[extropy-chat] FWD [forteana] Gun control [was Re: the road to hell]

Steve Davies Steve365 at btinternet.com
Fri Apr 2 21:07:50 UTC 2004


----- Original Message -----
From: "Terry W. Colvin" <fortean1 at mindspring.com>
To: <Extropy-chat at extropy.org>; <skeptic at listproc.hcf.jhu.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 9:33 PM
Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD [forteana] Gun control [was Re: the road to
hell]


> >>>Either whoever wrote this is a bare-faced liar, or this is some special
> gun-nut usage of "skyrocketed" to mean "reached their lowest level in two
> decades, having fallen steadily since 1995".<<<
>
> A case of who to believe I guess.
>
> < http://www.reason.com/0211/fe.jm.gun.shtml >
>
Broadly Joyce Malcolm is right. Crime as a whole has fallen in Britain since
1995 (according to both Home Office statistics and the official Crime
Victimisation Survey, which gives a much better picture of the real level as
it corrects for the 'dark figure' or unrecorded crime) but violent crimes
such as robbery, assault, wounding and so on have been increasing over the
same period and there has been a very sharp rise in the use of guns by
criminals over the same period. (Guns are now very cheap and easy to get).
The likelihood of being the victim of a violent crime is indeed now higher
in the UK than the US on a per capita basis. I would say that it's always
been misleading to talk about the US as a single unit where crime is
concerned because the degree of local and regional variation is so great.
The case involving the chap with the sword in Salford happened just down the
road from where I live. Gangland shootings happen pretty regularly in
Manchester, and most other major cities, as do armed robberies. So much so
in fact that they hardly get news coverage. Mike Lorrey will be glad to know
that the bonkers way the British police aggregate separate crimes into one
'incident' for statistics has now been stopped (as of January this year in
fact).





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