Just another day in the US of A.

[HemlockGrey]

You people are fucked up. Toronto, with a population of 5.4 million, had 99 homicides in 2006.

At least in Philadelphia, most of the murders take place in the ghetto and are drug or gang-related- of course that also includes people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and took a bullet because drugdealers have bad aim. I would wager this is true of most major cities in the United States.

This is what happens when you have poverty-stricken ghettos, a major drug problem and economically collapsed post-industrial cities.

[Darth Wong]

Interesting link:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm

According to the DOJ, whites and blacks split the murder numbers roughly 50/50, with a miniscule 2% going to "other". I guess latinos and asians have a lot of catching up to do. Of course, since blacks constitute less than 20% of the population, that does imply a much higher rate among blacks.

Anyway, the charts also show that the murder rates across the board have dropped substantially since the 1970s. All this talk about a worsening crisis might not really amount to much if the underlying numbers aren't there. Whatever the problem is, it is something that's clearly been around for a long time, and was actually worse in the 1970s.

[Spyder]

I think that Duchess' comments that 11 dead " is a trivial blip" indicate why the rest of the world views the America as it does.

well, considering that, in number terms, 11 people murdered in the US is like one guy in N.Z. getting a limb severed in a bar fight, I'd say it is relatively trivial.

Unless there's a new stereotype that I'm not aware of, someone losing a limb in a bar fight would probably make the news.

The problem with gun control is that America's already full of guns, leading to the infamous right wing chestnut "but if you outlaw them then only the outlaws will have guns!"

The solution is to take it step by step.

Better registration and tracking of firearms coming in and being manufactured would eventually start making guns harder to obtain for criminals but it seems that most right-wingitards won't even go that far because they actually believe the fairytale about using their guns to bring down a tyrannical government.

[Havok]

Fun facts:

In 2006, Oakland CA, with a population of 398,834, had 145 murders.

Los Angeles CA, with a population of 3,879455, had 480 murders.

New York City NY, with a population of 8,165,001, had 596 murders.

Detroit MI, with a population of 884,462, had 410 murders.

Chicago IL, with a population of 2,897,796 had 468 murders.

Just some of our lovely cities, including my home town. One of you math types can do the numbers on which one is statistically worse. I'm just glad I don't live in fucking Detroit.

I have to agree with The Duchess, about the 11 not being a blip, as I said something similar about a 5 person killing a couple of days ago. It's not that we don't care, it's just that we... don't care.

[Darth Fanboy]

Rounded to the largest whole number, Ratio of people to murders in Havokeff's listed cities.

OAK - 2751 / 1

LA - 8082 / 1

NYC - 13700 / 1

DET - 2157 / 1

CHI - 6192 / 1

[Darth Fanboy]

MacGuyver Edit:

And because I haven't seen it mentioned yet, the thread gets more material to work with.

Three dead in Louisiana campus shooting
Fri Feb 8, 2008 5:06pm EST

By Ruth Laney

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - A nursing student shot two women to death and killed herself in front of horrified classmates at a college in the southern U.S. state of Louisiana on Friday, police said.

Investigators still did not have a motive for the early morning killings at the Louisiana Technical College in the state capital, Baton Rouge, police spokesman L'Jean McKneely told Reuters.

Details such as the names of the victims and the type of weapon used have not yet been released.

Blake Thibodeaux, 20, a drafting student at the college who was in a nearby classroom, said he heard what he initially thought was a door slamming and asked his teacher if he could investigate.

"I ran towards it and was at the door of the classroom when she shot off the last few rounds," he said, adding that the other students streamed in terror out of the room, many crying.

Police spent hours at the school gathering witness testimony and in the early afternoon were still not allowing people to enter the campus. Crowds of bystanders quietly milled around across the street.

The shootings came just hours after a gunman killed two police officers and three city officials on Thursday night when he stormed into a city council meeting in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. He was later shot dead by police.

Mass shootings are not particularly rare in the United States, where the gun-ownership lobby is politically influential and gun control is far less strict than in many countries.

In the worst shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, a student with a history of mental illness killed 32 people at Virginia Tech university in April 2007 before turning one of his guns on himself.

In December, a 19-year-old gunman in Omaha, Nebraska, killed eight people and then himself at a shopping mall. On Saturday, a man robbing a clothing store outside Chicago shot five women to death.

(Reporting by Anna Driver in Houston, Ed Stoddard in Dallas; Writing by Ed Stoddard; Editing by Eric Beech)

Fucking ridiculous.

[FSTargetDrone]

MacGuyver Edit:

And because I haven't seen it mentioned yet, the thread gets more material to work with.

I actually posted a similar story about this shooting on the first page, but it seems like another situation where multiple murders are "easier" because of a gun in play. If she had walked into the room with a knife, would she have killed or been able to attack more than one person before the rest fled? Who knows, but, well, it's already been said...

[Glocksman]

Anyway, the charts also show that the murder rates across the board have dropped substantially since the 1970s. All this talk about a worsening crisis might not really amount to much if the underlying numbers aren't there. Whatever the problem is, it is something that's clearly been around for a long time, and was actually worse in the 1970s.

True, especially when you consider that US gun laws were appreciably looser during most of that period then they are now.
Prior to 1968, it was perfectly legal to purchase guns via mail order and background checks were only mandatory nationwide after 1994.

IMHO, as far as the US is concerned, using gun laws to tackle crime is akin to using band aids and aspirin to cure cancer.

[Glocksman]

Addendum:
I didn't make it clear in the first post, but the spikes in the murder rate didn't occur until the mid 1960's.
Prior to that, the US murder rate was pretty low despite the legal* availability of firearms.


*On the Federal level. Each state was free to enact tighter controls, but since you could mail order guns at the time, the state bans were ineffective.

[Darth Fanboy]

snip

Didn't see it anywhere else in N&P but forgot to check the rest of the thread, my bad. At least it's a different article.

[[R_H]]

Addendum:
I didn't make it clear in the first post, but the spikes in the murder rate didn't occur until the mid 1960's.
Prior to that, the US murder rate was pretty low despite the legal* availability of firearms.


*On the Federal level. Each state was free to enact tighter controls, but since you could mail order guns at the time, the state bans were ineffective.

Is there any kind of breakdown into what types of weapons were used in the murders (ie pistol, knife, rifle, assault rifle etc)?

[Broomstick]

Actually, I think that can be obtained for the US, I just don't remember where, exactly.

[Glocksman]

Addendum:
I didn't make it clear in the first post, but the spikes in the murder rate didn't occur until the mid 1960's.
Prior to that, the US murder rate was pretty low despite the legal* availability of firearms.


*On the Federal level. Each state was free to enact tighter controls, but since you could mail order guns at the time, the state bans were ineffective.

Is there any kind of breakdown into what types of weapons were used in the murders (ie pistol, knife, rifle, assault rifle etc)?

The data is available in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports.
Linky

[[R_H]]

The data is available in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports.
Linky

Thank you. Unsurprisingly, handguns are used in the majority of murders involving firearms, and the numbers are increasing. Is it more difficult to buy a handgun than a rifle (in general)?

[Enigma]

Oh yippee. And this is the country I'll be moving to in the near future.

Here in Ottawa, we have a population close to Detroit yet we only had maybe 12 to 14 murders last year?

[FSTargetDrone]

Isn't gun smuggling to Canada from the US becoming more of a problem lately? Thought I read about something along those lines recently, but I cannot seem to find it.

[CmdrWilkens]

The data is available in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports.
Linky

Thank you. Unsurprisingly, handguns are used in the majority of murders involving firearms, and the numbers are increasing. Is it more difficult to buy a handgun than a rifle (in general)?

In general yes. Rifles tend to be far more available with major sporting goods stores stocking them (which they don't do for handguns). The amount of registration paperwork for handguns also tends to be much higher though I couldn't tell you how much other than in maryland getting a rifle ro shotgun is essentially a matter of being 18 wheras the handgun requires the waiting period, watching a mandatory "you could kill someone" video then waiting for the dealer to test fire and deliver the resulting round to the Maryland State Police for its ballistics database. Yes there are caveats to all of the above but handguns are noticeably more difficult to obtain...legally.