Interesting take on policing in the UK vs the US

[GMDino]

(07-12-2016, 09:17 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: FTFY.  Gun ownership has climbed significantly in the last ten yeas while violent crime has dropped every single one of those ten years.  If there was a direct gun ownership to gun crime corollary why did it not express itself?  Better yet, why did the exact opposite occur?  Sadly, around 80% of gun related homicides can be directly traced to violence related to the drug trade.  Legalize drugs, tax them, dry up the financial incentive and that crime will largely disappear.  It worked in The Wire.  

(07-12-2016, 04:16 PM)GMDino Wrote: No doubt we have a love of guns problem here in the US.

But thanks for "fixing" it, I guess?



Now go back and re-read the thread. It is about how the lack of guns leads to better endings for situations due to a lack of fear that the other guy has a gun.

btw, I agree on legalizing drugs. I disagree that we'd stop shooting each other over something else stupid just because we can.

But while I'm here:

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/10/gun-laws-deaths-and-crimes/

Quote:President Barack Obama claimed that “states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths.” Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, meanwhile, has made nearly the opposite claim, saying states with stringent gun control laws have “the highest gun crime rates in the nation.”

In looking solely at the numbers of gun deaths and gun crimes, the data back up Obama, not Fiorina. But both politicians imply a causation that’s impossible to prove — that gun control laws lead to fewer or greater gun crimes or gun deaths.
Obama talked about gun deaths, while Fiorina said “gun crime rates,” which could include aggravated assault and robberies. Let’s start with gun deaths.

Obama’s Argument

The president made his comments on Oct. 1 after a mass shooting that day at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon, left 10 people dead, including the shooter.

Obama, Oct. 1: We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don’t work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals [to] still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes statistics on firearm deaths and the death rate, which would be a fairer measure in comparing states of various populations. The death rate is the number of deaths per 100,000 people. The CDC also gives age-adjusted death rates, since such rates are influenced by the age of the population. This levels the comparison between different groups.

For 2013, the 10 states with the highest firearm age-adjusted death rates were: Alaska (19.8), Louisiana (19.3), Mississippi (17.8), Alabama (17.6), Arkansas (16.8), Wyoming (16.7), Montana (16.7), Oklahoma (16.5), New Mexico (15.5) and Tennessee (15.4).

The 10 states with the lowest firearm age-adjusted death rates were, starting with the lowest: Hawaii (2.6), Massachusetts (3.1), New York (4.2), Connecticut (4.4), Rhode Island (5.3), New Jersey (5.7), New Hampshire (6.4), Minnesota (7.6), California (7.7) and Iowa (8.0).

Firearm deaths, however, include suicides, and there are a lot of them. In 2013, there were a total of 33,636 firearm deaths, and 21,175, or 63 percent, were suicides, according to the CDC. Homicides made up 11,208, or 33 percent, of those firearm deaths. The rest were unintentional discharges (505), legal intervention/war (467) and undetermined (281).

Homicide data for 2013 don’t give us a clear picture of homicides only by firearm; however, 70 percent of homicides for the year were by firearm. The 10 states with the highest homicide rates were: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Carolina, New Mexico, Missouri and Michigan. That lists includes six states that also have the highest firearm death rates.

The 10 states with the lowest homicide rates are: North Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Utah, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts and Oregon.

The number of homicides that occurred in the first three states were so low that their death rates were zero. Wyoming is an interesting case, because it has one of the highest firearm death rates but a homicide rate of zero.

It would appear most gun related deaths are self inflicted. Yay?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/19/alcohol-is-still-the-deadliest-drug-in-the-united-states-and-its-not-even-close/

Quote:Which intoxicating substance is associated with the most lethal violence? Devotees of the Wire might presume that cocaine or maybe heroin would top the list, especially if you asked the worst causes of violence in poor, minority communities.

The correct answer, by far, is alcohol. It’s involved in more homicides than pretty much every other substance, combined. Alcohol’s relative importance has grown over the last fifteen years, as aging populations of cocaine users account for a declining proportion of violent crime. Here in Chicago, positive cocaine screens in the Cook County Jail are down by about half when compared with ten or twenty years ago. The same is true in many other cities.

Surveys of people incarcerated for violent crimes indicate that about 40% had been drinking at the time they committed these offenses. Among those who had been drinking, average blood-alcohol levels were estimated to exceed three times the legal limit. Drinking is especially common among perpetrators of specific crimes, including murder, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence.


Correlation does not equal causation, of course. If offenders all stopped drinking, we wouldn’t see a 100-percent reduction in their crimes. Yet alcohol does play a distinctive role. It lowers inhibitions and, among some people, fosters aggressive behavior that ratchets up the risk that violence will somehow occur. In my own career as a public health researcher, I’ve come into close contact with many intoxicated heroin and marijuana users. In these moments, I’ve never had reason to feel that my safety was at risk. I have been present for some scary incidents. Almost every time, alcohol was in the mix, often as things were getting a little late in a tough neighborhood near a liquor store.