Quote:
Originally posted by Sir Kenyth:
"Hand-gun" murder rate is skewed to determine the relevance of hand-guns to murders. Straight murder rates before and after the banning of handguns compared to the same murder rates for the same time periods in the US would be the ticket there. Unfortunately, most statisticians are hired for their ability and bending the truth to their employers benefit instead of determining it.
|
The only homicide rates I could find quickly were from 1997, which are:
US: 6.8/100,000
England & Wales: 1.5/100,000
The higher homicide rate in the US doesn't necessarily mean, at least to my way of thinking, that the availability of hand-guns is to blame though - plenty of other ways to go. You could find a correlation probably between pretty much any 2 sets of figures, but that does not imply that one is the cause of the other. US society does certainly seem to be a more violent one, looking at those figures, but maybe if you removed guns people would take to topping each other with home-made flamethrowers instead - I dunno.
"Lies, damn lies, and statistics."