Cops shot in Brussels...but...they have gun control..right?

[TheOldSchool]

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong....Puerto Rico is an island......Mexico has strict gun control laws......they get most of their cartel guns from China and Europe, not the U.S......

Their governments are very capable of disarming law abiding citizens..which they have....the criminals are the ones who get the guns...easily.

The overwhelming majority of guns used by criminals in Mexico and Puerto Rico and the cartels come from the U.S. Are you stoned?

 

[2aguy]

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong again...this is a lengthy quote...but the information is important to show how wrong you are...

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.

Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:



Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?


Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.

But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list.

But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisherreally means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”

At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

More Realistic Comparisons Involve a Broader View of the World

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members.

In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Things get even more interesting if we add American states with low murder rates.



And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.)



Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them?


The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:



We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado.


Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.

But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to.Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)

Nevertheless, we have yet to see any objective reason why only OECD countries should be included or why countries similar in the HDI to Turkey and Mexico should be excluded.

But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)

 

[2aguy]

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

Maybe it is the free college?

Keep trying.......little drug use.....little crime...Iceland is a law abiding society...but that too is changing.....Icelanders have guns...they don't commit murder.....The currently don't have the social pathologies that turn their young men into killers....

Things People Say Without Thinking- Gun Ownership in Iceland

There is no guaranteed right to own a gun in Iceland.

You may only own a gun with permission of the government.

All sales of guns are registered and kept with an official registrar.

You must demonstrate a valid purpose for owning a firearm.

"Self Defense" is specifically not a valid purpose for owning a firearm.

You may only own a firearm if you have done the required training, and you are 18 years old.

A unique identifying mark is required by law on all guns.

And yet there are a lot of guns in Iceland....and their gun murder rate and over all crime rate is low....

It is you guys who say that this is not possible...any country with a lot of guns will have high gun murder rates...Iceland and other countries show you are wrong.

 

[2aguy]

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong....Puerto Rico is an island......Mexico has strict gun control laws......they get most of their cartel guns from China and Europe, not the U.S......

Their governments are very capable of disarming law abiding citizens..which they have....the criminals are the ones who get the guns...easily.

The overwhelming majority of guns used by criminals in Mexico and Puerto Rico and the cartels come from the U.S. Are you stoned?

Wrong....China and Europe...

 

[2aguy]

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong....Puerto Rico is an island......Mexico has strict gun control laws......they get most of their cartel guns from China and Europe, not the U.S......

Their governments are very capable of disarming law abiding citizens..which they have....the criminals are the ones who get the guns...easily.

The overwhelming majority of guns used by criminals in Mexico and Puerto Rico and the cartels come from the U.S. Are you stoned?

Mexican drug cartels get some guns from their government....as many from other latin American countries...but the serious military weapons come from China and Europe....

 

[2aguy]

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong....Puerto Rico is an island......Mexico has strict gun control laws......they get most of their cartel guns from China and Europe, not the U.S......

Their governments are very capable of disarming law abiding citizens..which they have....the criminals are the ones who get the guns...easily.

The overwhelming majority of guns used by criminals in Mexico and Puerto Rico and the cartels come from the U.S. Are you stoned?

Here you go...

Where Drug Cartels Really Get Their Arms

The Mexican government and the media have consistently blamed the U.S. for the vicious drug war in Mexico that has resulted in over 35,000 deaths since late 2006. A diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks will disappoint them, as it shows that 90 percent of the heavy weapons used by the drug cartels come from Central America. The strength of the drug cartels is more attributable to the Mexican government’s inefficiencies than America’s gun laws or consumption of narcotics.

------

“According to the figures presented by the GAO [Government Accountability Office], there is no evidence to support the assertion that 90 percent of the guns used by the Mexican cartels come from the United States—especially when not even 50 percent of those that were submitted for tracing were ultimately found to be of U.S. origin,” STRATFOR concluded.

In addition, it simply doesn’t make sense for the Mexican drug cartels to make the U.S. their primary point of gun acquisition. As Howard Nemerov writes, “Why would cartels spend over $1,000 -- plus a background check and smuggling risks — for a decent American semi-automatic rifle, when they can buy 4-5 fully automatic AK-47s for the same price on the black market?”

 

[TheOldSchool]

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong again...this is a lengthy quote...but the information is important to show how wrong you are...

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.

Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:



Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?


Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.

But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list.

But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisherreally means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”

At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

More Realistic Comparisons Involve a Broader View of the World

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members.

In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Things get even more interesting if we add American states with low murder rates.



And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.)



Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them?


The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:



We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado.


Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.

But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to.Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)

Nevertheless, we have yet to see any objective reason why only OECD countries should be included or why countries similar in the HDI to Turkey and Mexico should be excluded.

But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)

Mexico is wracked by a decades long drug war, and the government is ineffective. Turkey is a religious fundamentalist state in the middle of the deadliest war in the world right now.

If you're so desperate that those are the 2 countries you think best help your defense, then you should really reflect on your position.

 

[Agit8r]

It's all because the cops aren't allowed to beat the hell out of people for no reason there, right?

 

[Brain357]

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong again...this is a lengthy quote...but the information is important to show how wrong you are...

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.

Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:



Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?


Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.

But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list.

But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisherreally means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”

At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

More Realistic Comparisons Involve a Broader View of the World

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members.

In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Things get even more interesting if we add American states with low murder rates.



And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.)



Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them?


The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:



We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado.


Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.

But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to.Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)

Nevertheless, we have yet to see any objective reason why only OECD countries should be included or why countries similar in the HDI to Turkey and Mexico should be excluded.

But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)

So you have to lower the bar. How sad.

 

[TheOldSchool]

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong....Puerto Rico is an island......Mexico has strict gun control laws......they get most of their cartel guns from China and Europe, not the U.S......

Their governments are very capable of disarming law abiding citizens..which they have....the criminals are the ones who get the guns...easily.

The overwhelming majority of guns used by criminals in Mexico and Puerto Rico and the cartels come from the U.S. Are you stoned?

Here you go...

Where Drug Cartels Really Get Their Arms

The Mexican government and the media have consistently blamed the U.S. for the vicious drug war in Mexico that has resulted in over 35,000 deaths since late 2006. A diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks will disappoint them, as it shows that 90 percent of the heavy weapons used by the drug cartels come from Central America. The strength of the drug cartels is more attributable to the Mexican government’s inefficiencies than America’s gun laws or consumption of narcotics.

Desperate technicalities and speculations. The cold hard facts say that 70% of weapons seized from Mexican Cartels come from the United States. Which should not be the least bit surprising to anybody with a shred of common sense considering the U.S. has over 400 million guns and has no idea where almost all of them are.

In Mexico, Tens Of Thousands Of Illegal Guns Come From The U.S.

 

[idb]

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong again...this is a lengthy quote...but the information is important to show how wrong you are...

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.

Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:



Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?


Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.

But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list.

But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisherreally means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”

At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

More Realistic Comparisons Involve a Broader View of the World

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members.

In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Things get even more interesting if we add American states with low murder rates.



And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.)



Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them?


The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:



We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado.


Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.

But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to.Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)

Nevertheless, we have yet to see any objective reason why only OECD countries should be included or why countries similar in the HDI to Turkey and Mexico should be excluded.

But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)

You yourself regularly say that most murders in the US are carried out by criminals so should be discounted.
Your article is accusing others of doing the same thing.

 

[2aguy]

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong again...this is a lengthy quote...but the information is important to show how wrong you are...

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.

Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:



Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?


Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.

But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list.

But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisherreally means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”

At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

More Realistic Comparisons Involve a Broader View of the World

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members.

In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Things get even more interesting if we add American states with low murder rates.



And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.)



Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them?


The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:



We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado.


Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.

But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to.Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)

Nevertheless, we have yet to see any objective reason why only OECD countries should be included or why countries similar in the HDI to Turkey and Mexico should be excluded.

But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)

Mexico is wracked by a decades long drug war, and the government is ineffective. Turkey is a religious fundamentalist state in the middle of the deadliest war in the world right now.

If you're so desperate that those are the 2 countries you think best help your defense, then you should really reflect on your position.

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong again...this is a lengthy quote...but the information is important to show how wrong you are...

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.

Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:



Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?


Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.

But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list.

But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisherreally means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”

At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

More Realistic Comparisons Involve a Broader View of the World

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members.

In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Things get even more interesting if we add American states with low murder rates.



And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.)



Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them?


The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:



We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado.


Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.

But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to.Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)

Nevertheless, we have yet to see any objective reason why only OECD countries should be included or why countries similar in the HDI to Turkey and Mexico should be excluded.

But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)

Mexico is wracked by a decades long drug war, and the government is ineffective. Turkey is a religious fundamentalist state in the middle of the deadliest war in the world right now.

If you're so desperate that those are the 2 countries you think best help your defense, then you should really reflect on your position.

And Russia......let's not forget Russia.....they have almost total gun control...and a gun murder rate higher than ours....

And you still haven't explained how gun crime is going up in Britain....

or Australia...two countries that confiscated guns.....

 

[2aguy]

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong....Puerto Rico is an island......Mexico has strict gun control laws......they get most of their cartel guns from China and Europe, not the U.S......

Their governments are very capable of disarming law abiding citizens..which they have....the criminals are the ones who get the guns...easily.

The overwhelming majority of guns used by criminals in Mexico and Puerto Rico and the cartels come from the U.S. Are you stoned?

Here you go...

Where Drug Cartels Really Get Their Arms

The Mexican government and the media have consistently blamed the U.S. for the vicious drug war in Mexico that has resulted in over 35,000 deaths since late 2006. A diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks will disappoint them, as it shows that 90 percent of the heavy weapons used by the drug cartels come from Central America. The strength of the drug cartels is more attributable to the Mexican government’s inefficiencies than America’s gun laws or consumption of narcotics.

Desperate technicalities and speculations. The cold hard facts say that 70% of weapons seized from Mexican Cartels come from the United States. Which should not be the least bit surprising to anybody with a shred of common sense considering the U.S. has over 400 million guns and has no idea where almost all of them are.

In Mexico, Tens Of Thousands Of Illegal Guns Come From The U.S.

Wrong......that is guns they are able to trace.......you really need to dig deeper....

 

[Brain357]

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

Maybe it is the free college?

Keep trying.......little drug use.....little crime...Iceland is a law abiding society...but that too is changing.....Icelanders have guns...they don't commit murder.....The currently don't have the social pathologies that turn their young men into killers....

Things People Say Without Thinking- Gun Ownership in Iceland

There is no guaranteed right to own a gun in Iceland.

You may only own a gun with permission of the government.

All sales of guns are registered and kept with an official registrar.

You must demonstrate a valid purpose for owning a firearm.

"Self Defense" is specifically not a valid purpose for owning a firearm.

You may only own a firearm if you have done the required training, and you are 18 years old.

A unique identifying mark is required by law on all guns.

And yet there are a lot of guns in Iceland....and their gun murder rate and over all crime rate is low....

It is you guys who say that this is not possible...any country with a lot of guns will have high gun murder rates...Iceland and other countries show you are wrong.

Per capita they have fewer guns than norway and sweden. And ownership is highly regulated which is what people want.

 

[TheOldSchool]

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong again...this is a lengthy quote...but the information is important to show how wrong you are...

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.

Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:



Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?


Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.

But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list.

But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisherreally means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”

At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

More Realistic Comparisons Involve a Broader View of the World

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members.

In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Things get even more interesting if we add American states with low murder rates.



And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.)



Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them?


The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:



We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado.


Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.

But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to.Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)

Nevertheless, we have yet to see any objective reason why only OECD countries should be included or why countries similar in the HDI to Turkey and Mexico should be excluded.

But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)

Mexico is wracked by a decades long drug war, and the government is ineffective. Turkey is a religious fundamentalist state in the middle of the deadliest war in the world right now.

If you're so desperate that those are the 2 countries you think best help your defense, then you should really reflect on your position.

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong again...this is a lengthy quote...but the information is important to show how wrong you are...

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.

Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:



Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?


Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.

But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list.

But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisherreally means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”

At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

More Realistic Comparisons Involve a Broader View of the World

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members.

In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Things get even more interesting if we add American states with low murder rates.



And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.)



Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them?


The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:



We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado.


Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.

But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to.Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)

Nevertheless, we have yet to see any objective reason why only OECD countries should be included or why countries similar in the HDI to Turkey and Mexico should be excluded.

But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)

Mexico is wracked by a decades long drug war, and the government is ineffective. Turkey is a religious fundamentalist state in the middle of the deadliest war in the world right now.

If you're so desperate that those are the 2 countries you think best help your defense, then you should really reflect on your position.

And Russia......let's not forget Russia.....they have almost total gun control...and a gun murder rate higher than ours....

And you still haven't explained how gun crime is going up in Britain....

or Australia...two countries that confiscated guns.....

Russia is corrupt and considering it a 1st world nation is dubious at best. Plus that flies in the face of your argument that you use sometimes saying that the reason the U.S. has a high murder rate is because of black people. There are barely any black people in Russia.

 

[TheOldSchool]

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong....Puerto Rico is an island......Mexico has strict gun control laws......they get most of their cartel guns from China and Europe, not the U.S......

Their governments are very capable of disarming law abiding citizens..which they have....the criminals are the ones who get the guns...easily.

The overwhelming majority of guns used by criminals in Mexico and Puerto Rico and the cartels come from the U.S. Are you stoned?

Here you go...

Where Drug Cartels Really Get Their Arms

The Mexican government and the media have consistently blamed the U.S. for the vicious drug war in Mexico that has resulted in over 35,000 deaths since late 2006. A diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks will disappoint them, as it shows that 90 percent of the heavy weapons used by the drug cartels come from Central America. The strength of the drug cartels is more attributable to the Mexican government’s inefficiencies than America’s gun laws or consumption of narcotics.

Desperate technicalities and speculations. The cold hard facts say that 70% of weapons seized from Mexican Cartels come from the United States. Which should not be the least bit surprising to anybody with a shred of common sense considering the U.S. has over 400 million guns and has no idea where almost all of them are.

In Mexico, Tens Of Thousands Of Illegal Guns Come From The U.S.

Wrong......that is guns they are able to trace.......you really need to dig deeper....

Why? The answer is plain as day. The U.S. is flooded with 400 million+ guns. The border, especially according to conservatives like yourself, is wide open. 70% of all recovered Mexican Cartel guns were able to be traced to the U.S. This isn't rocket science.

A bunch of nutters present wild speculations about the Jews or U.S. government being behind 9/11. That doesn't make them likely to be right. So don't expect me to be swayed by your wild speculations.

 

[2aguy]

Let's take a look at another country with a lot of guns.....according to you guys the mere presence of guns will make people go out and use them....which is how you get to the idea less guns/less gun crime.......

Iceland shows how you are wrong...lots of guns very little crime...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? - BBC News

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong again...this is a lengthy quote...but the information is important to show how wrong you are...

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.

Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:



Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?


Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.

But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list.

But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisherreally means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”

At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

More Realistic Comparisons Involve a Broader View of the World

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members.

In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Things get even more interesting if we add American states with low murder rates.



And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.)



Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them?


The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:



We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado.


Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.

But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to.Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)

Nevertheless, we have yet to see any objective reason why only OECD countries should be included or why countries similar in the HDI to Turkey and Mexico should be excluded.

But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)

You yourself regularly say that most murders in the US are carried out by criminals so should be discounted.
Your article is accusing others of doing the same thing.

No...I don't say they should be discounted...I say they are not law abiding people....and that allowing law abiding people to own and carry guns does not increase the gun crime rate or the crime rate in general....

after all...more Americans now own and actually carry guns...and our gun murder rate has gone down...right?

if what you believe is true...that would not be possible.....

2012.... 11.1 million Americans carry guns for self defense....our gun murder rate went down...320,000,000 guns in private hands.....

2013... 12.8 million Americans carry guns for self defense...our gun murder rate went down...again

2014.... 13 million Americans carry guns for self defense ....357,000,000 guns in private hands...and our gun murder rate went down...again...

Since the 1990s...more Americans now own and actually carry guns......all 50 states now have some form of concealed or open carry law....and our gun murder rates have gone down.......

How do you explain that if you think the mere presence of guns leads to more gun murder and more crime?

And we are not talking about guns lowering those rates...what this shows is that law abiding people owning and carrying guns does not increase the gun murder rate or the violent crime rate...

Right?

 

[2aguy]

Wrong....Puerto Rico is an island......Mexico has strict gun control laws......they get most of their cartel guns from China and Europe, not the U.S......

Their governments are very capable of disarming law abiding citizens..which they have....the criminals are the ones who get the guns...easily.

The overwhelming majority of guns used by criminals in Mexico and Puerto Rico and the cartels come from the U.S. Are you stoned?

Here you go...

Where Drug Cartels Really Get Their Arms

The Mexican government and the media have consistently blamed the U.S. for the vicious drug war in Mexico that has resulted in over 35,000 deaths since late 2006. A diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks will disappoint them, as it shows that 90 percent of the heavy weapons used by the drug cartels come from Central America. The strength of the drug cartels is more attributable to the Mexican government’s inefficiencies than America’s gun laws or consumption of narcotics.

Desperate technicalities and speculations. The cold hard facts say that 70% of weapons seized from Mexican Cartels come from the United States. Which should not be the least bit surprising to anybody with a shred of common sense considering the U.S. has over 400 million guns and has no idea where almost all of them are.

In Mexico, Tens Of Thousands Of Illegal Guns Come From The U.S.

Wrong......that is guns they are able to trace.......you really need to dig deeper....

Why? The answer is plain as day. The U.S. is flooded with 400 million+ guns. The border, especially according to conservatives like yourself, is wide open. 70% of all recovered Mexican Cartel guns were able to be traced to the U.S. This isn't rocket science.

A bunch of nutters present wild speculations about the Jews or U.S. government being behind 9/11. That doesn't make them likely to be right. So don't expect me to be swayed by your wild speculations.

Your number is wrong....it isn't 70% of the total number of guns....please read more carefully....it is 70% of the guns that they are able to trace....most guns in Mexico do not come from the United States...you are wrong...

 

[2aguy]

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong again...this is a lengthy quote...but the information is important to show how wrong you are...

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.

Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:



Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?


Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.

But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list.

But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisherreally means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”

At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

More Realistic Comparisons Involve a Broader View of the World

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members.

In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Things get even more interesting if we add American states with low murder rates.



And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.)



Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them?


The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:



We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado.


Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.

But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to.Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)

Nevertheless, we have yet to see any objective reason why only OECD countries should be included or why countries similar in the HDI to Turkey and Mexico should be excluded.

But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)

Mexico is wracked by a decades long drug war, and the government is ineffective. Turkey is a religious fundamentalist state in the middle of the deadliest war in the world right now.

If you're so desperate that those are the 2 countries you think best help your defense, then you should really reflect on your position.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong again...this is a lengthy quote...but the information is important to show how wrong you are...

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.

Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:



Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?


Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.

But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list.

But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisherreally means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”

At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

More Realistic Comparisons Involve a Broader View of the World

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members.

In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Things get even more interesting if we add American states with low murder rates.



And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.)



Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them?


The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:



We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado.


Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.

But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to.Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)

Nevertheless, we have yet to see any objective reason why only OECD countries should be included or why countries similar in the HDI to Turkey and Mexico should be excluded.

But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)

Mexico is wracked by a decades long drug war, and the government is ineffective. Turkey is a religious fundamentalist state in the middle of the deadliest war in the world right now.

If you're so desperate that those are the 2 countries you think best help your defense, then you should really reflect on your position.

And Russia......let's not forget Russia.....they have almost total gun control...and a gun murder rate higher than ours....

And you still haven't explained how gun crime is going up in Britain....

or Australia...two countries that confiscated guns.....

Russia is corrupt and considering it a 1st world nation is dubious at best. Plus that flies in the face of your argument that you use sometimes saying that the reason the U.S. has a high murder rate is because of black people. There are barely any black people in Russia.

I never say it is because they are black...I say it is because they don't value not killing people.....that applies to Russia.....strictest gun control....incredibly high gun murder rate...

It is the criminal sub cultures attitude toward murder that regulates gun murder...not access to guns by law abiding citizens....you guys have it all wrong....you think just having guns causes gun murder.....that is not true.....culture...not guns....causes gun murder.....That is Why Russia and Chicago have such high murder rates...vs. Utah...

 

[TheOldSchool]

A medical examination and a written exam before purchasing a gun? Unarmed police? Interesting that you would support that.

And in Mexico you don't need a medical exam, or a written exam because you cannot have any guns......and their gun murder rate is higher than ours......dittos Puerto Rico...and island with strict gun controls...and the highest gun murder rate in the world....

Access to guns isn't the issue......icelandic criminals can get around medical exams and written exams the same way criminals do in Europe....I have links where a police officer in Europe points out the book you have to know for the exam to own a gun...and a criminal can get a gun in less than an hour...

Your point about guns being the cause of gun crime is just stupid....if you notice....it isn't ethnic Belgians doing the shooting....it is immigrants....same thing you find with Australia, Britain and the countries all over Europe...they do not share the same cultural value against violence that natural Europeans do...and that is who is committing the gun crime over there....

And the young males raised by single mothers...another group of shooters in Europe...who also do not value the limits placed on shooting other people...which is why in Britain...a country that confiscated their gun...had their gun crime rate, go up 4%.....

And that is also why Australia has seen their gun crime rate go up....another country that confiscated guns......

Access to guns is not he issue....it is the criminal sub culture and their attitude toward murder....

Mexico and Puerto Rico are neighbors of the greatest gun flooding nation on the planet. And their governments are not capable of enforcing gun control. The U.S. has the highest homicide rate in the entire first world, and by embarrassing proportions the highest rate of gun crime in the first world. Maybe the entire world on that second point.

Wrong again...this is a lengthy quote...but the information is important to show how wrong you are...

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view.

Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:



Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph?


Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.

But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list.

But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisherreally means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”

At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

More Realistic Comparisons Involve a Broader View of the World

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.

Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.

You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members.

In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Things get even more interesting if we add American states with low murder rates.



And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.)



Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them?


The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:



We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado.


Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.

But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to.Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)

Nevertheless, we have yet to see any objective reason why only OECD countries should be included or why countries similar in the HDI to Turkey and Mexico should be excluded.

But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)

You yourself regularly say that most murders in the US are carried out by criminals so should be discounted.
Your article is accusing others of doing the same thing.

No...I don't say they should be discounted...I say they are not law abiding people....and that allowing law abiding people to own and carry guns does not increase the gun crime rate or the crime rate in general....

after all...more Americans now own and actually carry guns...and our gun murder rate has gone down...right?

if what you believe is true...that would not be possible.....

2012.... 11.1 million Americans carry guns for self defense....our gun murder rate went down...320,000,000 guns in private hands.....

2013... 12.8 million Americans carry guns for self defense...our gun murder rate went down...again

2014.... 13 million Americans carry guns for self defense ....357,000,000 guns in private hands...and our gun murder rate went down...again...

Since the 1990s...more Americans now own and actually carry guns......all 50 states now have some form of concealed or open carry law....and our gun murder rates have gone down.......

How do you explain that if you think the mere presence of guns leads to more gun murder and more crime?

And we are not talking about guns lowering those rates...what this shows is that law abiding people owning and carrying guns does not increase the gun murder rate or the violent crime rate...

Right?

The gun homicide rate barely moved over those years you're talking about.