Holidaying Scot shot in the leg

[TheDarkling]

Link for this 'fact'?

Do you mean the 11 in 15 years?

If so it was said Ken Macdonald the director of public prosecutions.

Here

[Keevan_Colton]

The opinion of the Torygraph contrasts somewhat with the fact that only 11 people have been prosecuted for "defending their homes" in 15 years.

Isnt it great that people can use an editorial (someones rantings designed to fit in with an agenda) in place of evidence?

Link for this 'fact'?

It's how newspaper editorials tend to work, you're given the party...er...paper line and allowed to go an have a rant with it.

[Glocksman]

Link for this 'fact'?

Do you mean the 11 in 15 years?

If so it was said Ken Macdonald the director of public prosecutions.

Here

thanks

[aerius]

Indeed, I better not show the evidence from the British crime survey showing Burglaries falling by over 40% since 1995, that wouldn't fit in with the crime out of control theme at all (nor would it be useful in proving that guns are necessary for home defence).

Burlaries are down, but what about those nice double digit increases in violent crime, same with other violent offences involving bodily injury? 7% increase in sex crimes, 9% increase in criminal damage, and that's just in the last year.

[Keevan_Colton]

double digit increases in violent crime, same with other violent offences involving bodily injury?

Remember aerius, violent crime here includes swearing and spitting.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Burlaries are down, but what about those nice double digit increases in violent crime, same with other violent offences involving bodily injury? 7% increase in sex crimes, 9% increase in criminal damage, and that's just in the last year.

Hardly indicative of the need for personal firearms, no?

A lot of this increase, as others have stated, is down to the renewed and quite befuddling ways in which crimes are reported nowadays which lead to something of an increase in areas that were otherwise stationary or even going down.

[aerius]

Remember aerius, violent crime here includes swearing and spitting.

Are you saying that it counts into the categories of "Other offences against the person - with injury" and "more serious violence against the person" rather than "other offences against the person - without injury"?

[Chmee]

Tough shit. Don't go breaking into people's houses.

My point remains, it's a rule for the summary execution of criminals.

No, I don't see it that way.

The rule allows you to use deadly force. Now it doesn't say 'go ahead and kill.' What this law does is allow the homeowner to err on the side of caution when faced with an intruder. You don't know this guy. You don't know what he's capable of. You *do* know that he was willing to break into your home while you were there. Maybe he knew you were there, maybe he didn't, but you have a right to assume he DID, meaning that he was willing to use some kind of force to restrain, injure, or kill you (and any loved ones in the home) to do whatever it was he planned to do when he broke into your home.

What this means is that when you face an intruder and generously shoot him in the leg with your shotgun instead of the chest (it's deadly force in either case), and he dies by bleeding out of the severed leg, you're not guilty of manslaughter. If on the other hand you don't trust your aim that much, and you aim center mass and hit him in the chest, you're still not guilty of manslaughter.

The bottom line is, you don't know why he's in your house ... but you know he broke in. It's not summary execution, it's a wide latitude to defend yourself against an intruder of unknown intent. You are not required to risk your safety, and your loved ones, determining his 'true' intent.

I'm okay with that ... but then again I'm biased: I hate fucking thieves. I'm a bleeding heart liberal on 99 out of 100 issues, but this is #100.

[TheDarkling]

Burlaries are down, but what about those nice double digit increases in violent crime, same with other violent offences involving bodily injury? 7% increase in sex crimes, 9% increase in criminal damage, and that's just in the last year.

The British Crime Survey indicates a 36% fall in violent crime from 1995.

50% of the violent crimes reported to the BCS involved no injury which gives testament to Keevan's point about just what constitutes violent crime.

The reason for the increase in recorded crime (at least part of it, the BCS would indicate it is responsible for all of it) is because the government has made big changes in the area to ensure crimes get reported and recorded.

You also need to be aware what is included in your categories, sex crime for example includes kerb crawling, pimping, incest, bigamy, under age sex as well as rape, indecent assault and gross indecency.

It is difficult to figure out what is going on with some violent crime because the BCS doesn't do some areas (such as sex crime) however the violent crime the BCS does deal with shows steady decrease since 1995 (except in relation to attacks by strangers which decreased and has since risen to just below the 1995 level).

[Glocksman]

Interesting.

What we're seeing here is a great example of the cultural divide between Americans and Europeans.
Most Americans, even those who consider themselves to be politically liberal, don't question (assuming the circumstances are clear cut) the right of homeowners to use deadly force against intruders.

I confess to being a little surprised to see Aerius arguing this position, considering that he's Canadian.
The few times I've discussed issues like this with my Canadian relations, they're mildly shocked that I can legally carry a gun and they take positions similar to Keevan's on the subject of deadly force and burglars.

Then again, that Snyder quote in his sig is a giveaway.

[Chmee]

Interesting.

What we're seeing here is a great example of the cultural divide between Americans and Europeans.
Most Americans, even those who consider themselves to be politically liberal, don't question (assuming the circumstances are clear cut) the right of homeowners to use deadly force against intruders.

I confess to being a little surprised to see Aerius arguing this position, considering that he's Canadian.
The few times I've discussed issues like this with my Canadian relations, they're mildly shocked that I can legally carry a gun and they take positions similar to Keevan's on the subject of deadly force and burglars.

Then again, that Snyder quote in his sig is a giveaway.

It's not like it's not a hotly debated issue here in the States. But I've had 2 cars stolen, had my house broken into (while I was asleep in it), and my best friend assaulted while she was overseas (she carries a Glock here at home) .... I'm 6'5, 230 lbs., I have never felt afraid for my personal safety when confronted by an unarmed individual, but I know that if that individual is armed, with even a knife, my size will not be one damned bit of help. I do a lot of back-country hiking and there's always a risk I'm going to stumble onto some jerk's meth lab or run into god knows what kind of reclusive whacko.

So I carry ... and if you break into my house, I hope you're the kind of person smart enough to run like hell when you hear a 12-gauge chamber a round.

[Glocksman]

It's not like it's not a hotly debated issue here in the States

Sure it's debated, but the trend in lawmaking here has been going in the opposite direction from the state of affairs in the UK. How many states have either loosened their requirements for a CCW or allowed it for the first time over the course of the last 2 decades?

Like you said, it's not as if these laws are a blanket license to kill. If someone thinks they are, they'll be the one in jail.

So I carry ... and if you break into my house, I hope you're the kind of person smart enough to run like hell when you hear a 12-gauge chamber a round.

Bingo.

If the burglar either turns and runs without looking back or instantly complies with my orders to lay on the ground until the cops arrive, he's perfectly safe.

If he's foolish enough to come at me....

[aerius]

I confess to being a little surprised to see Aerius arguing this position, considering that he's Canadian.
The few times I've discussed issues like this with my Canadian relations, they're mildly shocked that I can legally carry a gun and they take positions similar to Keevan's on the subject of deadly force and burglars.

Then again, that Snyder quote in his sig is a giveaway.

I'm definitely in the minority when it comes to my beliefs in crime prevention, most people I know believe in the UK way of doing things. In my youth I hung around with criminal types and commited a few misdemeanors myself so I know how easy it is to get around laws & restrictions and how little they matter to criminals. I learned that what perps fear most is an intended victim that hits back & whacks them, or otherwise getting caught in the act of commiting a crime.

Anyways, back to UK crime stats, which look more & more shady the more I look at them.

What the BCS doesn't cover

The BCS surveys people in private households, and therefore doesn't cover certain types of crime, including:

crimes against businesses
crimes where there is no direct victim (such as drug dealing)
crimes against victims younger than 16 (it is considered inappropriate to survey child victims of crime in a general household survey)
crimes that have involved deaths, like homicide (as the victims cannot be interviewed)

So one could go around beating kids over the head with a ballbat and it wouldn't count. One could also go on a murder spree at one's workplace and not have it count. Or I could just kill my whole family in their sleep and not have it count either.


Next we have questionable reporting procedures
Excerpt:

"American homicide rates are based on initial data, but British homicide rates are based on the final disposition." Suppose that three men kill a woman during an argument outside a bar. They are arrested for murder, but because of problems with identification (the main witness is dead), charges are eventually dropped. In American crime statistics, the event counts as a three-person homicide, but in British statistics it counts as nothing at all. "With such differences in reporting criteria, comparisons of U.S. homicide rates with British homicide rates is a sham," the report concludes.

Another "common practice," according to one retired Scotland Yard senior officer, is "falsifying clear-up rates by gaining false confessions from criminals already in prison." (Britain has far fewer protections against abusive police interrogations than does the United States.) As a result, thousands of crimes in Great Britain have been "solved" by bribing or coercing prisoners to confess to crimes they never committed.

Explaining away the disparity between crime reported by victims and the official figures became so difficult that, in April 1998, the British Home Office was forced to change its method of reporting crime, and a somewhat more accurate picture began to emerge. In January 2000, official street- crime rates in London were more than double the official rate from the year before.

You can find this info buried deep in a couple UK police websites. Look at the crime stats for London and you will see the jump that's mentioned.

Next up Homicide Stats (PDF file)
From 97-01, homicides have gone up 19%, I haven't been able to find more recent stats. Murder is up, violent crime is up, sex offences are up. But if UK residents can sleep better at night by writing it off to "spitting & swearing counts too", hey, whatever works.

[Keevan_Colton]

Well, those extra three people per homocide might help account for why over the same period the US had FOUR times the homocide rate per head of the population compared to the UK according to the CDC.

[Glocksman]

Well, those extra three people per homocide might help account for why over the same period the US had FOUR times the homocide rate per head of the population compared to the UK according to the CDC.

On page 10 of that Home Office report aerius linked, it gives the US homicide rate as 5.56.
If you total up the rates (1.61, 2.65, and 2.18) for the 3 separate regions of the UK and divide by 3, you get a rate of 2.146 for the UK as a whole.

Last I heard, 2.146x4 didn't equal 5.56.

[Keevan_Colton]

Well, those extra three people per homocide might help account for why over the same period the US had FOUR times the homocide rate per head of the population compared to the UK according to the CDC.

On page 10 of that Home Office report aerius linked, it gives the US homicide rate as 5.56.
If you total up the rates (1.61, 2.65, and 2.18) for the 3 separate regions of the UK and divide by 3, you get a rate of 2.146 for the UK as a whole.

Last I heard, 2.146x4 didn't equal 5.56.

I'm using England (1.61) as it is what americans tend to understand as the UK, and the figure on the CDC site was 6.1 in the section on homocides and gun homocides (Which were 4.1). Which gives ~4.

Adding together scotland into the equasion confuses it, it has a completely seperate legal system and seperate laws.

[Perinquus]

Well, those extra three people per homocide might help account for why over the same period the US had FOUR times the homocide rate per head of the population compared to the UK according to the CDC.

On page 10 of that Home Office report aerius linked, it gives the US homicide rate as 5.56.
If you total up the rates (1.61, 2.65, and 2.18) for the 3 separate regions of the UK and divide by 3, you get a rate of 2.146 for the UK as a whole.

Last I heard, 2.146x4 didn't equal 5.56.

I'm using England (1.61) as it is what americans tend to understand as the UK, and the figure on the CDC site was 6.1 in the section on homocides and gun homocides (Which were 4.1). Which gives ~4.

Adding together scotland into the equasion confuses it, it has a completely seperate legal system and seperate laws.

No, I and most of the other Americans I know understand England as England, and the UK as England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It looks like you are selectively comparing part of the UK with all of the US in order to skew your figures. And the fact that Scotland has a different legal system makes no difference. Different states over here also have different laws, and Louisiana has a completely different legal system altogether (theirs is based on the Napoleonic Code rather than English Common Law like the rest of the country).

[Keevan_Colton]

On page 10 of that Home Office report aerius linked, it gives the US homicide rate as 5.56.
If you total up the rates (1.61, 2.65, and 2.18) for the 3 separate regions of the UK and divide by 3, you get a rate of 2.146 for the UK as a whole.

Last I heard, 2.146x4 didn't equal 5.56.

I'm using England (1.61) as it is what americans tend to understand as the UK, and the figure on the CDC site was 6.1 in the section on homocides and gun homocides (Which were 4.1). Which gives ~4.

Adding together scotland into the equasion confuses it, it has a completely seperate legal system and seperate laws.

No, I and most of the other Americans I know understand England as England, and the UK as England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Funny you've been debating with english cases, english law and english police officers...

It looks like you are selectively comparing part of the UK with all of the US in order to skew your figures.

Care to pick a few states at random and see if their per capita homocide rates are much better compared to england?

And the fact that Scotland has a different legal system makes no difference. Different states over here also have different laws, and Louisiana has a completely different legal system altogether (theirs is based on the Napoleonic Code rather than English Common Law like the rest of the country).

Except there is an overall federal legal system, that isnt the case in the UK, the systems are completely seperate from one another.

Taking the figures from the CDC, there are still more gun homocides per capita in the US than in the entire UK added together and adding in scotland brings it down with the CDC figures to closer to 3.

Scotland actually has looser laws with regards to self defence compared to england which is another reason I didnt include it, even with the looser laws, there's a higher body count per head of the pop here.

[Glocksman]

I assumed you meant the UK as a whole since you stated 'UK' and not 'England and Wales'.


According to the CDC's WISQARS database, US homicide rates for the years 1999-2001 (same years covered in the HO report) were as follows:

Total homicide deaths:
Crude rate: 6.38

Firearm homicide deaths:
Crude Rate: 3.90


Now where it gets interesting is when you break it down by race:

Black homicide deaths:
Crude Rate: 21.59

Black firearm homicide deaths:
Crude Rate: 15.61

White homicide deaths:
Crude Rate: 3.22

White firearm homicide deaths:
Crude Rate: 1.51


According to the FBI. the great majority of homicides are intraracial.
So what we pretty much have here are whites killing whites and blacks killing blacks.

Why this is would be a good subject for a documentary.
Michael Moore, are you listening?

[Glocksman]

Oh yeah, the CDC's figure probably includes the 3000 9/11 victims.
The footnote in the Home Office report said they were excluded from the total used in the report.

This would explain the discrepancy between the report's numbers and the CDC's numbers.

[Chmee]

Scary numbers ... certainly lends support to the school of thought that homicide rates are tied closely to economic factors.

[TheDarkling]

On page 10 of that Home Office report aerius linked, it gives the US homicide rate as 5.56.
If you total up the rates (1.61, 2.65, and 2.18) for the 3 separate regions of the UK and divide by 3, you get a rate of 2.146 for the UK as a whole.

Last I heard, 2.146x4 didn't equal 5.56.

You would need to weight them by population and England has the bulk of the population by a considerable margin.

[Glocksman]

Care to pick a few states at random and see if their per capita homocide rates are much better compared to england?

Firearm death rate in parentheses:

Vermont: 2.30 (1.04)
New Hampshire: 1.72 (0.65)
Minnesota: 2.74 (1.35)
South Dakota: 2.43 (0.75)
Massachusetts: 2.63 (1.14)
New Jersey: 6.60 (2.02)

All this proves is that the US is a more violent place than England.
Our per capita non-gun rate is higher than England's total rate.
I suspect you could give the UK the gun laws of Texas and the total homicide rate wouldn't change very much.

You would need to weight them by population and England has the bulk of the population by a considerable margin.

No you wouldn't as the numbers are per 100k in each region, and the UK as a whole *is* England/Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

[Perinquus]

I'm using England (1.61) as it is what americans tend to understand as the UK, and the figure on the CDC site was 6.1 in the section on homocides and gun homocides (Which were 4.1). Which gives ~4.

Adding together scotland into the equasion confuses it, it has a completely seperate legal system and seperate laws.

No, I and most of the other Americans I know understand England as England, and the UK as England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Funny you've been debating with english cases, english law and english police officers...

Gee, I wonder if that could be because those are the ones I happened to be able to find information on. If I had found similar stories reported from Belfast or Edinburgh, I'd have used them happily.

It looks like you are selectively comparing part of the UK with all of the US in order to skew your figures.

Care to pick a few states at random and see if their per capita homocide rates are much better compared to england?

Gladly. Montana. Wyoming. North Dakota. Vermont. Maine. Alaska. I would not be at all surprised to find their homicide rates comparing very favorably to England's. That sort of thing can happen when you compare selectively.

And the fact that Scotland has a different legal system makes no difference. Different states over here also have different laws, and Louisiana has a completely different legal system altogether (theirs is based on the Napoleonic Code rather than English Common Law like the rest of the country).

Except there is an overall federal legal system, that isnt the case in the UK, the systems are completely seperate from one another.

So what. Most crimes are prosecuted under state laws. Unless a crime crosses state boundaries, occurs on feeral lands (like military bases) or features a crime like abduction, for which there is a federal statute, offenders are prosecuted entirely under state laws, and sentenced to serve time in state prisons. The federal court system never enters into it.

[Ma Deuce]

Care to pick a few states at random and see if their per capita homocide rates are much better compared to england?

Last I checked, 5 states actually have an equal or lower homicide rate than England: In the same period (1999-2001) from which the 1.61 figure for England comes, Maine and Iowa average 1.6, New Hampshire averages 1.56, South Dakota averages 1.43, and North Dakota averages 1.1. Don't know that the gun laws are like in those states, though.