Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

"The argument the DC has tight gun laws and the highest gun crime rates is fundamentally flawed for two reasons."

DontCallMeShirley .. 11 January 2011 12:01PM

The argument the DC has tight gun laws and the highest gun crime rates is fundamentally flawed for two reasons.

First of all, it is almost entirely urban. Murder rates are almost always higher in urban areas, which makes comparing it to, for instance, Montana, completely irrelevant.

Secondly, which is perhaps linked to the first point, anyone making this argument has probably misunderstood the link between cause and effect. The reason why there are tight restrictions on guns is because of the problems with gun crime, rather than the other way around. In some states, the low levels of crime mean that tight gun rules are not as necessary.

[Insert: fuagf, just what i've been thinking.]

Just another interesting point - I live in Milton Keynes (that's not the interesting bit) which, according to these figures, if it were an average American city, would experience one murder by firearm every 50 days. But I cannot remember any fatal shooting at all in the last 10 years or so, nor is there any real threat of this. Another way of looking at it, if Britain had the same rates of gun crime as America, we would have about 36 murders from guns every WEEK. Terrifying to think, really.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state#start-of-comments

that's a couple down from the one in the other reply ..