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| Yoepus |
Well I just finished watching Bowling for Colombine.
I think it was a fun watch, a laughable attempt at making some dumb political points, but at the end it does pose one good question:
Why is American Gun Crime so much higher in the US then other places?
I do some of Mike's nudges that it might be due to the NRA, or TV News (making everyone scared) - as local TV did not scare me nearly a precent as much as his film did (I actually started thinking black ppl use more guns and that white ppl should be scared of blacks thanks to his scary movie ;) )
I don't believe it has anything to do with history either.
The answer I do believe lies in culture.
But the closest answer I got to that was - Culture.
But what is it about US culture that is so different from the rest of the world?
And here I thought Charles (Heston) did have a good point - Ethnicity; meaning that the US is not as homogenous as the other places it is being compared to regarding gun crime.
So I looked up the stats for myself:
Mike, says Canada has only 13% minorities (and I will believe him for lack of being to lazy to look it up myself), that is in my opinion a completely homogenous society.
The US however has 25% - this is a partially homogenous society. The minorities are a minority - but a 1/4 of the populaiton is significant. source: US Census
US total population is : 281,421,906
US white population is : 211,460,626
I don't know, so I don't know if this is the best explination for it... what have you guys come up with? |
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| ProDiGaL |
well in australia, cureently most of the population wasnt born there. Not sure about colors and so forth. But Australia has tightest gun control: No semi auto rifles, and pistols are only for sports shooting. Which leads me to my next point, you cant buy a gun in aus for self defence, you cannot purchase a firearm with the intention to use it on a person. You have to have other reasons which are mainly sports or hunting.
He makes out that gun numbers are irrelevent but i disagree.
I mean having a gun and shooting some one, and not having a gun and not shooting someone, there cant be a connection can there??!! |
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| Yoepus |
Ya I'm curious.. if you aussies have a census maybe there can be more info broken down.
Still however, how many murders take place?
The thing I wonder and what the Columbine movie totally neglects is the ammount of murders in a country compared to another (factoring in population)... Any clue what the rate is in Australia?
As to your point however, I would have to disagree. He compared Canada where 10,000,000 ppl have 7,000,000 guns to the US and found much lower murder rate. |
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| Dj O'Callaghan |
I'll see if I can find some statistics for you. However I know murders involving guns in the UK have gone up by 70% cases when the murderer didn't know the victim i.e hitmen etc have gone up by 30%.
In the bigger cities London, Birmingham and Manchester they probably get 1 or 2 firearm murders a day or every other day, at the beggining of last year a big gangwar broke out and a lot of people got murdered in London it was turning into scenes out of 1920s Chicago.
Gun control here is tight since the Dublaine massacre, however gangs are getting guns, from Eastern Europe, Or the new niche blackmarket in the UK reactivating deactivated guns all that involves is putting a firing pin into a gun and a lot of ppl are obtaining guns that way. UK there is just about 70 million people and I would probably guess 250,000 odd firearms excluding the Miltaries and the Police. |
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| ProDiGaL |
yes but he compared canada only, like he declared no canadians lock their doors after he tried 3 doors. Aus population is around 18-19 million, so yes its low and it has a low muder rate, dont know exactly what it is exaclty, but its in the double figures i know for sure (around 70 or 80 from memory)
what i mean is that he made gun numbers seem totally irrrelevent, which is where i beg to differ, i think it does have a part in the problem, its not the source, but its a major player. |
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| Yoepus |
Currently I am thinking the two most contribution factors to gun crime are:
Urban Density
Ethnicity ratios
The higher both those figures the higher gun crime... I wish I could do a thesis about that and see if its true though :D |
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| LiquidX |
I see it more like this way.
Well, first of all, you gotta blame some of it to those government representatives ( uhum bushes and republicans:toothless ) have faught their teeth in making gun sell easily in the market, something that the opossed party ( democrats ) have tried to tighten that. Eitherway, the US is a country with an avarage of 300,000 million peeps. Its the richests country in the world, with one of the best styles of living, so that means that theres alot of wasted white kidds. Believe me- and this is for what Ive seen.. personal testimony.
I have a friend who lives in this very exclusive city, bunch of rich people ( Boca Raton - For those familiar with Florida ).. well, about everybody there goes to private schools, and everything is much expensier, for the obvious reason that its a rich community. Every single kidd in there was on drugs, into illegal stuff, and a great amount of those kids had guns.. just for fun, they would go to a deserted warehouse and play with them.. not harming or anything, but doing stupid crazy stuff.. sadly enough, a great amount of those rich kidds were involved into some kind of gang groupies.. doing all sorts of bad stuff. So this leads me to believe that the problem with the US is that its easy, and accesible to obtain guns, especially those wasted trashed rich kidds.. although in the case of California, ethnicity does play some role, because of the gangs. But overall, some of the worst shootings and terrorists attacks in the US ( Columbine and Oklahoma ) were all in heavily white sectors, byt white people. |
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| rizen |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yoepus
Urban Density
Ethnicity ratios |
yes and no. Oakland, CA a city not so far from me (probaly 40miles), has probaly the highest murder rate at the moment, most of the murders are all related to black gang rivaries. so theres no ethnicity ratios there, however there is urban density. another example maybe my own city, San Jose (silicon valley), CA where theres a large mixture of ethnicity, and we are also very spread out, its like one huge suburb. our murder rate is not high, i think its around 35 a year in a city of one million plus. most of those murders also have nothing to do with ethnicity but drugs/gangs and domestic violence. it is different in every city though. |
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