UK v US homicide rate 1. it's the guns

Murby · Feb 8, 2016

OldWiseGuy said:
If you subtract the homicides committed by blacks and Hispanics in the U.S. our murder rates would be nearly the same.

And if you subtract the homicides committed by white people the same would be true.

Einstein once said "There are only two things that are infinite, the Universe and Human Stupidity.... and I'm not sure about the Universe"

OldWiseGuy · Feb 8, 2016

Murby said:
Actually white people are more likely to attack white people. But, so long as we are using logic at the level of a 6th grader, or at best, a poorly performing high school kid, we could extend your ridiculous comment and say that since the greater majority of blacks are also religiously affiliated as Protestant, then maybe that's the problem?

See how idiotic statements like that are?

As I pointed out before, these are not my statistics. I get them from government sources.

OldWiseGuy · Feb 8, 2016

Murby said:
And if you subtract the homicides committed by white people the same would be true.

Einstein once said "There are only two things that are infinite, the Universe and Human Stupidity.... and I'm not sure about the Universe"

I'm drawing an ethnic comparison between the U.S. and Britain. Using your method we would be comparing black and Hispanic violence in the U.S. with largely white violence in Britain. Try to follow along.

Murby · Feb 8, 2016

OldWiseGuy said:
As I pointed out before, these are not my statistics. I get them from government sources.

Statistics mean nothing without context.. In fact, quoting statistics in the absence of context is no more ethical than twisting the words of other people to suit an agenda. It leads to an inaccurate representation of the facts.

I believe any reasonable person interpreting your statements would tend to believe that you think blacks are more violent than whites are.
So lets take a look at some statistics.. Here's an interesting graph of mass murderers by race:

OldWiseGuy · Feb 8, 2016

Murby said:
Statistics mean nothing without context.. In fact, quoting statistics in the absence of context is no more ethical than twisting the words of other people to suit an agenda. It leads to an inaccurate representation of the facts.

I believe any reasonable person interpreting your statements would tend to believe that you think blacks are more violent than whites are.
So lets take a look at some statistics.. Here's an interesting graph of mass murderers by race:

I have been pleading for "context" on these boards for years. No one, NO ONE, will entertain this crazy notion. Everyone uses statistics, even (gasp) me from time to time.

Note: Mass murders are a very rare event, not to be considered a substantial element in the homicide or gun debate. Also most so-called "mass murders" are actually "multiple victim" homicides, not true mass murders as the term is generally understood.

And yes, I do believe blacks are more violent than whites. I wouldn't post statistics that support this if I didn't ("violent" also needs context).

Context is a dirty word to the anti's, because when gun homicides are examined within their context there is little that could have been done to prevent them. So they have chosen to fashion statistics into a giant club to beat us over the head with.

MorkandMindy · Feb 8, 2016

Murby said:
The reason the USA is more violent is due to the fact that we have one characteristic no other country has.. We are a melting pot of every other country in the world. We are the only country with such a wildly diverse population made up of just about every culture, race, and religion in the world.

Due to this fact, there are bound to be clashes between the various differences. It takes a while for different cultures to acclimate to each other and the process can be long and messy.

You could take away every gun in the USA and we'd still have the violence.. it would just morph into a different form.

Also, guns have a way of leveling the battlefield between women and men. Men, in general, posses superior strength, size, and weight, and will usually over power a woman quite easily. Guns have a way of reducing that advantage and allows a woman to protect herself against assault.

Here is some good news.. While the melting pot may be messy for a while, it also results in mixed race offspring. Scientist have concluded two interesting facts.. the further away your parents are separated in the DNA pool, the healthier your children are likely to be. The closer your parents are in the DNA pool, the more likely your children are to have health problems. This is why incest is so bad and why entire royal families and dynasties have fallen because of it.

To say that blacks or Hispanics, or any other race, are the source of violence is just ignorant, stupid, and quite frankly racist. Funny thing is, I don't find the racism as offensive as I do the ignorance that breeds it.

So close, you knew you had an answer there, or very nearly.

I didn't until I started writing a response and found it didn't disprove what you said.

I would suggest that it isn't being a melting pot that is the exact problem, Britain with a much lower homicide rate is also a melting pot.

But it is that in Britain the ingredients are different, or to be more exact, what they experienced before they arrived is different, in maybe 1% of the cases, but it's that 1% that produce many of the homicides, on top of contributions from the drug/gang culture some people have over here.

And yes, there is also a contribution from the competitive nature that has also been instilled in our own population. So I'd suggest that is three sources, not sure if that is the order they are in, but pretty sure those are the three.

The guns are also a factor, it makes for example mistaken identity killings more likely and even the accident rate alone is bad enough to want to reduce them. But yes, I'll concede to a large extent it is the people.

Someone will dispute, well what about Japan? It is more competitive but has a tiny homicide rate. I would ask if the violence isn't still there, just inwardly directed, because a Japanese student will feel he has failed and rather than aggression on another will take it out on himself.

Murby · Feb 8, 2016

OldWiseGuy said:
And yes, I do believe blacks are more violent than whites

You believe wrong then. You are seeing (believing) the social equivalent of an optical illusion.

Should you consider a black person raised in the inner city slums to be more dangerous than a white person raised on a farm in the country? Sure, but it has nothing to do with race.. its all about environment. Switch it around, would you rather depend on a white person raised in the slums or a black person raised on a farm in the country?

It has nothing to do with race.. its about the environment they come from. Additionally, since a persons aggressiveness or disposition for violence, is not isolated to a proverbial vacuum, one must also consider the effects of external bias such as a police officers opinion on who they're going to search and when.. there's also the economic variances as wealthy people tend to have money for effective defenses.

All other factors being the same, there are no differences between any of the races on earth.. There are however cultural differences that affect a persons aggressiveness, and educational differences, religious differences, etc etc.. but these are all environmental, not biological.

There is one difference that could be a significant biological factor, but I'm not sure about it so I say this with extreme caution. Black people were enslaved for a very long time and subjected to very harsh conditions. It may, or may not, be possible for evolutionary changes to have occurred to allow them to survive those conditions.. This is where the environmental can cross over to the biological. One would have to have more knowledge and expertise than I to evaluate this.. While it comes to mind, my first thought is that the time span probably wasn't long enough.. but again, I don't know.

OldWiseGuy · Feb 8, 2016

OldWiseGuy · Feb 8, 2016

Murby said:
All other factors being the same, there are no differences between any of the races on earth.. There are however cultural differences that affect a persons aggressiveness, and educational differences, religious differences, etc etc.. but these are all environmental, not biological.

"All other factors" aren't the same. I have already attributed black violence to their culture, not their race, however there might be a genetic factor.

Murby said:
There is one difference that could be a significant biological factor, but I'm not sure about it so I say this with extreme caution. Black people were enslaved for a very long time and subjected to very harsh conditions. It may, or may not, be possible for evolutionary changes to have occurred to allow them to survive those conditions.. This is where the environmental can cross over to the biological. One would have to have more knowledge and expertise than I to evaluate this.. While it comes to mind, my first thought is that the time span probably wasn't long enough.. but again, I don't know.

Have you considered the "warrior gene"?

Murby · Feb 8, 2016

OldWiseGuy said:
"All other factors" aren't the same. I have already attributed black violence to their culture, not their race, however there might be a genetic factor.

What culture are you taking about? What specific trait of "black culture" are you referring too?

I'm a white guy, I live in farm land out in the country where I've grown up.. Did my time in the military, knew quite a few people from all different races and I am not aware of anything called or referred to as "black culture" that includes any elements of violence or aggression...

Now, I am aware of the fact that if we force a specific racial segment of society to live in high-density populated areas, then allow those area's to turn into run down slums while simultaneously removing funding for their education, you are going to create a "culture" of a bunch of [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]ed off people. And it won't matter what color their skin is.

In my family, we call them "city slickers" because it denotes a person who grew up in a highly populated area.. In many cases, coming from impoverished areas where survival has taken precedence over educational opportunities due to greedy social policies that end up creating environmental issues.. (and when I say environmental, I'm not talking about tree huggers) And it doesn't matter what color their skin is or what part of the world they come from.

To refer to blacks as more likely to attack a white person is beyond just racist.. its a shinning example of outright ignorance and demonstrates you do not even have a rudimentary understanding of your own environment.

OldWiseGuy said:
Have you considered the "warrior gene"?

That's funny.. you know, I'm an electrical engineer by education.. spent most of my career designing a variety of industrial processing machinery. My hobbies are learning as much as I can about particle physics, cosmology and astrophysics.
I'm not much into genetics or biology, or even chemistry for that matter... its just never held a big interest for me.. But I'd bet just about anything that I know 100 times more about genetics than you do, and I can tell you right now that the "warrior gene" hoopla doesn't hold the significance you think it does or in the way you think it does.

When you rationalize an opinion on racism, or any other subject, with evidence you don't fully understand or comprehend, then go through life using it to base decisions on, you do far more damage to yourself than anything else.

OldWiseGuy · Feb 8, 2016

Murby said:
What culture are you taking about? What specific trait of "black culture" are you referring too?

The inner city black gangster culture. Heard of it?

Murby said:
Now, I am aware of the fact that if we force a specific racial segment of society to live in high-density populated areas, then allow those area's to turn into run down slums while simultaneously removing funding for their education, you are going to create a "culture" of a bunch of [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] off people. And it won't matter what color their skin is.

Now you're getting it.

Murby said:
To refer to blacks as more likely to attack a white person is beyond just racist.. its a shinning example of outright ignorance and demonstrates you do not even have a rudimentary understanding of your own environment.

It's not a "reference", it's a fact.

Murby said:
I'm not much into genetics or biology, or even chemistry for that matter... its just never held a big interest for me.. But I'd bet just about anything that I know 100 times more about genetics than you do, and I can tell you right now that the "warrior gene" hoopla doesn't hold the significance you think it does or in the way you think it does.

So you have heard of it.

MorkandMindy · Feb 8, 2016

Murby said:
You believe wrong then. You are seeing (believing) the social equivalent of an optical illusion.

Should you consider a black person raised in the inner city slums to be more dangerous than a white person raised on a farm in the country? Sure, but it has nothing to do with race.. its all about environment. Switch it around, would you rather depend on a white person raised in the slums or a black person raised on a farm in the country?

It has nothing to do with race.. its about the environment they come from. Additionally, since a persons aggressiveness or disposition for violence, is not isolated to a proverbial vacuum, one must also consider the effects of external bias such as a police officers opinion on who they're going to search and when.. there's also the economic variances as wealthy people tend to have money for effective defenses.

I think the main defenses are where you live and how you would buy something illegal.

A handyman who did some work for my sister didn't have much money and was shot outside his house because the person he shared it with turned out to be a drug dealer. Mistaken identity, wouldn't have happened if he had lived somewhere better.

A wealthy person would use a contact for sourcing illegal drugs, the trusted contact would get them, deliver to the house, be paid and nobody would know who the final user was.

It is no surprise that the voter rolls in some states were purged of people delinquent on parking fines. Park outside your friend's house in the suburbs and there are no parking restrictions, it is all about purging poor people from the rolls.

MorkandMindy · Feb 8, 2016

Murby said:
All other factors being the same, there are no differences between any of the races on earth.. There are however cultural differences that affect a persons aggressiveness, and educational differences, religious differences, etc etc.. but these are all environmental, not biological.

I understand that the genetic variety among present day humans is less than within a variety of chimps. I would be inclined to think of the Neanderthals as a separate race of humans, we may have interbred a bit with them, but of all present day humans as a single race with slight genetic variants, Germanic, Viking, Asiatic, and 8 who were until very recently in Africa. There is no such thing as a 'black race'. The tallest people in the World are of African origin as also are the shortest, how can there possibly be one black race? The differences in IQs has been comprehensively found to be cultural, if it wasn't then your kids who likely outperform you by 20 points (even after correcting for age) would have to be of a different race.

Rick Otto · Feb 8, 2016

MorkandMindy said:
The gun violence thread while very interesting is long and complex because there are so many factors.

I thought it might be best to have a thread for each factor to improve the focus

There appear to be three lines of reasoning - the higher rate of homicides in the US is due to:

1. the abundance of guns
2. the violent nature of occupants of the US
3. something about the combination of 1. and 2.

If for example the problem is the media sensationalises gun violence than that is an input into the minds and should be considered with all the other inputs into the minds of the occupants of the US (2).

1.are we being compared to the UK? Has the population difference been factored in? We the people are sovereign here, not the government.
2. Yeah. I admit our violence isn't as "civilized" as yours. I include government when I number the perpetrators. And you guys were pretty violent about us wanting freedom.
3. Something about hypocrisy and irony in you pointing a finger at us.

MorkandMindy · Feb 8, 2016

Murby said:
There is one difference that could be a significant biological factor, but I'm not sure about it so I say this with extreme caution. Black people were enslaved for a very long time and subjected to very harsh conditions. It may, or may not, be possible for evolutionary changes to have occurred to allow them to survive those conditions.. This is where the environmental can cross over to the biological. One would have to have more knowledge and expertise than I to evaluate this.. While it comes to mind, my first thought is that the time span probably wasn't long enough.. but again, I don't know.

The harsh conditions and ruthless punishment and selective breeding all of which unfortunately existed, would have removed the more rebellious so the remaining population should be more peaceful than most.

But as you say, a bigger factor is going to be the childhood environment.

Rick Otto · Feb 8, 2016

MorkandMindy said:
View attachment 168164

If more guns made a nation safer the US would be the safest nation on Earth

The good guy tried and was arrested. He's not in the picture.

Rick Otto · Feb 8, 2016

Paradoxum said:
I think the US has a gun culture, which promote gun sales, and idolizes the use of guns. In my ignorant opinion, this is the problem.

Too many Americans see guns as heroic and amazing, instead of dangerous death machines.

Agreed.

Rick Otto · Feb 8, 2016

Chesterton said:
I get really tired of this unfair bashing. I'm an American, have been a gun owner all my life, and I can absolutely assure you I HAVE NEVER SHOT ANYONE who didn't need shooting. Even if that were arguable I assure you the number of people I've shot is so low as to be statistically negligible. We're talking 5, 6 people tops. Granted, that time outside the bowling alley I shot several people, but certainly that should be properly counted as a single "shooting incident". Still, we're probably talking less than 10 people. Of course there was that one time when I was trying out a rifle but every new product has some learning curve, so that doesn't really count. Anyway, less than 12 for sure. Well, then there was that time I shot the DeLuca kid but c'mon, nobody likes that kid.

Regardless, I can absolutely assure you I've shot less than 20 people.

Oh, wait, 21.

I admire your restraint!

Rick Otto · Feb 8, 2016

MorkandMindy said:
The harsh conditions and ruthless punishment and selective breeding all of which unfortunately existed, would have removed the more rebellious so the remaining population should be more peaceful than most.

But as you say, a bigger factor is going to be the childhood environment.

I must have been 7 or 8yrs old when my 11 or 12yr old brother got a Daisy BB rifle.
He shot me in the leg with it to see if it would hurt.

Murby · Feb 8, 2016

OldWiseGuy said:
Of course they are not the source of all violence, but they are the most violent as a group.

Please show and correct me if I mistook your meaning here, but a page ago in this thread you were referring to blacks and Hispanics as being more violent than whites. Did I get that right?

OldWiseGuy said:
The inner city black gangster culture. Heard of it?

And after several of my arguments showing how wrong you are, you've been reduced to abandoning any racial wide characteristics and have narrowed your opinion and statements to just "inner city black gangster culture"..

Wow, that's a much more precise statement now that you have geographically identified and singled out a specific environment. But we have a little way to go before we're home because you're still stuck on "BLACK"... Did I misinterpret your quotes or your meaning anywhere along the way? If so, please quote and correct as required.

This should cut out the racial bias completely.. here we go.. short and simple.
What about the inner city white gangster culture? I won't even mention the whole Aryian Brotherhood group..

Check out this clown! ya.. no gangster here eh? Are we done yet? (I love the backdrop!)

And oh my.. these fine gentleman look like outstanding citizens.

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