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 dogma wrote:

 Spacemanvic wrote:

That sounds suspiciously like the common sense gun laws which aren't.

Generally speaking someone who is arguing from "common sense" is trying to cloak their opinion in seemingly neutral terminology. Double points if that person claims to be "no-nonsense".

"This isn't about critical thinking, facts, analysis, or reflection. It's about being comfortable with our conclusion!"

 dogma wrote:

 surixurient wrote:

What is the crime rate in your neighborhood polonius? If you one day find yourself surrounded by crime you might become less dismissive of effective law enforcement. But how privileged-minded of you to deny a life-raft on behalf of the drowning. Your bleeding heart really touches me

Have you considered that the "drowning" might deny the life raft all on their own, and what the consequences (human, fiscal, and political) of forcing them to take it might be?

The people in the high crime urban areas are already being forced to NOT take a life raft.

Gun control laws make being a criminal that much safer. You dont have to worry as much if the chances of your victim not being armed, are pretty good. In my area, a concealed carry weapon is common. The populace is polite, and the criminals are wary.

As it should be.

 Spacemanvic wrote:

The Constitution codified restrictions on the government. It's progressive interpretations ("living document") that twist it's purpose.

It also specifically empowers it. Most notably by way of the Commerce Clause, and the Taxing and Spending Clause; both of which empower Congress to encroach on rights and liberties. As such, if your argument is to hold, any attempt to halt the government encroachment on rights and liberties has been necessarily doomed to failure since the Constitution was signed.

That, or slippery slope arguments are nonsense.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Spacemanvic wrote:

Gun control laws make being a criminal that much safer. You dont have to worry as much if the chances of your victim not being armed, are pretty good. In my area, a concealed carry weapon is common. The populace is polite, and the criminals are wary.

I have a hard time believing that gun control reform is likely to solve gang violence on the scale being seen in cities like Chicago.

Well limiting the right to own fire arms of the law abiding citizens certainly isn't going to stop the violence either.

You would literally have to go house to house confiscating guns for gun control to stop gun violence.

All the gun control measures proposed are aimed at guns that are NOT used in violent crimes except once in a blue moon(if that often)

 whitedragon wrote:

And what are you implying, that repo of a car because you didn't pay your bill is the same thing as the government targetting you for owning a registered firearm?

There are more reasons than just not paying the bill that property will get repossessed, though I suppose the better term would be in the case of impounding a vehicle... Wherein, a person who has a legal right to own something, but has legal action taken against them (parking tickets, moving violations, etc.), and the vehicle is removed from their possession, or its location. Yes if a vehicle is impounded, it is usually because the owner has broken a/several law(s)... but what happens if I own a Kentucky Long Rifle, and the Government makes a law making said firearm illegal to own/possess? If it is registered, as some people have said is a good idea, then the government can come take it through whatever force they deem necessary... In that instance, the only law that I have broken was possessing an item which until a new law was passed, was completely legal for me to own.


Having a manufacturers registration would allow them to tell the government we have X number of Y model in circulation today... Then, should the government ban model Y, they could go to the manufacturer, institute a recall and then said manufacturer would report in periodically to ensure it got done.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I know it's slightly off topic, but it came up in this article. I'm not in the rabid pro- or anti-Obama camps, but I find it really irritating when people refer to Illinois as his homestate. It isn't. He was neither born nor raised here. He took a home in Chicago for the briefest period of times in order to capitalize on an almost guaranteed group of Democrat voters. I'm not throwing rocks. It's a viable, and even cunning, tactic for political election. But he isn't from Illinois. He has zero real investment in this state, and has never represented the interests of the state more than was required to meet the bare-bones demands of his Senate constituency.

It's not a political thing, it's just an accuracy thing. He's not really an Illinoisan. I don't know why that bugs me so much, it just does.

I can understand where you come from on that, especially since Illinois is your home state.

I also find it aggravating when people refer to him as "black"

He was born to a white mother, and raised by white relatives, how is he any more black than he is white?

I know this is a late reply, but I can't let this just slide without contention

 cincydooley wrote:


And then, in regards to Australia...there's this:

http://www.worldpublicunion.org/2013-04-05-NEWS-australian-gun-ban-resulted-in-higher-crime-rates.html

http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html

Look at the trend in gun homicides in the final graph.

http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide/weapon.html

That may be a more clear example of how the gun crime has declined. And before you go 'oh well the knife/sharp object crime has increased, therefore they just swapped from guns to knives', they haven't increased by the same amount that it dropped (it increased by less than it dropped), which means all up its a positive change in terms of homicide by firearms, and homicide by weapons in general (well blunt weapons aren't on here, but at least firearms and sharp weapons).

http://web.archive.org/web/20090221083431/http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi066.html

While this one doesn't chart from immediately post-restriction, it still shows the decrease in effect.

So there we go. When yanks quote stats from people/organisations in your country about our homicide rates it always aggravates me. I mean for gods sake, our attorney general at the time asked the NRA to stop using Australia as an example because they were falsifying the data. Doesn't this put the data you'd take from US organisations about Australian gun crime in a bad light? A bad enough light to stop using them to try and prove your points?

motyak wrote:So there we go. When yanks quote stats from people/organisations in your country about our homicide rates it always aggravates me. I mean for gods sake, our attorney general at the time asked the NRA to stop using Australia as an example because they were falsifying the data. Doesn't this put the data you'd take from US organisations about Australian gun crime in a bad light? A bad enough light to stop using them to try and prove your points?

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between certain groups in the US, and empirical statistics.

So what's this Motyak? A pesky NRA newspaper in Australia?:

Topics: gun crime, nsw police
New plan unveiled to tackle out-of-control gun violence

Jessica Grewal
21st Aug 2013 3:16 PM

COMBATING gun crime in NSW remains the top priority of the state's police force, senior officers announced on Wednesday.

In the past 12 months, more than 9000 guns have been taken off NSW streets and 3352 people have been charged as part of ongoing investigations by Strike Force Raptor and Operations Apollo and Spartan.

Unveiling a new plan to tackle out-of-control gun violence in Sydney on Wednesday, NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said all three strike forces had been brought together to form Operation Talon.

"There is no single source of gun crime violence...guns have fallen into the hands of organised crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs, mid-level crime groups and petty thieves and the lines are often blurred," Mr Scipione said

"That's why it is so important to focus on all these aspects in a unified way...pulling our resources together under the one banner we have that opportunity."

http://www.ballinaadvocate.com.au/news/new-plan-unveil-tackle-out-of-control-gun-violence/1992835/

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azazel the cat wrote:

motyak wrote:So there we go. When yanks quote stats from people/organisations in your country about our homicide rates it always aggravates me. I mean for gods sake, our attorney general at the time asked the NRA to stop using Australia as an example because they were falsifying the data. Doesn't this put the data you'd take from US organisations about Australian gun crime in a bad light? A bad enough light to stop using them to try and prove your points?

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between certain groups in the US, and empirical statistics.

No, we understand bs is international...


It's understandable, Australians are afraid of guns. I dont blame them, they make loud noises. If I didnt know how they worked, Id be afraid of them too. You Aussies keep your kangaroos, we'll keep our firearms, its all good

 Spacemanvic wrote:
So what's this Motyak? A pesky NRA newspaper in Australia?:
.

I'm flicking through that article Spacemanvic and I just can't find any stats which support the idea of 'out of control gun violence', and if that even means a rise from the pre-gun ban levels, or just from last year, and if that rise is significant or not. But that must be there, because you are trying to use it to disprove my statistics.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydney-gun-crime

seems to summarise gun crime in western sydney, but I haven't the foggiest how accurate the SMH is in terms of its reporting. So it seems to be some gun crime every 2.5 days, including a round hitting a house of a 67 year old man and things like that, not necessarily someone using a gun to threaten/harm another. So 56 dead or injured from 138 incidents, and several of those incidents were a two for and what not, so really the number of actual woundings/killings done with guns only happened 50 or so times. Not that bad for a bad part of the country in terms of gun crime in a year. Bad part being not nearly as bad as other countries which don't have gun laws.

edit: gun laws, not fun laws.

 motyak wrote:

 Spacemanvic wrote:
So what's this Motyak? A pesky NRA newspaper in Australia?:
.

I'm flicking through that article Spacemanvic and I just can't find any stats which support the idea of 'out of control gun violence', and if that even means a rise from the pre-gun ban levels, or just from last year, and if that rise is significant or not. But that must be there, because you are trying to use it to disprove my statistics.

I dont know, your police are the ones wringing their hands and making those statements, take it up with them. Thankfully, I dont live there.

Is hoplophobia a national thing for you guys?

So...you don't have an actual response based in statistics, just a random paper from the central coast (which isn't even in Western Sydney). You are just throwing that out there and walking away from the debate.

And not really, plenty of farmers and what not have firearms for rooing and pigging, and there is at least one large rifle range near where I live, which seems to get pretty good business and lets you fire them without licenses and what not as long as you are under supervision of someone with a license. It also holds 'introduction days' which seem to get pretty good attendance, where you learn a bit about shooting rifles and air rifles.

edit: Also, that is an awesome word, I had to google it to see what it was.
double edit: Ah no wonder I didn't recognise it, it isn't an actual phobia in the psychological sense. Still, cool word.

I don't think anyone has an argument based in statistics.

We can argue about violent crime rates all we like. It's difficult to compare them because of different definitions in different countries. For example, the USA doesn't record a crime as violent unless a weapon was involved. The UK records any assault and any sex crime as a violent crime, regardless of weapons or not. This means the "violent crime" rate is artificially low in the USA and artificially high in the UK.

We also need to accept that crime rates are not driven solely by the availability of weapons. It is a complex mix of many social factors.

 motyak wrote:
So...you don't have an actual response based in statistics, just a random paper from the central coast (which isn't even in Western Sydney). You are just throwing that out there and walking away from the debate.

And not really, plenty of farmers and what not have firearms for rooing and pigging, and there is at least one large rifle range near where I live, which seems to get pretty good business and lets you fire them without licenses and what not as long as you are under supervision of someone with a license. It also holds 'introduction days' which seem to get pretty good attendance, where you learn a bit about shooting rifles and air rifles.

edit: Also, that is an awesome word, I had to google it to see what it was.
double edit: Ah no wonder I didn't recognise it, it isn't an actual phobia in the psychological sense. Still, cool word.

Im still here.

Dont know anything about Australia's gun problems, dont really care to be honest as I live in this country and not there. Its a cultural difference. In this country, we still hold personal freedoms and rights of the individual as somewhat sacrosanct. There are those who would abrogate this to the state so as to relieve themselves of the burden of the responsibility of self protection, and because their mentality eschews the individual, they would like to impose their fear on everyone else. They need the group affirmation to bolster their beliefs. I hold them in contemptible regard, as Im sure they hold me. No love loss.

I live in a rural area. We have firearms for hunting, personal protection, recreation and collecting. My now 14 year old has a Ruger 10/22 as well as a Ruger MkIII that she shoots very well. My 11 year old will get a Browning BL22 Grade II when she turns 12. All my children know and love to shoot, they are very proficient at it. Its a family recreation for us. Provided my children keep their records clean, when they turn 21, I will transfer the firearms to them. In this country, licensing isnt needed as we view gun ownership generally as an inalienable right, my state having open carry. Because I chose to conceal carry, I have a license to do so. There are progressive states that have passed laws to curtail gun rights, but those laws when challenged fall to the wayside upon reaching the Supreme Court (for now). Should the balance of the court change and we see laws be reinterpreted, this whole issue may come to a head.

As it is, with this last gun control push, many looked into and chose to exercise their Constitutional rights as they saw the possibility that the government would make moves against it. People from all walks of life, race, religion and political affiliation took up the mantle of gun ownership. Some are fighting to reclaim it. For the most part, I dont think they will want to relinquish it in this country so easily.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think anyone has an argument based in statistics.

We can argue about violent crime rates all we like. It's difficult to compare them because of different definitions in different countries. For example, the USA doesn't record a crime as violent unless a weapon was involved. The UK records any assault and any sex crime as a violent crime, regardless of weapons or not. This means the "violent crime" rate is artificially low in the USA and artificially high in the UK.

We also need to accept that crime rates are not driven solely by the availability of weapons. It is a complex mix of many social factors.

Killkrazy... quick talking sense bro!

I remember an article that opined that if you took the homicide rates out of Chicago, New York and DC area... then, the rest of the US is much closer aligned with other Western Nations. What does those three places have in common? (can't find article yet, but I will... soon)

 whembly wrote:

I remember an article that opined that if you took the homicide rates out of Chicago, New York and DC area... then, the rest of the US is much closer aligned with other Western Nations. What does those three places have in common? (can't find article yet, but I will... soon)

Lots and Lots of minorities??


I guess that shows the best/only solutions would be to either loosen Restrictions in those cities, OR nuke them from orbit, its the only way to be sure.

whembly wrote:I remember an article that opined that if you took the homicide rates out of Chicago, New York and DC area... then, the rest of the US is much closer aligned with other Western Nations. What does those three places have in common? (can't find article yet, but I will... soon)

The trouble with that, is that a lot of the articles you read have the approximate value of used toilet paper.

Your statement implies that either you are unaware of the crime rates in, or unaware of the existence of the following cities, which all have staggeringly higher homicide rates than most other western nations:

Atlanta, GA
St. Louis, MO
Baltimore, MD
Kansas, MO
Miami, FL
Oakland, CA
New Orleans, LA
Los Angeles, CA

EDIT: and these are just the major metropolitan cities; I didn't even include the smaller ones like Gary, IN or East St Louis, IL

 azazel the cat wrote:

whembly wrote:I remember an article that opined that if you took the homicide rates out of Chicago, New York and DC area... then, the rest of the US is much closer aligned with other Western Nations. What does those three places have in common? (can't find article yet, but I will... soon)

The trouble with that, is that a lot of the articles you read have the approximate value of used toilet paper.

Your statement implies that either you are unaware of the crime rates in, or unaware of the existence of the following cities, which all have staggeringly higher homicide rates than most other western nations:

Atlanta, GA
St. Louis, MO
Baltimore, MD
Kansas, MO
Miami, FL
Oakland, CA
New Orleans, LA
Los Angeles, CA

EDIT: and these are just the major metropolitan cities; I didn't even include the smaller ones like Gary, IN or East St Louis, IL

Riiiiight.

Just stay in Vancouver Azazel... we're much too blood thirsty here bro.

(I may have been mistaken dude... so get down from your fething high horse once in a while)

 motyak wrote:
I know this is a late reply, but I can't let this just slide without contention

 cincydooley wrote:


And then, in regards to Australia...there's this:

http://www.worldpublicunion.org/2013-04-05-NEWS-australian-gun-ban-resulted-in-higher-crime-rates.html

http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html

Look at the trend in gun homicides in the final graph.

http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide/weapon.html

That may be a more clear example of how the gun crime has declined. And before you go 'oh well the knife/sharp object crime has increased, therefore they just swapped from guns to knives', they haven't increased by the same amount that it dropped (it increased by less than it dropped), which means all up its a positive change in terms of homicide by firearms, and homicide by weapons in general (well blunt weapons aren't on here, but at least firearms and sharp weapons).

http://web.archive.org/web/20090221083431/http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi066.html

While this one doesn't chart from immediately post-restriction, it still shows the decrease in effect.

So there we go. When yanks quote stats from people/organisations in your country about our homicide rates it always aggravates me. I mean for gods sake, our attorney general at the time asked the NRA to stop using Australia as an example because they were falsifying the data. Doesn't this put the data you'd take from US organisations about Australian gun crime in a bad light? A bad enough light to stop using them to try and prove your points?

That's great that gun related deaths have gone down. It doesn't change the fact that robberies and home invasions are significantly up since the gun ban. One could make a reasonable argument that, with nothing to fear from robbing a house in the way of firearms, home invasion has become an "easier, less risky" crime to commit.

While I don't contend the fact that violent crimes have risen in Australia, gun rates in Australia have risen to levels equal, if not higher, then they were in 1996 when the buy back program was instituted.

 whembly wrote:
(I may have been mistaken dude... so get down from your fething high horse once in a while)

Are you really trying to admonish a person for being knowledgeable?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think anyone has an argument based in statistics.

We can argue about violent crime rates all we like. It's difficult to compare them because of different definitions in different countries. For example, the USA doesn't record a crime as violent unless a weapon was involved. The UK records any assault and any sex crime as a violent crime, regardless of weapons or not. This means the "violent crime" rate is artificially low in the USA and artificially high in the UK.

We also need to accept that crime rates are not driven solely by the availability of weapons. It is a complex mix of many social factors.

You're very wrong about the US portion. Weapons have nothing to do with categorization of violent crimes.

In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses which involve force or threat of force.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/violent-crime

whembly wrote:Just stay in Vancouver Azazel... we're much too blood thirsty here bro.

(I may have been mistaken dude... so get down from your fething high horse once in a while)

I'm actually just outside of Montreal at the moment.

And Vancouver is on pace to have almost 45 violent deaths this year. Out of 2.3 million people, that's almost a 1.95 rate per 100,000, if I calculated it correctly.

Anyway, it doesn't really require a high horse to call out a blatantly false statement made from a recollection of a blatant lie from an ultra-right-wing-agenda-based pundit blog (how do I know this? because the commonality of the three places you listed just so happens to be the three places with some of the strictest gun control, despite the fact that the violent crime rates in cities like Baltimore, Detroit, Dallas and St. Louis are far higher than those of New York, Chicago or DC).

 djones520 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think anyone has an argument based in statistics.

We can argue about violent crime rates all we like. It's difficult to compare them because of different definitions in different countries. For example, the USA doesn't record a crime as violent unless a weapon was involved. The UK records any assault and any sex crime as a violent crime, regardless of weapons or not. This means the "violent crime" rate is artificially low in the USA and artificially high in the UK.

We also need to accept that crime rates are not driven solely by the availability of weapons. It is a complex mix of many social factors.

You're very wrong about the US portion. Weapons have nothing to do with categorization of violent crimes.

In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses which involve force or threat of force.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/violent-crime

If you read the definition carefully you will see that violent crimes in the USA do not include assaults that are made without the benefit of weapons. That type of assault is included in the UK figures, as are sexual offences that are not included in the US figures.

 whembly wrote:

(I may have been mistaken dude... so get down from your fething high horse once in a while)

You may have been, though it may also be possible that removing those three cities from the average lowers said average enough to bring us more in line with European gun crime rates. I would assume comparing national gun crime rates would involve averages, after all, so while Atlanta, GA can still be quite high, it can be balanced out by Elmo, AK and Bisbee, AZ, for example.

I would be interested to see the results. National crime rates are normally done per 100,000 population, average across the whole country. Large cities can be looked at individually, however it gets more difficult when you come down to sparsely populated countryside.

Baltimore and Detroit are also part of the "Super Strict gun control fun pack" as to the rest of your statement.... Well you and Whembly are throwing a lot of words around like they're facts without a single number, web link or any other information to back them up, so that means they're just opinions till proven otherwise! So let's go to the numbers ladies and gentlemen!

I retrieved all of this data using http://www.city-data.com

I am using per capita numbers to ensure an easier comparison. As always extremely large and extremely small cities can skew per capita numbers, NYC is an excellent example.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to make a table on most forums so this will be kinda rough.

Here is the format I will be using to copy the data:

City Name (Year) M(urders) Ra(pes) Ro(bberies) A(ssaults) B(urglaries) T(hefts) AT(auto thefts) Ar(son)

So to establish our base line, the often mentioned home of Cowboys, chili, fried things and a holster on ever belt Dallas! (It's not just for oil barons any more!)

Dallas, TX (2011) M 10.9 Ra 35.0 Ro 332.5 A 302.8 B 1531.2 T 2873.9 AT 652.8 Ar 48.7

*whistles* Well. That ain't pretty, that's for sure. Let's see how Dallas stacks up to the deadliest city in America and home of the deep dish pizza (which kills it's fair share every year)

Chicago, IL (2011) M 15.9 Ra N/A (no data*) Ro 516.9 A 458.9 B 877.2 T 2676.8 AT 719.2 Ar N/A (no data**)

*Last data year is 2009 with 50.4
**Last data year is 2009 with 21.3

Whelp, unless you're a fan of getting your ass kicked, raped or murdered seems Dallas is the safer city for you. Let's do Detroit next.

Detroit MI (2011) M 48.2 Ra 59.9 Ro 695.7 A 1333.6 B 2242.4 T 2307.2 AT 1593.9 Ar 134.2

That's... about as expected actually, but then again my mental picture of Detroit is best represented by Manhattan in the classic action movie Escape From New York, speaking of which, let's see how 12 years with Captain "The solution to our city's problems is more rich people to tax" himself. We can also see where per capita gets weird here, Chicago had more murders then Detroit, but a smaller portion of the population was busy murdering each other per capita.

New York, NY (2011) M 6.3*** Ra13.3 Ro 240.8 A 363.2 B 221.1 T 1374.4 AT 114.9 Ar N/A****

***It is worth noting that while this number is pretty low and that's good, it still means 515 people were cut down in the streets of New York in 2011. Areas with high population can skew numbers to look low... as they are relative to population, as dense as NYC is packed, the numbers here are odd, but the actual numbers of crimes committed are... shocking to say the least. Over a thousand rapes, thirty thousand assaults, some one hundred and sixty thousand combined varieties of theft, robbery, et al.
****No data available at all.

Baltimore, MD (2011) M 31.3 Ra 54.5 Ro 551.5 A 780.3 B 1374.3 T 2713.6 AT 669.9 Ar 49.0

Huh... looks like an old friend from the region's joke about the city actually being "Bodymore, Murderland" wasn't much of a joke huh?

St Louis, MO (2011) M 35.3 Ra 58.7 Ro 663.7 A 1099.1 B 2189.1 T 4769.8 AT 1051.3 Ar 59.6

So that's the East Coast and the Midwest covered. Let's hit up the West Coast and REAL West shall we?

Los Angeles, CA (2011) M 7.7 Ra 21.6 Ro 262.6 A 320.5 B 449.9 T 1393.4 AT 406.5 Ar 35.9

Denver, CO (2011) M 5.6 Ra 64.9 Ro 187.2 A 349.6 B 797.2 T 2299.3 AT 587.4 Ar 15.6

So go West young man, might still be pretty solid advice in the "Don't get murdered" sense of the term. It is worth noting that LA is reporting NYC style suppression of total numbers via sheer population density, but their numbers are comparable to other large cities, not the mind boggling numbers of NYC.

Next how about wild Arizona? Under constant threat in many corners from gang cartels waging literal war on our borders, how does Phoenix stack up?

Phoenix, AZ (2011) M 7.9 Ra 38.1 Ro 226.7 A 279.0 B 1273.2 T 2609.5 AT 515.3 Ar 18.6

Huh... not bad for being under threat by Narcoterrorists. Guess Sheriff Joe Arpaio actually knows his gak huh?

And finally our nation's capital. Surely the seat of government in America is safer then the lawless hell hole of Dallas Texas or drug war torn Phoenix?
Washington D.C. (2011) M 17.5 Ra 27.8 Ro 607.8 A 477.2 B 622.8 T 3265.3 AT 702.1 Ar 9.9

Nope!


So that's that! I look forward to seeing how this information is going to be used for and against the various arguments in this thread.

Meanwhile in Nairobi, Kenya at least 43 are dead and 200+ are injured after 10 armed gunmen (armed AK-47s, the real kind and grenades reportedly) attacked a large mall.

Almost 24 hours after gunmen stormed an upscale Nairobi mall, spraying bullets and killing dozens, the terror wasn't over.

An unknown number of hostages were still holed up Sunday in parts of Westgate mall, Kenya's National Disaster Operation Centre tweeted.

"That is what we suspect. We cannot share any further information," the agency said.

At least 43 people have been killed in the attack, Kenya Red Cross chief, Abbas Gullet said Sunday. He said more than 200 others were wounded.

Kenyan police and soldiers continued to face off with assailants. It's not clear how many attackers are left, or what they plan to do with those still trapped in the mall.

Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked militant group based in Somalia, claimed responsibility for the bloodshed and vowed not to negotiate with Kenyan authorities.

The group said "all Muslims" were escorted from the mall before the attack.

"The Mujahideen are still strong inside #Westgate Mall and still holding their ground," the group tweeted late Saturday. "All praise is due to Allah!"

So beyond the horrible event itself, AQ uses freaking twitter AND hashtags now? Feth it man.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think anyone has an argument based in statistics.

We can argue about violent crime rates all we like. It's difficult to compare them because of different definitions in different countries. For example, the USA doesn't record a crime as violent unless a weapon was involved. The UK records any assault and any sex crime as a violent crime, regardless of weapons or not. This means the "violent crime" rate is artificially low in the USA and artificially high in the UK.

We also need to accept that crime rates are not driven solely by the availability of weapons. It is a complex mix of many social factors.

You're very wrong about the US portion. Weapons have nothing to do with categorization of violent crimes.

In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses which involve force or threat of force.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/violent-crime

If you read the definition carefully you will see that violent crimes in the USA do not include assaults that are made without the benefit of weapons. That type of assault is included in the UK figures, as are sexual offences that are not included in the US figures.

They include "hands, feet, other body parts" as weapons. So all assaults are in that category. Robbery works the same way. In their "weapon" category, they reference Strong-Arm, which is just the threat of use of force, which could just mean something as simple as handing a note over saying you'll shoot the place up, or even just punch someone in the head.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

Here is the format I will be using to copy the data...

You are presenting the data, not copying it.

Also, you should have used means for each category if your intention was comparative*.




*And I know it wasn't.

Averages in what sense? and over per capita for something like this?