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It doesn't really matter, but the DOJ statistics were done by two people:

If you're interested, here is the UCR for 2000, it isn't the same as the DOJ:

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/00cius.htm

 

Laches, to get your numbers right I have made the effort and checked the statistics of our ministry of interior for the year 2001. 12.800? I can't let you rape germany's crime statistics undisturbed. It looks a little different than you put it, really:

"In 2001 there were 11 270 incidents of treatening with firearms, about 9,7% less than in the previous year.

Guns were fired 5 416 times, a decrease of 21,9 %.

The number of cases where firearms were fired or used to threten persons, developed as follows:

Nine of ten (88,4 %) cases, were firearmes were used to threaten, were robberies and crimes against the personal freedom (aka coercion). Among the robberies the cases where firearms were used to threaten sank, compared to the year 2000, about 8,3% to 4 878.

Almost a third of the cases when guns were fired (30,4 %), were less serious cases, namely damage of property (like: shooting on traffic signs). Another third of the cases (31,7 %) where guns were fired however, were cases of dangerous and grievous bodily harm. Compared to the year 2000 the number of cases decreased by 20,6 % to a total 1 715. The cases of murder and manslaughter with firearms involved sank by 13,3 % to 298 cases." (that's the number of gun kills; from first link)

"In 2001 there were 2 641 cases of murder and manslaughter, every third case was a "completed" crime, resulting in the victim dead (the number includes attempts!). Compared to 2000 that's a decrease by 4,7 %." (from second link)

That means that approx 11,3 % of the cases of murder and manslaughter included using a gun.

statistics taken from: official statistics on use of firearms (gedroht = threatened; geschossen = fired; the increase after 1993 is due to the increased population after the reunification, we didn't suddenly become more violent). About the general number of murders check here: official statistics on violent crime


Now to the year 2001 in the US, after the FBI crime statsistics:

That totals 10.179 gun kills. Even when you consider that the US are larger than germany and cut numbers by half the number of gun related deaths and the percentage of guns used in cases of murder is significantly higher in the US. Sorry Laches.

I enjoyed reading all the posts in here quite much, the pinheads doing the numbercrunching especially. I find the energy people put into bashing Moore amazing.
Moore's numbers may not be exact but he gets the general trend. As he's a polemist that's perfectly allright. The questions he asks and the theses he makes are way more interesting and important that the numbers behind.

[ April 01, 2003, 14:56: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

This pinhead would like to point out a few things (as an aside, I suppose I've been called worse than a pinhead but I would also note that it is a logical fallacy Ragusa):

1) They're not my numbers they're David Hardy's.

2) He used numbers from 1995 you used them from 2001.

3) The key number he used wasn't 12,888 (or 12,800) it was 1,476. That is the number he claims were homicides (actually he states murder) in 1995, not 2001.

4) I don't think your numbers match up with the official Uniform Crime Reports from the US. Once again, for 2000 the same numbers you purport to show are 8,493. Once again, the UCR is considered the definitive source from what I'm told. Once again, here is the source:

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/00cius.htm

It details murders (actually it uses this term to cover homicides and explains this in the beginning) by victim and crosses it with weapon type. Look under violent crimes, then homicides, and then look to the data regarding weapon type, it is all there.

5) And once again, I think you miss the point when you type, "since he's a polemist that's perfectly alright." He doesn't hold himself out to be a polemist, he holds himself out to be a documentary film maker. See the difference? I've seen his films, they're funny. They aren't however truthful which, as a documentary, I expect they should be.

6) While you find the energy people put into "bashing Moore" amusing I find the snideness of those who defend him (particularly people who have in the past admitted a perdisposition with regards to positions he supports such as gun control) amusing.

Perhaps for a fair impartial look we should consider people who might agree with him ultimately but are detached and honest enough to evaluate the issue -- wait, there are quotes from those people above. Oh well, I guess they must just be "bashing Moore" too -- it couldn't be there is an honest problem there.

 

Isn't it remarkable that you post numbers only to later claim that they are not yours while trying to make an argument using them?

 

Bah, this discussion has degenerated into personal attacks. I quoted the numbers very clearly earlier and attributed them. I haven't the opportunity to determine how closely your numbers that were of a date 6 years after his would have mirrored his had the date been correct. Your responses include pinhead and rape. You ignore the substance of responses while mocking those who dare disagree with you. I suppose I should probably peel myself away from this thread.

I think the central point trying to be made above stands, even if all of us are pinheads.

 

My point is that by posting numbers to undermine a statement you take position, the position that you trust in them, that they are the foundament for your argument. Now when you're unwittingly reiterate a NRA (just a guess ... ) statistic produced to make guns look nice and harmless and the US nice and peaceful compared to other nations you take the risk that they are perhaps flawed.

It is a very common tool to manipulate statistics, and the members of the NRA are very adept in this profession. Who in the US speaks enough german to search the web for first hand info to make a counter-check on german crime rates? Never trust a statistic you haven't manipulated yourself. And never rely on second hand info. Did that David Hardy dude say where he got his amazing numbers from? Hardly.

So back to the *rape* thing ... Back to your first post on this page:

Your numbers and your text just suggested that gun crimes in germany are much more common than they actuall are - and not only that, they suggested that gun crime in germany is almost en-par with the US level. I have to admit that really surprised me.

As I didn't knew where the numbers for germany were taken from I searched some of my own.

My reply was no wizardry, I found two statistics, and I can really see no reason to distrust the FBI nor my german ministry of interior's statistics. Re-read my post and recap the numbers and you see how wastly exaggerated the number of 12.800 actually is, especially when compared to a real number like 298 - or even Moore's mysterious 381.
And doing that to a statistic, adding everything related with guns and to compare it with the number of gun kills in the US to claim they are on a similar level is just that: a rape, or a clear and intended misinterpretation of facts.

Just have a look at the FBI statistic I used: approx 10 179 gun-kills in 2001. That implies that the number of "unsuccessful attempts" is even higher, and it also suggests that the number of armed robbery and threatening with guns isn't included. Neither are suicides using guns. Oops.

When you add everything related with guns in germanies crime statistics together, you have to do the same to the numbers in the US - which would be uncomfortably high as a result.
It's not that I spit fire on you because you "dare to disagree", it's because you quoted a liar.

Now Moore said 381 - and only hell knows where he took that from. Well, 2001's number of 298 is on a similar level. As I said above, Moore get's the trend, that's important. And I find his question: "Why is it so different in the US?" really more interesting than the numbers he, wrongly (yet somehow in the right direction) cited.

Besides Laches, the pinhead wasn't meant as an insult to you but to the people quoted writing their anti-Mooreisms in the links posted. My apologies for not clarifying that earlier, anyway .... too late.

 

I bet he regrets using Germany as an example now

 

There's also the fact that Germany has a population of somewhere around 85 million... considerably less than the US (which has around 300 million). If those stats were used 'per capita', the numbers would be close to those of Sudan(I'm speculating) and such countries... extremely violent countries.

There's also the consideration that in the catagory of 'GUN KILLINGS', there's a chance that that could include suicides and accidents or anything relating to the death of a person by a gun. Laches... don't you think you're being a tad defensive? What I said to you earlier was ten times worse than what Ragusa said but you never got so worked up.

If anyone ever says that the US is a nice, gentle and happy country, they need to get their head checked. I don't think that Laches would ever say that... so I'm not quite sure as to why he posted those (Ragusa says they're decieving, but I'm inclined to believe no one since numbers are numbers) numbers.

 

Me too, BTA, can you recommend a good therapist?

Seriously, the idiots who get themselves onto the evening news are a tiny proportion of the US citizenry. The happy majority isn't interesting.

 

I do not think that the US is a place where I have 50% chance to become victim of a crime when I leave home. That may be so in a few areas, but not so in a lot of other places. When you live in the right place the US can indeed be a nice and gentle place. On the other hand no country in the world (!) has more people in prison in relation to the total population.

When I read the FBI crime statistics, 65,6% of all murder cases included using a firearm. In germany that's just 11,3%. It needs no wizard to conclude that that might have something to do with the masses of firearms around in the US. This conclusuion however, is dangerous, as it seems to threaten the "holy cow", the right to own a gun. To save the cow every measure seems right. On of the weapon of coice, aside from bashing people who are for outrageous things like gun control, is a statistic. Now a statistic is always a hairy thing - how was it made? What was counted? How was counted? Are the representative groups comparable?

My g/f is studying psychology and told me a shiny absurd example for a statistic: In the US psychologists wanted to find out which gender is more "compulsive" in his sex life. So they took a cool dude and nice lass and sent them to a university campus to ask bystanding students if they liked to sleep with them. The males agreed to an overwhelming percentage, the girls barely ever. Mathematically corect and brilliantly they concluded: Girls are less compulsive than boys. Hmm
But perhaps this dude was just ugly? What would a girl think when a boy asked her that? Maybe: What's wrong with him? Is he a sicko? Should I risk going to bed with a stranger - who's probably physically superior?

So it just always amuses me when someone comes up and takes a country from overseas with quite a lot of weapons, such as switzerland, and present their crime stats, only to state that switzerland is safe and gentle because every male who served the army has his assault rifle in his house. Or taking the german statistics and generalising them a bit to say that we, crimewise, are even more violent than the US are ... and as we have much less guns, guns can't be the reason in the US Rescue successfull

IMO Moore made a very good point in asking the big "Why?". Statistics don't bring you very far when you ask for reasons, they can only give hints, in no case a definite proof. Knowing that it might be easier to understand and accept Moore beeing a bit generous with numbers.

 

Ragusa wrote:

As swiss male I'd say, that is because there's nearly no risk that someone from Switzerland comes along, to tell anyone using this argument in the USA, that the US weapon laws compared to the swiss laws just are unbelievabe irresponsible. We have strict laws concerning weapons, that's one of the reasons why swiss crime stats are so low compared to the US crime stats.

Most of the weapons you can get in an american weapon store are absolutely forbidden in Switzerland, because the only reasonable use for those weapons is to commit a crime.

And weapons are not sold to any lunatic, who just "wants" to buy a weapon, we have strict laws concerning "who" has the right to own a weapon and we control the people that have weapons (military discipline). Of course, those controls are not perfect and a nutcase goes sometimes unnoticed. But that has consequences for the responsible civil and military authorities.

And most important, we don't have the crazy idea, that those weapons are useful for defending "our property or our lifes". That's the job of the police and only the police.
And military instructors tell you, there is nothing more foolish than to keep a loaded gun in your household. Munition and rifle have to be kept separated.

[ April 03, 2003, 13:18: Message edited by: Yago ]

 

Thank you, Yago, thank you!!!

But you know that you'll provoke posts like: "The US weapons laws are so strict you can't imagine! I can't even get a 40mm AAA gun to protect my property (to be really safe) outside of Virginia!"

 

In Canada they've just passed a gun registration law... which is absolutely ridiculous. 98% of the guns used in Canadian murders come from... guess where... the US (they're smuggled in). Canada will spend more on gun registration (so far over a billion) than on Anti-Terrorism. This all boils down to it's too easy to buy a gun in the US. You can't buy any other kind of gun except a hunting rifle most other places in the world, so why does the states insist on having all their citezens owning machines of death (I don't mean by law but by the consitution)? I don't know... but the fact is is that the states is a violent country, much more so than others relative to it.

@Rallymama and BTA:
I know there's nice places in the states (I do... I lived there for awhile and am half-american). I'm not saying that if you step outside your condo in Florida to get some milk you'll get blasted. All I'm saying is that there obviously is a problem and people who say there's not need to have their head checked.

 

BTA - That's great, if they don't get you with an automatic weapon, I guess they can still run over you with an SUV. It's good to know that America is still the land of choice.

 

I think we're missing the point when focussing on gun control here. Moore makes a quite interesting point when he claims that canada and the US both have a huge number of firearms around - so some may argue that if it is so, the phenomenon of violence cannot be solved by gun control alone.
I also find the american display of loyalty and trust to their current, scary government remarkable, especially when considering the just as common paranoia against the evil government opressing the citizens.

Moore refers to a difference in the mindset - and that the media scare the **** out of people, I found the episode with the reality tv show producer remarkable. That, on the other hand, considering the general irrational climate of fear (which I simply accept for the sake of argument), that now really suggests gun control as an "insurance" as there is barely, anything more dangerous than a scared, paranoid gun owner.

Unfortunately the creators of the US constitution were not aware about the possibilities of technical progress and never imposed limitations (such as max calibre, weapon type) on gun ownership so that today some claim that even heavy artillery is still a gun, stressing the inherent constitutional rights of every citizen to_you_know_what .....
Finding out the inherent limitations of the constitution doesn't need more than common sense but there you end up having another peoblem and obstacle - as you live in a democracy (or a representative republic ) others have the right to give their, perhaps insane, opinions as well .... and they defend their holy cow to death, not unlike him.

 

The second post is always the hardest, as they say....

Firstly, BTA, it's really amazing how you say that:

How can you say that? It's true that hunting rifles can be dangerous, but half a mag's worth of hollow points coming towards you at high speed from a M16 is probably even more so.

You ask why there's not a "crusade" against traffic. It could be that the deaths in traffic can't be prevented to the same extent as say, a bunch of schoolkids killing everyone in sight using daddy's new auto rifle. Accidents always happen, especially in traffic, and you can't always prevent that. But rifle's, guns, AA missiles, you can at least prevent them from being sold openly.

Another interesting thing you say is:

I'd have to say that there more or less is. If all the crooks owns a gun, then what do you do?
You get a gun too! I'm not bashing the states, but let's face it:

Those who thinks the current gun policy is safe and sound needs to get their head checked. Bigtime.

Just my five cents....

 

This thread is a classic example of why I almost never post here anymore.

The absurd rhetoric:
@Baron Von M

(Do you really think M-16s are easy to come by?)

spin:
@Ragusa

(How many are gun related killings?)

assumptions:
Again Ragusa (you make it too easy)

baiting:
Wow Ragusa's on a roll, again.

cheerleading:
@Vukodlak

I don't single out Laches, because he presents what he believes are facts and uses them to support his argument.

As many of you know, my brother, Brian, was shot to death on August 26, 2000. He was sitting in his car outside of his apartment when his neighbor snapped, shot my brother (10 times) with a TEC-9, took his car, and killed two more people (his real targets). Mark then killed himself when surrounded by the police.

Are the gun laws in the US too permissive? In my opinion, yes. Should Mark have even been able to own a TEC-9? NO. I believe that civilians should be allowed to own hunting rifles, shotguns, and revolvers. In the interest of full disclosure: my brother owned two shotguns (we used to shoot clay pigeons together) and a .32 Baretta that he carried for protection when he worked in bad areas (he was in construction). He was unarmed when he was killed.

All of this does not mean that Michael Moore should twist the facts to try to get his point across. He hurts his cause and his credibility. It's easy enough to make the case without lying and grandstanding.

To all of the rest of you, spewing nonsense here, acting like you know what you are talking about, insulting those who disagree with you:
Give it a rest.
This topic is ripe for debate. DEBATE. This crap here is not debate, not even discussion.
In my opinion, all of this is the reason that no progress can be made on this, or any other serious social problem.

 

Jack Funk, you have read my post, did you?

Interesting question. How many people in jail are gun killings? Honestly, I don't know.

As for the trust and loyalty: I only wonder the phenomenon that US citizens semingly manage to combine support and trust for a government at war (like supporting the boys and girls down in Iraq) with the inherent distrust for a government trying to do things like gun control (as visible in the interview with the McVeigh relative).
IMO that's remarkable as it on the one hand brings with quite a bonus of trust to a gvt doing questionable things while they, at the same time, may distrust it doing IMO pretty reasonable things (like thinking about if a citizen needs a full auto ... errr ... hunting rifle - or a .50 cal ...) That's it, IMO something to wonder or ponder about.

As for the 40mm, ah yes, I couldn't resist posting that after again seeing a tv report about a guy from virginia toying around with his 40mm Bofors WW-II vintage anti-aircraft cannon in his garden I'm indeed polemising and not at all neutral - I just can't stop my joking about gun addicts