Culture of Violence:Gun Crime Up 89% in a Decade

[Angela Harlem]

No contradictions my friend.

This thread is about us. A society that seems to breed violence.
That continues, like you, to avoid the real issue. The real problem.

Waging a war in defense of your life and liberty is another subject.

it is unfortunately very much about 'you' and your culture. Your violent crime rates are phenomenally higher than anywhere else, yet, petty crimes remain amazingly lower than many places around the world. What exactly is wrong with the US? Why are you all so violent? Why are gangs the result of suburbs spilling over with the unemployed and drug dependent? They're not so prevalent in other countries. They're there, and they cause troubles, but not in the numbers they do in the US. Why are children there so tempted to turn to a gun to make their point that they're pissed off or scared? Kids here and other places turn into thuggish bullies who rob shops, steal cars, and beat up their girlfriends, not shoot innocent people.

What the hell is it with the US that fucks up your young people who have drug/unemployment/intellectual disadvantages? You need to find the answer. It's not a brain teaser or trick question.

 

[the iron horse]

it is unfortunately very much about 'you' and your culture. Your violent crime rates are phenomenally higher than anywhere else, yet, petty crimes remain amazingly lower than many places around the world. What exactly is wrong with the US? Why are you all so violent? Why are gangs the result of suburbs spilling over with the unemployed and drug dependent? They're not so prevalent in other countries. They're there, and they cause troubles, but not in the numbers they do in the US. Why are children there so tempted to turn to a gun to make their point that they're pissed off or scared? Kids here and other places turn into thuggish bullies who rob shops, steal cars, and beat up their girlfriends, not shoot innocent people.

What the hell is it with the US that fucks up your young people who have drug/unemployment/intellectual disadvantages? You need to find the answer. It's not a brain teaser or trick question.

Did I not say?

This thread is about us.

The link was about violent crime rates in the UK, but I was not trying to blame any one country.

I don't need to find the answer.

We need to find the answer.

 

[cobl04]

i may be ignorant, but i rarely hear of people going on a gun rampage and killing tens of people in countries that have strict laws on ownership. to my knowledge there hasn't been a psychopath in any of our institutions here who has suddenly decided to kill a bunch of people.

i'm not trying to get on people's nerves here, i just wonder.

 

[the iron horse]

i may be ignorant, but i rarely hear of people going on a gun rampage and killing tens of people in countries that have strict laws on ownership. to my knowledge there hasn't been a psychopath in any of our institutions here who has suddenly decided to kill a bunch of people.

i'm not trying to get on people's nerves here, i just wonder.

Go back and read the link posted.
The UK has very strict gun laws yet gun crime is up.

And please go back and read what I am trying to say here.
The question is what is it about our culture that is breeding to total disregard for life?

What is breeding this violence?

 

[BVS]

The question is what is it about our culture that is breeding to total disregard for life?

What is breeding this violence?

Lots of things! Everything from racism, worshiping gun culture, economics, celebration of selfishness, etc etc etc

 

[the iron horse]

Lots of things! Everything from racism, worshiping gun culture, economics, celebration of selfishness, etc etc etc

OK, lets start with racism.

If racism is what you think is causing this culture of violence.

You wanna post the current crime statistics on black on black crime in the United States?

 

[BVS]

OK, lets start with racism.

If racism is what you think is causing this culture of violence.

You wanna post the current crime statistics on black on black crime in the United States?

There you go being simplistic again. I think racism plays a big role in why minorities make up the majority of the population in ghettos and highly populated poor areas. I also think it plays a role in why they are often ignored.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

i love how a thread about any country, becomes some big america bashing thread.

 

[yolland]

For perspective (or not, depending on your assumptions). The international average is 9 per 100,000.

(It's unfortunate they only have state/provincial breakdowns for the US and Canada; would be interesting to at least see those breakdowns for other large countries as well.)

 

[cobl04]

what a depressing map of the world.

 

[mysterious_jen]

i may be ignorant, but i rarely hear of people going on a gun rampage and killing tens of people in countries that have strict laws on ownership. to my knowledge there hasn't been a psychopath in any of our institutions here who has suddenly decided to kill a bunch of people.

i'm not trying to get on people's nerves here, i just wonder.

Martin bryant . april 28 1996. Port Arthur.
the reason for our gun control laws.

violence is everywhere, we may not use guns here, but there are alot of dead , or brain dead people who have been beaten to a pulp with fists and or glassed in the face in pub/ street violence recently. Not only is the world a a violent place, your very own home is still most likely to be the place where people face violence on a day to day basis, and you will most likely be assaulted by someone you know.
so how do you tackle that as a society? in australia i believe it is very closley linked to the drinking culture that has insidiously worked its way into evey aspect of our lives here.

 

[coolian2]

Martin bryant . april 28 1996. Port Arthur.
the reason for our gun control laws.

exactly.

you've even had this kind of shit go on in new zealand. ultimately, there is a point where you can't legislate against crazy, but you can try to lessen the impact.

i largely agree with the rest of what you said. a lot of the violence here isn't as insidious (if you will, meaning it's more random and not as related to drug dealing etc) and it seems to get brushed off and blamed on alcohol, which isn't helped by the general societal view on drinking in these parts - admittedly moreso in australia.

 

[bigjohn2441]

wow, my area (caribbean) is the darkest of the dark. what a suprise

and yet, gun laws here in the USVI are extremely strict and there are no places to buy guns anywhere on the island. yet people are still shot and killed every weekend. in fact there were 3 that i know of this last weekend.

all the assholes have guns and the law abiding citizens are severly restricted ownership. makes sense.

 

[BVS]

wow, my area (caribbean) is the darkest of the dark. what a suprise

and yet, gun laws here in the USVI are extremely strict

And how long has this been happening?

 

[bigjohn2441]

And how long has this been happening?

i dont know, ive only been down here a year and change, but from what ive gathered from the locals and people i work with it has gotten real bad in the last decade or so and "never used to be this bad." since ive been here i'd say there has been at least 1 shooting every weekend. people are talking about how they are afraid to go out and all that. i was talking with a co-worker yesterday and he's seen guys sitting out front of their house with mac-11 machine gun in his lap just chilling.

you'll never catch me out without my piece thats for damn sure.

the day time is pretty safe of course, but at night is when the bugs come out from under their rocks.

 

[Irvine511]

We need to find the answer.

we can start by taking a stance on guns similar to that of the UK and Australia.

as Angela has pointed out, non-violent crime in the US is about on par with the rest of the Western world. it's murder -- specifically, handgun murder -- that's so much astronomically higher here than anywhere else.

where can we find the difference? is there something intrinsically murderous in the heart of every US American?

or is it just that we have way too many guns that are too easy to get and make it too easy to kill and if other societies had the availability of handguns they'd have similar rates of handgun murder, and vice versa.

 

[Irvine511]

What is breeding this violence?

the availability of handguns. lots and lots and lots of handguns.

makes it super-easy to kill.

 

[the iron horse]

the availability of handguns. lots and lots and lots of handguns.

makes it super-easy to kill.

First, it is a lot harder to get a firearm in the United States than it was twenty or more years ago. There are restrictions and background checks. The "availability of firearms" point does not work.

Did you notice that the thread was about gun crime being up in the UK by 89% since the gun ban?

And you said this?
"is there something intrinsically murderous in the heart of every US American?"

So, it's the murderous Americans?

Please explain why you think that is true and how that relates to the increase in gun crime in the UK.

And much thanks to several previous posters who are posting on this topic and are awake enough to see that this violence we are seeing in society is not being driven by firearms, but by evil.

 

[Irvine511]

First, it is a lot harder to get a firearm in the United States than it was twenty or more years ago. There are restrictions and background checks. The "availability of firearms" point does not work.

crime has gone down over the past 20 years. significantly. the peak year for homicides was 1991.

Did you notice that the thread was about gun crime being up in the UK by 89% since the gun ban?

did you notice that you've been effectively answered on this point?

So, it's the murderous Americans?

if it's not the guns in the United States that are causing the murders, then it must be, by your own words below, the evil Americans.

And much thanks to several previous posters who are posting on this topic and are awake enough to see that this violence we are seeing in society is not being driven by firearms, but by evil.

so thanks to the posters who agree with your erroneous conclusion?

 

[the iron horse]

The welfare state

Multiculturalism

No-fault divorce

Consumerism

Atomisation

Thatcher

The Conservatives

New Labour

Old Labour


Take your pick

Thank you for posting the list.
As a U.S. citizen I'm having a difficult time responding to all of the replies.
I have so many firearms falling out of my pockets and about the house that I just cant get my murderous hands to hit the keys fast enough.


My pick on your list would be divorce. The breaking apart of the traditional family, I think, is one of the reasons we have seen an increase in violent crime.

 

[coolian2]

uh huh.

 

[Pearl]

My pick on your list would be divorce. The breaking apart of the traditional family, I think, is one of the reasons we have seen an increase in violent crime.

And what makes you think so? Please explain.

Because I disagree. High divorce rates have little to do with criminal activity. Lousy parents - whether its a nuclear family or a single parent family - can create violent children, but even that's not always the case.

 

[financeguy]

Thank you for posting the list.

I am not necessarily saying I agree with the list. It was intended to be a list of factors that the media have blamed.

My pick on your list would be divorce. The breaking apart of the traditional family, I think, is one of the reasons we have seen an increase in violent crime.

I agree with you here.

 

[Irvine511]

I agree with you here.

divorce seems a band-aid on the actual problem, and it's easy to pick at.

i think what's probably more unsettling -- to some -- is the economic empowerment of women, and their ability to walk away from abusive, loveless, unhappy marriages in ways that their mothers and grandmothers could only dream of.

 

[Irvine511]

I have so many firearms falling out of my pockets and about the house that I just cant get my murderous hands to hit the keys fast enough.

no, no -- evil hands. you said so yourself.

Americans are more evil, that's why we have more gun crime.

it's not more guns, it's that we're more evil.

evil.

 

[powerhour24]

Seriously? Being allowed to own a gun makes it safer? Why, because if we stigmatize it then people feel bad and have to subvert the law? Yes, just like how we should legalize illicit drugs because that would save the government money on fighting trade.

Many of the people who really support gun rights, scare me, I don't want them with guns. Its funny, they're the ones who claim its safe because people make their own choices, I'd be a lot more confident in the choices someone who supports control would make over how to use a gun that was in their possession.

Truth is for a 'civilized' country violence in the United States is far too high, our culture is a selfish one that's conscience is out of whack or fading away, so less restriction on weapons is quite literally putting a loaded gun into dangerous hands. We can get into an argument over constitutional rights, but the constitution doesn't dictate that the government can make no law to keep its citizens safe. Cite statistics on one side or the other until kingdom come, if you value your right to own a gun against even a single life lost or damaged by accident or assault, I'm afraid for humanity.

 

[BVS]

My pick on your list would be divorce. The breaking apart of the traditional family, I think, is one of the reasons we have seen an increase in violent crime.

Once again this is just simple and naive.

First of all not all divorce has children involved, secondly some that do actually function a lot better post divorce, and third this doesn't even begin to address all the other variations of family and non-families out there.

What about those families that are still married but neither parent is really involved?

 

[Angela Harlem]

i love how a thread about any country, becomes some big america bashing thread.

I hope you don't think my reply was an excuse to bash America. It was definitely not intended as such.
The causes in the US are growing, slowly but surely, in other parts of the world. The causes need to be identified and rectified. I think it's got little do to with availability of guns themselves (though I support gun control totally) and even less to do with Americans being somehow different to people in other countries. To be honest, I don't think as people you are any different. The young people in the UK who are upping the rates there are more than likely facing the same issues that youth in the US face.

 

[yolland]

^ Surely the illicit drug trade, and the incentive to violence its profits offer (Prohibition was repealed for a reason!), must be central among those causes. The correlation between the arrival of crack cocaine and the huge surge in violent crime across the US during the 1980s has been exhaustively documented, and we're still the largest consumer market for crack cocaine today, even though our consumption--along with our homicide rate--has dropped considerably since the 1990s (only Spain has a higher proportional prevalence of cocaine use than we do, and they have very strict gun control laws).

That said, our comparing unfavorably to Europe where violent crime rates are concerned apparently isn't anything new:

Crime in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 1916, 198 homicides were recorded in Chicago, a city of slightly over 2 million at the time. This level of crime was not exceptional when compared to other American cities such as New York City, but was much higher relative to European cities, such as London, which then had three times the population but recorded only 45 homicides in the same year.

( ^ ETA: Granted, that's during WWI, so I'm only assuming that year was broadly representative of comparative crime trends.)

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

^ Surely the illicit drug trade, and the incentive to violence its profits offer (Prohibition was repealed for a reason!), must be central among those causes.

I was going to say that, if I had to make a guess, the drug trade is the leading cause of handgun murder in the US, especially in the housing projects and other rough areas of cities like L.A., Baltimore, D.C., Chicago, etc.

I obviously don't have the statistics but, yeah, I'd wager that the distribution of cocaine and heroin on the streets of these big cities leads to the majority of gun murders.

It's all in the game, as they say.