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MasterOfNone wrote:

Purplehood wrote:I find those numbers interesting. Nations like the UK, New Zealand and Australia that pretty-much prohibit handguns do not appear in the top 24.

Maybe it's because they can rob gunless victims with just a good beating. Biggest thug wins.
I'd be more interested in violent crimes numbers.

I had read that a lot of it, in the case of the UK anyway is that they way they track these stats and report them is different than ours. Here we track the crimes and report them. There they track the convictions and then report them. Don't know how true it is.

MasterOfNone wrote:

Purplehood wrote:

MasterOfNone wrote:

Purplehood wrote:I find those numbers interesting. Nations like the UK, New Zealand and Australia that pretty-much prohibit handguns do not appear in the top 24.

Maybe it's because they can rob gunless victims with just a good beating. Biggest thug wins.
I'd be more interested in violent crimes numbers.

I kinda consider murder as violent.

OK. Numbers that include ALL violent crimes is what I meant.

Countries with an agenda still won't call say, a bomb on a bus, a violent crime, or a murder, they'll move it to the terrorist acts column.

That school n Russia where over a hundred children and over 300 people total were shot and killed, might not be in the murder or violent crimes column either one for that year it occurred... I dunno.

There should be better transparency in reporting.

Purplehood wrote: I find those numbers interesting. Nations like the UK, New Zealand and Australia that pretty-much prohibit handguns do not appear in the top 24.

That's because the UK, NZ, and Aussies stopped releasing statistics to journalists/the public because it was too embarrassing that there was an increase in violent crime in the two years after guns were banned. So, the third year after the ban, all stats were withheld.

I took a trip to Canada, ended up in Montreal. I felt it was very safe as remember no one has guns. My wife and I were walking in the old part of town, very touristy. We went down some side streets so I could take some interesting pictures, not a lot of people around. Noticed two men in their thirties, walking in the direction we were going, just ahead. One man tried to pass a large hunting knife to the other with out being seen. We both immediately saw it and turned around and hightailed it to a more public area real fast.

So much for safe I thought.

I took a trip to France, ended up in Rouen (where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake) two men were harassing a local man in a wheel chair in front of where I was eating (you know one of those cute sidewalk cafes). I was going to intervene when my friend who had his wife with him said "no look at the mans face". He had an old deep scar on the side of his face from the above the ear to the front of his chin from a knife. They were both from some sort of French version of the Mafia. I sat down.

Thought more about my safety for the rest of the trip.

In the US we sort of recognize the "bad" parts of town and stay away. When your overseas you don't recognize the "bad" parts because it is all so picturesque. But you can get killed real quick with a knife if you stray down the wrong street or go to the wrong train station.

While I seriously distrust the way some countries report crime, I'll note the U.S. firearm-involved murder rate is only 0.0287 per 1,000...only about two-thirds of the total. (Source: http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offens ... le_07.html)

Which may surprise the UK and Australia, and no doubt causes constant aggravation to the Brady Bunch.

The ratio of murders in the U.S. involving the emptying of a "high-capacity" magazine? My guess is around 0.000001 per 1,000. Just sayin'.

IIRC, many anti's will also use justified self-defense shootings as "homicide" even though it's not criminal. Some of these even counted police shootings in their stats.

FWIW, I just got back from South Africa and didn't get murdered. Keeping your head on a swivel, staying alert, and avoiding being an easy target are important anywhere. I felt safe most of the time and met a lot of kind people.

fickman wrote: FWIW, I just got back from South Africa and didn't get murdered.

Man, you are brave. I know a native South African who will never go back to his home country. Over 1/3 of all South African men have RAPED before. Great country.

I've been to some sketchy countries before like Colombia during the American kidnappings, post-war Bosnia, and Venezuela during the student riots. Even I won't go to South Africa.

BTW, if you remove police shootings, suicides, and drug/gang related shootings, the murder rate in the USA in states where there is shall-issue CHL, the USA is safer than places like Sweden or Switzerland. When it's a police officer shoots someone, I would assume that 95-99% of the time, it's a lawful shooting (I hope). Suicide cases would kill themselves even if they don't have access to guns. Japan has the highest suicide rate, but there are less than 50 legal civilian handguns in the entire country where the population is 1/2 that of the USA. Usually, if you don't involve yourself with drugs/gangs, you won't be involved in a drug/gang shooting. The real culprit driving the American violent crime rate is illegal drugs, not guns. BTW, the antis/Brady bunch even include lawful self-defense shootings in their statistics as a "homicide" or "murder". That is just patently wrong and misleading.

drjoker wrote:

fickman wrote: FWIW, I just got back from South Africa and didn't get murdered.

Man, you are brave. I know a native South African who will never go back to his home country. Over 1/3 of all South African men have RAPED before. Great country.

I've been to some sketchy countries before like Colombia during the American kidnappings, post-war Bosnia, and Venezuela during the student riots. Even I won't go to South Africa.

BTW, if you remove police shootings, suicides, and drug/gang related shootings, the murder rate in the USA in states where there is shall-issue CHL, the USA is safer than places like Sweden or Switzerland. When it's a police officer shoots someone, I would assume that 95-99% of the time, it's a lawful shooting (I hope). Suicide cases would kill themselves even if they don't have access to guns. Japan has the highest suicide rate, but there are less than 50 legal civilian handguns in the entire country where the population is 1/2 that of the USA. Usually, if you don't involve yourself with drugs/gangs, you won't be involved in a drug/gang shooting. The real culprit driving the American violent crime rate is illegal drugs, not guns. BTW, the antis/Brady bunch even include lawful self-defense shootings in their statistics as a "homicide" or "murder". That is just patently wrong and misleading.

Strange. I know a guy and his wife that have just recently moved back there. They seemed quite optimistic about it, and visited it frequently in the past while living in the USA.

I had a friend who went dove hunting in South Africa and never said a thing about crime or safety. Had a great time. Not what he said when he went to Scotland for goose hunting. (cold) Or to Honduras (detained by the police )

What percent of the murders in the US are related to either illegal drug sales or gang activity? If we pull those out, what happens to the murder rate for the rest of the country? It seems like I heard that about 80% of murders in the US are related to gang and drug activity. That means, that, without those, the rate for the rest of the population is about 20% of that quoted number--quite low.

philip964 wrote:I had a friend who went dove hunting in South Africa and never said a thing about crime or safety. Had a great time. Not what he said when he went to Scotland for goose hunting. (cold) Or to Honduras (detained by the police )

Johannesburg certainly isn't safe. Even in the "suburbs", 100% of the real houses (non-shanty town shacks) I saw were behind permanent iron fences up to 10-12' tall with razor wire or spikes on top. Most citizens also have private contracts with armed-response companies.

At the same time, few people have ever seen an issue outside of a rise in carjackings a few years ago that the police proactively curtailed. I stayed in Sandton, which has a great security presence and is safe as long as you don't go where you aren't supposed to go. If you don't feel safe somewhere. . . follow that intuition. I walked around a bit in Sandton between the shopping areas and my hotel - but only during the day. After nightfall I used the hotel's private drivers (it's not safe to just use any cab). I definitely didn't walk around the streets of downtown Johannesburg.

I was concerned about safety after reading the warnings, and then decided to see what those same sites said about Dallas and Houston. . . it was surprisingly similar. Avoid areas known for crime. Don't walk by yourself at night. Violent crime is common, with robberies, assaults, drug crime, gang violence, and homicides higher in certain areas.

We just know instinctively where the "safe" areas in our cities are.

After reading this thread, I poked around a bit looking for more information. I ran across this:

Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy Vol. 30 wrote:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/org ... online.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
CONCLUSION
This Article has reviewed a significant amount of evidence
from a wide variety of international sources. Each individual
portion of evidence is subject to cavil—at the very least the
general objection that the persuasiveness of social scientific
evidence cannot remotely approach the persuasiveness of
conclusions in the physical sciences. Nevertheless, the burden
of proof rests on the proponents of the more guns equal
more death and fewer guns equal less death mantra, especially
since they argue public policy ought to be based on
that mantra. To bear that burden would at the very least
require showing that a large number of nations with more
guns have more death and that nations that have imposed
stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions
in criminal violence (or suicide). But those correlations are
not observed when a large number of nations are compared
across the world.

Over a decade ago, Professor Brandon Centerwall of the University
of Washington undertook an extensive, statistically sophisticated
study comparing areas in the United States and Canada to
determine whether Canada’s more restrictive policies had better
contained criminal violence. When he published his results it was
with the admonition:

If you are surprised by [our] finding[s], so [are we]. [We] did
not begin this research with any intent to “exonerate” handguns,
but there it is—a negative finding, to be sure, but a negative
finding is nevertheless a positive contribution. It directs us
where not to aim public health resources.

The stats used are from 2001/2002/2003/2994, however, if you have time the 45 page study is a good read.