Thread: Bowling for columbine... double take

"Canada classifies homicides, attempted murder, all assaults, all sexual offences, abduction and robbery as violent crime."


"The United States Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) counts five categories of crime as violent crimes: murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault."[/img]

Although Canada includes abductions, I doubt that accounts for their substantially higher crime rate.

This is a convenient comparison that was avoided in Mr. Moore's documentary.

And what are the sources of these statistics, besides I'm pretty sure moore was refering to murder statistics, and gun crimes specifically. Both of which occur much less frequently in Canada.

Edit: Also from wikipedia : "While similar reporting methods for homicide shows the U.S. figures as 189.5% higher, the reported US violent crime rate includes only Aggravated Assault, whereas the Canadian violent crime rate includes all categories of assault, including the much-more-numerous Assault level 1 (i.e., assault not using a weapon and not resulting in serious bodily harm)."

To reduce gun crime, you could always ban the use of firearms...

What evidence is there that banning guns will reduce gun crimes?

Would it just displace gun crimes? Would there be, for example, more knife crimes and/or more beatings? Or more subtle crime, such as burglary, conning, pick pocketing, fraud, blackmail, etc.

Originally Posted by marcusclayman

What evidence is there that banning guns will reduce gun crimes?

Would it just displace gun crimes? Would there be, for example, more knife crimes and/or more beatings? Or more subtle crime, such as burglary, conning, pick pocketing, fraud, blackmail, etc.

You are assuming that knife crimes require equal effort as gun crimes, and have equal lethality. Although, I agree that the legality of guns isn't the issue, since in Canada guns are legal as well, and there are actually more guns per capita in Canada than the USA. (Probably more hunting rifles than pistols though, the liberals here are trying to ban automatic weapons and pistols)

Here you go sleepy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

Moore was only talking about gun crimes, but he used information about various things to support his thesis on gun crimes.

Here I am talking about violent crime in general. I am sort of hinting at the theory, if you lessen one thing, you increase another. When there is a social motivation towards violence, and a social motivation to avoid guns, the social motivation will tend towards other forms of violence. Hypothetically speaking. I like to think there is a cause of causes: not that Americans kill each other so much because the laws are too lenient.

The media and crime are two aspects of culture, individual action and group action each has their effect(on individuals and on groups, respectively)

Cultures influences actions, and actions influence cultures. The media influences crime as much as crime influences the media.

Both are influenced by cultural ideals.

I'm almost completely sure you can blame the crime rates on crime culture in American cities. In Canada there are no ghettos, as a result of the way the cities were built, apart from also having a smaller proportion of minorities.

In Canada 20% of the prison population are natives, and they make up 5% of the population. They also happen to live in extreme poverty more than any other group, in concentrated communities where crime is largely romanticized. This parallels the situation of African Americans in the USA. The blame is on concentrated poverty, which came out of bad urban planning in the 50-80 period. You can't put poor people surrounded with other poor people. In Montreal the city attempts as much as possible to build public housing away from each other in all sorts of places, this does a lot to combat crime.

Violent crime in Canada includes throwing a rock at someone and hitting them.

In the USA there are about 30,000 gun shot deaths a years and about 85,000 non-fatal shootings.

Many so-called 'non-homicide' gun shot deaths are not pursued but classified as accidents or suicide. This lowers and fudges the stats in many jurisdictions. The majority of suicide and non-fatal shootings listings are among street gang members and only listed as 'self-inflicted' for lack of any other evidence and questionable eye witness accounts.

In Canada there are about 975 gunsot deaths a year..less than 1/30th that in the USA....and much mch less per capita than the USA. Gun shot non-fatalities are 1/55th...about 5 1/2 times less per capita.

Canadians own as many rifles per capita than Americans but not significant numbers of hand guns outside of approved specialty use (police, armour car guards, etc.)

We're also not jammed up against each other so much, and more importantly - not in a full fledged capitalist system.

But you're right also about the insulting thing - It's a crime to even tell someone "I'll kill you, asshole."

And we wonder why people are so damn rude to each other nowadays. It used to be that if you mouthed off to much, you got punched in the nose. Then you'd think twice about mouthing off again. But now people are too worried about the 'crime' and nobody gets comeuppance for being a smartass.

And theres alot of rudeness going around - making people detest each other all the more.

Crime rate

Darker red=higher crime rate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Canada

Population
ON 12,986,857
QC 7,782,561
BC 4,419,974
AB 3,632,483
MB 1,213,815
SK 1,023,810
NS 939,531
NB 748,319
NL 508,990
PE 140,402
NT 42,940
YT 33,442
NU 31,556
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._by_population

and for those of us who don't know Canada that well



Crime rate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

Population

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._by_population

The trend seems to be that more crime is committed in the lesser populated areas in Canada. If your more familiar with canadian culture, maybe you could shed some light on this. In the US, more crime is committed in higher populated areas in the US, with the exceptions predominantly in the southern half(Bible belt?)

and indeed, Canada had(and still has, assuming not much has changed in 5 years) about half the homicide rate of the US

It's probably the same reason that Alaska has a high crime rate, these areas are largely populated by aboriginal populations which have been hard hit by the introduction of alcohol and the loss of their cultural identity. In general natives make up 80% of the population in the territories. Along with a lack of jobs it is a difficult situation for most natives, like I said early 20% of prisoners in Canada are natives. I wouldn't credit it with population density, because the maritime provinces in the East have lower crime rates than the more populated western provinces.

Not that I know whether it is the proven deterrent or not, but in Japan, going to jail is a whole 'nother prospect.

I heard about a french guy that got slammed in for 2 years for having a fistfight with a taxi driver. In prison, they told him to rinse his hair. He also rinsed his face. For not doing exactly what he was told, he was strapped naked to a chair with a hole in the bottom for 2 days.

Makes for alot more respect for the law, eh?

In contrast to our wussy liberal countries where the 'poor criminal' is a 'victim' of the system, and should get health care, cable TV, exercise and rights when they took away the rights of others to earn a place in prison in the first place?

I overlooked Alaska, indeed, quite the exception to my premise(not much of a premise I suppose)

Loss(or the threat of loss) of cultural identity is probably the cause of most crime everywhere, huh?

I was visiting my cousin in germany a few years back, and we were talking about gun laws, and I told him I can just walk into Walmart and buy a shot gun, but in germany one can only buy a bb gun. But my cousin in germany LOVES the fact you (cant) just go out and buy a gun in his country.

my cousin said americans love their guns. I think we love them (too) much, and we should have much tougher gun laws.

Not that I know whether it is the proven deterrent or not, but in Japan, going to jail is a whole 'nother prospect.

Lots tougher jails in Brazil and Russia. They don't seem to solve the problem.

In the US, the worst jails are in the highest crime areas - and have been for decades. In Europe, the worst prisons are in the most crime prone countries. There seems to be a sort of reverse deterent effect, at least statistically.

As far as crime rates, of course the readier availability of guns leads to the readier use of guns in anything, including crimes - I had a neighbor who used to trim his trees back from the power line with a shotgun. It was handy. And guns work better than most other means for murder, suicide, etc - the success/attempt ratio goes way up. They also amplify accidents: nobody gets killed cleaning their knife, or hit on their porch by a stray knife from a gang fight a block away. That doesn't explain more frequent crimes, or more frequent gang fights, than other places.

This is not not enough of an argument to justify the kinds of impositions that would be involved in any serious reduction of gun availability in the US. Never mind the Constitutional amendment, with all the risks inherent - how is anyone actually planning to accomplish the confiscation? Pah. Forget it.

Iceaura

As with everything else, no positive change can be made without a beginning.
I agree with you that the gun problem in the USA would be very, very difficult to solve, and would doubtless take decades. However, unless a start is made, it will never be fixed.

The real problem in the USA is hand guns. Other firearms do far less harm. But a hand gun can be concealed, and thus can be carried undetected. This makes it an ideal homicide weapon, and about half of all homicides in America are with hand guns.

It is also a far better suicide weapon. More people in America die from suicide using hand guns than from homicide. The following reference ( http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0805923 ) discusses the problem and points out that a home with a hand gun has an elevated risk that some member of the family will suicide ranging from twice as much to ten times as much, depending on how well the hand gun is secured.

My suggestion is that hand guns be outlawed, except by those who require them in the performance of their duties, like police. If a person carrying a hand gun can be arrested and jailed, purely for holding a hand gun, they will quickly be hidden away. Most of those who carried them (including criminals) will stop carrying them for fear of arrest. This is not a complete solution, and lots of people will break the rules. That is why it will take a long time to solve the problem. But it will take forever if a start is not made.

The real problem in the USA is hand guns. Other firearms do far less harm. But a hand gun can be concealed, and thus can be carried undetected. This makes it an ideal homicide weapon, and about half of all homicides in America are with hand guns.

I completely agree. It's difficult to make most of the gun-rights arguments as well with hand-guns. They'd suck for fighting the government or a foriegn invader, they suck for hunting and aren't the best choice for the home either compared to other options. But in the crazy environment where even high capacity clips for handguns can't be done away with, it's going to be a long slog to get well reasoned and pragmatic arguments into effect.

Give me the benefit of your wisdom, Lynx Fox.

If someone's argument for owning a hand gun is : "It is my right!" as enshrined in the second amendment, how do you reply?

Originally Posted by skeptic

Give me the benefit of your wisdom, Lynx Fox.

If someone's argument for owning a hand gun is : "It is my right!" as enshrined in the second amendment, how do you reply?

Probably the best argument centers on what they meant by "militia." Whether they meant it as a National guard or lower level citizen groups to fight off some tyrannical government, hand than or now, weren't what they had in mind--they suck in combat.

Originally Posted by marcusclayman

What evidence is there that banning guns will reduce gun crimes?

Would it just displace gun crimes? Would there be, for example, more knife crimes and/or more beatings? Or more subtle crime, such as burglary, conning, pick pocketing, fraud, blackmail, etc.

Recently there was a shooting in Pennsylvania with a weapon procured in Texas.

It is also the case that most gun related crime in Mexico involves weapons imported from the USA. So I am inclined to agree.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

The real problem in the USA is hand guns. Other firearms do far less harm. But a hand gun can be concealed, and thus can be carried undetected. This makes it an ideal homicide weapon, and about half of all homicides in America are with hand guns.

I completely agree. It's difficult to make most of the gun-rights arguments as well with hand-guns. They'd suck for fighting the government or a foriegn invader, they suck for hunting and aren't the best choice for the home either compared to other options. But in the crazy environment where even high capacity clips for handguns can't be done away with, it's going to be a long slog to get well reasoned and pragmatic arguments into effect.

Shooter's maxim that best use of handgun is using it to procure shotgun or rifle. Other side of coin is that the gun you have is always better than the one you don't, practically speaking.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Probably the best argument centers on what they meant by "militia." Whether they meant it as a National guard or lower level citizen groups to fight off some tyrannical government, hand than or now, weren't what they had in mind--they suck in combat.

I understand your point.
Trouble is, the guy who made that claim (It is my right) also pointed out that the American Supreme Court stood by the 'right' to bear arms despite the fact that no militia is still needed.

The Supreme is pretty rudderless on this issue but keeps being put into positions to interpret poor language. The 2nd admendment language should have been clarified 200 years ago. N

The second amendment is quite clear, it's just that it establishes a right to keep and bear arms suitable for recruitment into a well-equipped and capable (well "regulated", the term then) militia as was common for military ventures at the time.

That would mean combat infantry level weaponry - AKs, for example. Very few people want that. It's obvious the firepower and convenience of modern weaponry were not anticipated in this document. So the Court does the pretzel thing, and "interprets".

Originally Posted by iceaura

That would mean combat infantry level weaponry - AKs, for example. Very few people want that. It's obvious the firepower and convenience of modern weaponry were not anticipated in this document. So the Court does the pretzel thing, and "interprets".

Why? An AK is perfect for that role, and much closer to the purpose than any handgun.