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[Phmcw]

Ok, guns lovers, answer this one : what is he big difference between America and Europe that make you have more than three time more homicide than us.
Andir already shifted my mind a little : 1) violence is more socially acceptable (hence your related gun law btw).
Other?

[Lord Shonus]

For starters, there's massive lingering racial tensions and economic inequalities made worse by extremists and pandering politicians, an unceasing flow of narcotics that are not in the least hindered by prohibitionism, and an ever-increasing number of mental-illness related homelessness.

[Leafsnail]

And we don't have any of that stuff in Europe...?

[Phmcw]

For starters, there's massive lingering racial tensions and economic inequalities made worse by extremists and pandering politicians, an unceasing flow of narcotics that are not in the least hindered by prohibitionism, and an ever-increasing number of mental-illness related homelessness.

Got that too. As much. Maybe even "worse". Not the social inequalities thank to our socialists systems, but a lot of more and more extremist politician, progression from racist party, and the social tension actually lead to riot. Global distrust in our politician too.

[Lord Shonus]

They are all problems that get much worse the larger a area is. 2 slightly crazy men sleeping in a park in a town of a 1000 people is nowhere near the same issue as 200 slightly crazy men sleeping in a park i a city of 100,000.


Also, I checked official statistics, and only 30% of the murders in Toledo last year involved guns in any way. Most were stabbings or beatings.

[Phmcw]

Keep with me Shonus : US have a lot of gun and claim is help them cull violence. It seems nonsensical to me both for practical reason( not a good reason ) and because assassination statistic in the US are overall awful.
Beside, you have a lot (estimation 10* more) mass shooting than US while having less population on a larger territory. Unsurprisingly, your less populated sate are the less touched by the violence. So you should expect more Assasination in Europe. Therefore gun are probably part of the problem, and certainly not a solution.

http://europa.eu/abc/keyfigures/sizeandpopulation/howmany/index_fr.htm#chart3 (for population).

[Lord Shonus]

First, unless you count the Arizona shooting (unclear if it counts yet), the last assassination attempt in this country was when Reagan got shot. In fact, purely political violence is lower here than almost everywhere else. I'm going to assume you meant something else.


Second, it's not purely population density that I'm talking about. It's size. Ohio alone is on par in land area with most European countries. That's one of fifty states. True, there are countries that have higher populations or similar land masses, but the combination of the two in the US is fairly unique.

Third: In the last ten years, I can recollect three mass shootings, one of which was a terrorist attack supported by a foreign power by a military individual.

[Phmcw]

The point is : there was only one in europe.
And there has been more than 100 school shooting since 1960 in the US. 17 in whole of Europe.
Low density of population is a GOOD thing when it come to criminality statistics.
How the hell can the size of the us influence criminality?
Striker was joking you know. He was just trying to point out the old correlation does not mean causation.

Edit : We're both wrong on the shooting spree : since 2000 there has been 7 shooting spree in the US and 3 in Europe listed in the wikipedia page about shooting spree.

[Lord Shonus]

We must be looking at different pages. I count it at 6 and 4, with near parity in total victims.

[Cecilff2]

How the hell can the size of the us influence criminality?

 

Is this a serious question?


You don't seem to have a grasp on population density.  New York City alone has over 10 times the population of the entire state of Alaska.  Just because there is a large landmass doesn't mean the entire population is evenly distributed.

[Phmcw]

Beside, you have a lot (estimation 10* more) mass shooting than US while having less population on a larger territory. Unsurprisingly, your less populated sate are the less touched by the violence. So you should expect more Assasination in Europe. Therefore gun are probably part of the problem, and certainly not a solution.

http://europa.eu/abc/keyfigures/sizeandpopulation/howmany/index_fr.htm#chart3 (for population).

[Leafsnail]

They are all problems that get much worse the larger a area is. 2 slightly crazy men sleeping in a park in a town of a 1000 people is nowhere near the same issue as 200 slightly crazy men sleeping in a park i a city of 100,000.

Well, Europe has over twice as many people as America overall.  Mind expanding on this...?

Also, I checked official statistics, and only 30% of the murders in Toledo last year involved guns in any way. Most were stabbings or beatings.

And...?

[Lord Shonus]

I'm going to reply to the second part first. Phmcw and Max White were insisting that flat murder rates in and of themselves were proof that guns cause crime. So I checked the local paper's archives to get better data to contest that. If only 30% of crimes in a given area involve firearms, then it is very difficult to insist that the other 70% of those crimes were a result of gun ownership, which is no lower in Toledo than the rest of Ohio, although the crime rate is above average.

As to the other:
Europe is not a unified country with a generally uniform legal system. True, American states are far more independant than is the norm for divisions of a country, but there is a common culture and legal background far more extensive than in Europe. Thus the "spill-over" where a crime in one state affects crime in another, is greater in the US than in Europe.

[Leafsnail]

I'm going to reply to the second part first. Phmcw and Max White were insisting that flat murder rates in and of themselves were proof that guns cause crime. So I checked the local paper's archives to get better data to contest that. If only 30% of crimes in a given area involve firearms, then it is very difficult to insist that the other 70% of those crimes were a result of gun ownership, which is no lower in Toledo than the rest of Ohio, although the crime rate is above average.

I'm still not sure what you mean.  Is the proportion of gun linked murders the same in other bits of Ohio?

As to the other:
Europe is not a unified country with a generally uniform legal system. True, American states are far more independant than is the norm for divisions of a country, but there is a common culture and legal background far more extensive than in Europe. Thus the "spill-over" where a crime in one state affects crime in another, is greater in the US than in Europe.

Uh, what?  I don't see how this "spillover" would affect overall rates.  Maybe they wouldn't spillover as much, but surely they'd just remain in their own countries?

[Phmcw]

Actually, they spill as far as they want. There is no border within Europe, and no special ID needed.
I could just go to France, or Germany and work there.