From: fcrary@ocf.berkeley.edu (Frank Crary)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,soc.culture.french
Subject: Re: Guns, and the necessity to trust our governement.
Date: 29 Aug 1992 17:32:43 GMT
Organization: U. C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: lightning.berkeley.edu
Keywords: guns and fascism

In article <1992Aug29.061315.1128@rhrk.uni-kl.de> andrick@rhrk.uni-kl.de (Ulf Andrick) writes:
>> Ok, let's have a look (I'll only select a few, to save space):
>>                  H O M I C I D E
>>                                   PER         ABSOLUTE
>> RANK  COUNTRY                     100,000     NUMBERS
>> ====  ==========================  =======     ========
>>  11   United States                 9.60      18,155
>>  18   Netherlands                   7.15         964
>>  25   Finland                       4.88         229
>>  27   West Germany                  4.47       2,771
>                                                 ^^^^^
>I know that number. It comprises about 1900 attempts, which means that
>about 800 people were actually killed. I wonder what the quote of attempts 
>is in the US.

The number for the United States includes accidental deaths and justifiable
homocides (i.e. killing a criminal in self-defence.) 

>If people have access to guns and use them when they try to 
>kill somebody, they might be more successful.

If memory serves, gunshots are fatal roughly 25% of the time. According
to your information 800/2771 of the attempted murders in Germany are fatal
or about 30%. It would seem American murders, armed with guns, are not
more successful than German murders.

>> -------------------  R A P E  -----------------
>>                                 PER         ABSOLUTE
>> RANK  COUNTRY                   100,000     NUMBERS
>> ====  ========================  =======     ========
>>    2  West Germany              77.49       48,075
>>    8  Netherlands               56.00        7,554
>>    9  England & Wales           50.20       24,698
>>   13  Scotland                  44.69        2,330
>>   14  Denmark                   41.06        2,068
>>   15  Sweden                    40.52        3,313
>>   18  Austria                   30.42        2,274
>>   22  United States             26.30       40,168

>These numbers are regrettable, especially for Germany. But I don't see
>how rape is related to the subject of this thread, which is 
>guns. (Guns are rarely used in rapes, at least in Germany.)

In the United States, it would be more accurate to say guns are very
rarely used by rapists. Overall, 37% of attempted rapes here are
compleated. However, if the victim uses, or tryes to use, a gun 
in self-defence she will be raped only 3% of the time. According
to FBI statistics, producing a gun is the most effective defence
against rape.

However, the point of the rape statistics is to show the effects of
cultural and social differences: The laws concerning rape are essentially the
same in the United States and in Germany, however there are roughly
three times as many rapes (per 100,000 people.) So different 
cultures can have a very large effect on the crime rate.

Could not, similarly, the greater number of homocides in the United
States be due to cultural or social factors, and not due to different
gun control laws?

>People in a state with restrictive arms control laws are not necessarily
>less criminal than others, but the number of people killed is probably
>lower when there are less firearms about. 

This isn't actually true: England, for example (since I've seen statistics
for this  but not for Germany or France), has _always_ had a much lower homocide
rate than the United States. This was the case before and gun control laws were
passed in England and it is still the case. Further, in all cases I have seen
data on (England, Canada, New South Wales [Australia], Washington D.C. and
New York) there was no significant change in the homocide rates following the
passage of gun control laws. (With one exception, where the rate had been
dropping for several years before the laws were enacted and continued to 
for several years after.)

>> Curiously, Switzerland was not even on the scale... (not in the top 60).
>> It must be their well known lack of firearms is responsible...  ;-)

>That Switzerland does not appear at all is rather strange. Such an extreme
>difference to all of its neighbours seems a little incredible.

As well as their amazingly low crime rate, the Switz are also very 
heavilly armed: Most Switz men are required by law to keep a fully
automatic assault rifle and ammunition in their homes and are 
encouraged to practice with the weapon (This is part of their national
defence system.) Laws regarding other firearms are roughly as lax as
those in the United States (and less restrictive in some cases.)

Clearly, the social differences between Switzerland and the rest of 
Europe are much greater than any effects of limited access to firearms.

					      Frank Crary
					      CU Boulder

(By the way, does anyone know how to get a usenet feed here at
Boulder? My new account is on pprince, which doesn't seem to accept
news commands. Remote logins to my old Berkeley account are getting to
be a pain...)