Murders by Guns!

its all a lie.

What are the numbers for Africa?

It would be more effective had you posted per capita stats

lack of per capita just shows your a fucking idiot

http://www.google.ca/search?q=miserable+failure

second place ain't bad

Bowling for Columbine?

wow

Australia (x14.6) : 876

America : 11,600

Zappu - i don't think the problem is our laws here in the u.s. so much as our entire perspective on the use of guns and on killing other people. just my opnion...

Yea i seen a show about it too and the stats are sick man, if it's the same show it was also doing some comparison that the USA were just really trigger happy.
HAPPY

I don't think they should ban guns, but they should put the price of bullets up to like $4000 dollars a bullet.
That would soon make people think before they pulled the trigger!

America = 13 times more gun deaths than Australia.

http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html


6. International Comparisons. To pound home its point, Bowling flashes a dramatic count of gun homicides in various countries: Canada 165, Germany 381, Australia 65, Japan 39, US 11,127. Now that's raw numbers, not rates -- Here's why he doesn't talk rates.

Verifying the figures was difficult, since Moore does not give a year for them. A lot of Moore's numbers didn't check out for any period I could find. As a last effort at checking, I did a Google search for each number and the word "gun" or words "gun homicides" Many traced -- only back to webpages repeating Bowling's figures. Moore is the only one using these numbers.

Germany: Bowling says 381: 1995 figures put homicides at 1,476, about four times what Bowling claims, and gun homicides at 168, about half what it claims: it's either far too high or far too low. ( Jörg Altmeppen has emailed me a link to a German site putting the figure at Moore's 381, in 1998 -- I have to depend upon his translation here, as German is one of the languages in which I can only curse.).

Australia: Bowling says 65. This is very close, albeit picking the year to get the data desired. Between 1980-1995, firearm homicides varied from 64-123, although never exactly 65. In 2000, it was 64, which was proudly proclaimed as the lowest number in the country's history.

US: Bowling says 11,127. FBI figures put it a lot lower. They report gun homicides were 8,719 in 2001, 8,661 in 2000, 8,480 in 1999. (2001 UCR, p. 23). Here's the table:

[You can download the entire report, in .pdf format, by clicking here; look for pt. 2 at p.23.] To be utterly fair, this is a count of the 13,752 homicides for which police submitted supplemental data (including weapon used): the total homicide count was 15,980. But what weapon, if any, was used in the other homicide is unknown to us, and was unknown to Moore.

After an email tip, I finally found a way to compute precisely 11,127. Ignore the FBI, use Nat'l Center for Health Statistics figures. These are based on doctors' death certificates rather than police investigation.

Then -- to their gun homicide figures, add the figure for legally-justified homicides: self-defense and police use against criminals. Presto, you have exactly Moore's 11,127. I can see no other way for him to get it.

Since Moore appears to use police figures for the other countries, it's hardly a valid comparison. More to the point, it's misleading since it includes self-defense and police: when we talk of a gun homicide problem we hardly have in mind a woman defending against a rapist, or a cop taking out an armed robber.

Canada: Moore's number is correct for 1999, a low point, but he ignores some obvious differences.

Bias. I wanted to talk about fabrication, not about bias, but I've gotten emails asking why I didn't mention that Switzerland requires almost all adult males to have guns, but has a lower homicide rate than Great Britain, or that Japanese-Americans, with the same proximity to guns as other Americans, have homicide rates half that of Japan itself. (And, after posting this, got an email saying that Switzerland doesn't require all adult males to own guns -- not everyone is in the national militia. Here's an encyclopedia reference to their system. 36% of entire population is enrolled in the militia -- which must mean a very great part of the adult male population, " All of Swiss society celebrates shooting, and skill with the rifle. For example, each year Zurich shuts down a whole day for its "Boys' Shooting Festival."" Sounds like a plan to me.)

And, oh, yes, there is an extremely interesting paper by Canadian criminologist Gary Mauser, presented at a colloquium in, appropriately enough, the Tower of London, and addressing international comparisons of firearms laws and firearm crime rates. I highly recommend reading, if you're interested in serious research rather than Moore's flashing numbers. Okay, they're mentioned, now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Actually, international comparisons lead to some interesting points. Here's a webpage which gives worldwide homicide rates. The U.S. comes in at 23rd place. It only made the list by edging out Armenia and Bulgaria. Its former rival as a superpower, the states of the former Soviet Union, absolutely flatten it in this competition. Russia has four times the US rate. Ukraine and Estonia have twice its rate. Even Poland ranks higher. South Africa's showing is ten times the US rate! Hmm-- another point from a different section of that site. In rape rates per 1000 population, the US ranks ninth, at .32, just ahead of Iceland and Papua New Guinea. Canada is fifth, at .75, over double the US rate, and Australia is third with .80.

just a quickie per capita thing given i know the aussie population # offhand. interesting. i didn't think the difference was that much.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicid...weaponstab.htm

what fucking good is a gun ban?

think the criminals will suddenly fear the law and turn in all their guns?

doubt it.

after the hardylaw post it takes it down to ~6 times our gun murder rate which is probably closer to the truth.

That it was

around here when they're not shooting people in clubs they just beat them to death .. yehaa no legal guns

kinda fucks up the hardylaw guy and shows whether you're for mike moore or against you fudge statistics to show what you want to.


so using 2000 figures which is almost the US's lowest gun murder rate in 25 years (the second lowest by ~40) as well as australia's it's back to almost 11 times (10.8) of the AU murder rate.

then again there are so fewer murders here our rate jumps around a lot, like in '96 when one man contributed about a third of our gun murder rate lol which would skew things from year to year.

murder is murder, whether it's guns or knives or gang beatings.. gun statistics are really insignificant unless they're compared with a murder rate in which case i'm sure that legal guns ownership will result in lower murder/rape percentages

Where have you been the last few years. More like:

Australia (x20) = 1200

Still a huge difference, though....

That's probably true, but at the same time the TV Shows and news are showing up 600% more of this stuff. What do you think this will make in people mind?

We can see the same is moving on here in Germany, less crime but much more reality crime shows at the TV. I think if the TV will show up more stories regarding people help people the influence to peoples mind will be much better and stories like the one mentioned at the board before, the one with this Skateboard Guy, will not happen so much.

where have I been? um living in a country of 20 million people, most of whom know basic arithmatic - where the hell are you?

america = 292 million people
australia = 20 million people

292/20=14.6

unless you think america has 400 million people.

I knew this from bowling for columbine

Oops. Sorry. I should get more sleep. Maths was never my strong point