living in cardboard boxes, for example.
One major contributing factor to the amount of violent crime in the US is the drug trade, something which Switzerland does not have anywhere near the same problem with for various reasons. In fact, if you look at the list you linked to, most of the high-ranking countries have serious issues with drug cartels and whatnot. I wonder what the murder rate in the US would be if the drug trade were removed from the numbers, just for the sake of comparison. If we break things down and compare the US against our neighbors, all of whom face similar issues with the drug trade due to proximity to sources in South America, we actually have a lower murder rate than any other country in the Americas except for Canada, Chile, and Argentina. For that matter, Bermuda, a country that's known to be pretty wealthy overall, has triple the murder rate of the US.
It is not good enough to dismiss 10,000 murders per year on the basis that 10,000 is very small compared to 300 million, unless those 300 million people also make the costs of doing anything about it prohibitively high; I see little reason to believe that is the case. If I was arguing that lack of economic prosperity was the sole cause of violent crime, my earlier discussion would fail entirely because any kind of cultural effects would be moot. Obviously that's not the point I'm making, and I'm not sure how it is that you read it that way. However, what I am saying is that South Africa, Russia and Mexico are, on the economic front, poor comparisons to the murder rate in the U.S. I think you as a country can do much better than saying "well, at least we have a lower murder rater than Mexico", when in terms of, say, GDP per capita, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Israel, Western Europe, etc. are much more appropriate points of reference.
As for your point about Somalia, I don't see why you even brought it up. It's simply common sense that those statistics are unreliable in the extreme, and if you look in the table it quite specifically puts the count as "176+" - the plus sign is telling.
It wasn't some conspiracy, unless the collective noun for a group of Powerful idiots is a conspiracy.
Never assume conspiracy, when something is more than adequately explained by blatant and overwhelming incompetence that is trivially observable. Can you show me somewhere official that says as such? I can't find any such regulation noted anywhere, it could be useful for future reference.
Also, it should be noted that the Czech republic has no such rules about being in a militia - if such a rule is indeed in place - and has rules just as loose as the US. And yet, their firearm murder rate is 0.02 per 100,000. And where are you getting that 4.2 for the US? Last I recall, it was closer to 3.16, and it's been on a downward trend.
Also, two countries with far more interesting laws are Sweden and Israel. But I'll get to that shortly, I've gotta run a few errands.
As a pure side note, using homicide instead of murder all throughout this thread is starting to annoy me. Homicide simply means "People killing other people", and in this case, with the qualifier that it's people doing each other in with firearms. Which includes cops shooting people, justifiable self defense cases, manslaughter, etc, etc. Any time someone kills another person, regardless of motive, reason, or anything else. Use whatever term you like, but be aware of what you're saying and which statistics you're using.
So yes, 10,000 murders per year in the United States is a big number at first glance. However, it's not so big when compared to the total number of people in the United States. Still, the ideal is to have zero murders per year (just like the idea is to have zero plane crashes per year), and efforts should always be undertaken to reduce the murder rate to as close to zero as possible. Well, you mentioned that the greater economic equality in Switzerland contributed to their low crime rate in an earlier post. Although, it's possible I misinterpreted that because the other countries I made comparisons too had significantly higher crime rates and more severe economic problems than either the US or Switzerland, and you may have been pointing out that those countries' issues make them invalid comparisons to the US and Switzerland. If that's the case, my bad for misunderstanding.
Although, to briefly go back to the whole economic issue by making a comparison based on per capita GDP, the US also has a lower murder rate than Bermuda, which has the highest per capital GDP in the world. It also is geographically close enough to deal with some of the same geographic issues that the US faces that the other countries you mentioned do not with respect to drug trafficking and such.
Heck, Italy, which currently ranks pretty low, had some serious violent crime issues not too long ago, especially on Sicily, during the hey day of the Mafia... and we're talking about not just mob thug one gunning down mob thug two there. There were cases of the Mafia blatantly assassinating politicians and law enforcement officials. Since then, they do seem to have cleaned up their act and the Mafia now mostly resorts to non-violent crimes, though.
Again, I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't reduce the murder rate in the US. I'm just saying that the US has various issues, economic, geographic, and so on that makes things somewhat different than even our economic peers. The best comparison we have is probably Canada, and even it has a higher murder rate than anyone in western Europe except for Belgium and Luxembourg. So while we are higher than our economic peers, we are lower than all of our geographic peers except for Canada, Chile, and Argentina. The geographic comparison is something that does need to be noted, as Western Europe, ANZAC, and Japan aren't exactly known to be major drug running corridors, whereas the US, due to its size and location, is. It would be very interesting to see a statistic for non-drug related murders in the US and compare it to our peers. My gut tells me that it would significantly reduce the murder rate in this country if we could just make it less attractive a place for drug cartels and their lower level dealers/distributors to do business.
Of course, I'm also in favor of getting rid of some of the other, more stupid, laws out there such as "stand your ground" laws and such that only lead to tragedy. While the total number of stand your ground cases that have appeared in the news has been relatively small, this is just such a ridiculous case that the laws should be abolished. It's akin to the airline regulation that DC-10s change the design of their cargo bay doors in order to prevent explosive decompression (which was an actual regulation passed in the 80's or so after several crashes were caused by poorly designed cargo bay doors). I did explicitly mention that Somalia's statistics were quite probably inaccurate. Switzerland has compulsory military service for all males. This is less a case of "you have to have served in the military to own a gun" and more a case of "we know you guys can handle a gun safely because you were all trained in the military." Guess I should've been more explicit. As for the general gun laws, they were on the appropriate Wikipedia entry.
Not to mention, it's not actually true - Practically anyone over 18(also - conscription starts at 20, two years later, unless one is taking a prep course, which is not compulsory at all), who is psychologically fit and doesn't have a criminal record can obtain firearms if they so choose. It's possible to be a gun owner in Switzerland without any formal training or military service.
It is also not true that all Swiss males are required to serve in the military. Putting aside that more than 20% of Swiss citizens are found unfit for Military or Civil Service, it's not actually compulsory to join the military, It's only compulsory to face the conscription process and do your "National Service" - you can also serve in the Civilian Service to satisfy the requirement, and a great many do. How do you get into the Civilian service? Pretty much just say you don't want to join the Military, and in 90% or so of cases, your request is granted.
It's also becoming a more popular option with Swiss youths, because unlike the military option, it allows you to profit and benefit from your service, and you come out the other side with qualifications, and possibly even a degree - it's entirely possible to continue university studies while doing your Civil Service.
In poor countries the violent crime is by the poor, and in countries with wealth disparity the violent crime I'd by the poor, despite a higher average wealth. In rich countries with less wealth disparity there aren't the downtrodden poor to commit the same rate of violent crime.
At least that is one way of looking at the statistic, not that I *have* looked at the statistics, nor am I trying to argue one way or the other on this issue.
In poor countries the violent crime is by the poor, and in countries with wealth disparity the violent crime I'd by the poor, despite a higher average wealth. In rich countries with less wealth disparity there aren't the downtrodden poor to commit the same rate of violent crime.
At least that is one way of looking at the statistic, not that I *have* looked at the statistics, nor am I trying to argue one way or the other on this issue.
My position on firearms has changed pretty dramatically this week, and sure, it's due to an event which by all rights is not statistically significant enough to have made a difference in my thinking, but viscerally and emotionally is far more than enough. So be it.
I don't think a full ban will happen in the US in my lifetime, but damned if we don't need to get rid of semiautomatics and large magazines, or at least stop selling them and offer cash incentives for the surrender of those already in circulation.
If you focus solely on rates as opposed to the actual numbers, you can miss some useful lines of thought. For example, most of the costs of medicine are research costs, which are a one off expenditure. Consequently, the greater the total population, the more it makes sense to spend money on medical research, even on relatively rare conditions.
My point isn't that you're at high risk of murder by living in the U.S. - that would be ludicrous. That being said, a relatively low overall murder rate does not preclude there being certain outlier areas where the rate is very high, and such areas would also be the best place to expend effort. Yes, that's the point I was making. A quick search tells me that Bermuda's violence problem is primarily gang-related, and so it's decent evidence of the greater point you're trying to make about the U.S.
However, while I agree that the drug trade is a significant cause of violence in the U.S., I'm not convinced that it fully explains the discrepancy between other advanced countries and the United States. For one thing, many of those nations have similar or even greater rates of drug usage; Australia is an example here.
Of course, drug usage is not the same as drug trafficking, but ultimately the drugs have to come from somewhere, and the networks that distribute those drugs are always illegal by necessity.
I would argue that in general, drug usage and the associated distribution is, by itself, not that strong a factor except when it is also combined with areas of concentrated, cyclical poverty - it is the two in combination that lead to significant problems. In general, I'd say that the greater factor behind drug-related crime, for the most part, poverty and not drugs.
As such, I don't feel that your argument that the geography plays a large role in U.S. violence is a particularly good one. Yes, but not in its entirety.
This point is being unintenionaly made by people who want to ban such guns.
If your justification for owning a gun is home defense then you need to ensure that having that gun there actually increases safety. That means taking proper precautions (IE a gunlock) and considering other security options. A big dog does a better job of discouraging home invasion than a gun, and your kids are moderately less likely to shoot themselves with the dog. I suppose they cold antagonize the dog into biting them, but that would be a worthwhile lesson all on it's own.
<_<