3 people killed in shooting near Texas A&M University

[Byrthnoth]

Owch. Actual data must be hard to take.

Do you really think the British underreport their gun violence by an order of magnitude due to their can-do attitude and stiff upper lips? There may be valid arguments against gun control, but "gun violence does not drop when you take away guns" is definitely not one of them.

[Zeb]

How many of those US homicides are police shooting "criminal scum"?

[drwaffles]

Quoted for awesome? I think so!


How about the UK has a dark secret of under reporting crime because they have an elitist attitude and don't want to be viewed by the rest of the world as the barbaric mother of an uncivilized group of gun-crazed maniacs? Either way you look at it, with or without guns, the UK still has one of the highest per-person rape/assault/stabbing/incest/predatory robbery crime rates in the world. Murder is bad but so is abductions, kidnapping, terrorist incursions on UK soil, and human trafficking which has been linked to several members of the UK Government in the past.

Stop being so elitist and just agree that this incident was blown outta proportion by the media hype because people like you eat up the whole gun control issue and are helping the media get very fucking rich by watching their programs.

This is... one of the most ridiculously stupid things I've ever read. I'm not even going to respond because you've already demonstrated your inability to argue coherently or even understand the point, and I don't want to waste my time.

[miokomioko]

I'm pretty sure every shooting from now on will always be tagged with being "near" the nearest school campus regardless of the people involved. Sensational bullshit.

[Ragnus]

To be fair, it's kind ridiculous to compare a country where retards have access to guns just because they have a clean federal background to a country where you need to show ID just to buy a freaking butter knife. The cultures are totally different.

As shown, US gun violence is actually on the decline and I'm more prone to believing that almost every shooting is blown out of proportion due to everyone being so connected to everything. I do agree that there needs to be some kinda control, in the cases of assault weapons and AP ammo, but guns have been bred into American culture. Hell, two of the most stereotypical American things are the showdown at high noon and quick draw contests back in the wild west age.

We don't live in that time period right now but there are plenty of people who still live the lifestyle and honestly believe in the "Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again" mentality. Hell, I've seen that sign on a few properties. On top of that there is a problem with gang violence which almost always involves some firepower. America is never going to be Britain because it would require a total shift in culture to something that your average, stars and stripes bleeding individual will always resist being since the UK is what we broke away from to do our own thing in their eyes. Giving up their guns is equivalent to bowing down to big government in their eyes. It's the same reason why every major shooting always sparks up permit requests and gun sales out of the fear of regulation.

We've already restrict convicted felons from legally owning guns or even going into a gun range. It's just that some parts of America are huge proponents of using guns to protect yourself, your family and your property and that drives gun violence figures up. Of course you're going to see lots more people in this country shooting each other when handguns, which are the predominant form of gun violence in the country, are billed as personal protection tools just like a taser or pepper spray. On top of that, the appearance of stand your ground laws in more areas means it gives people more leeway to shoot people and get off scot-free.

[archibaldcrane]

End the War on Drugs and you'll see gun violence in America decline even further.

[Byrthnoth]

PS. Given the variance in that data I can't really make myself believe that gun violence has dropped. Dropped from '93? Okay. Dropped from '98? Ehhhhhhh....

[Churchill]

That's cause you wanna believe otherwise.

[Byrthnoth]

'98 to '08 average: 3.12, STD: 0.15

2.9853 isn't even one standard deviation away from the mean.

Realistically those stats aren't right but if I do the real stats then the answer is even less meaningful.

[archibaldcrane]

PS. Given the variance in that data I can't really make myself believe that gun violence has dropped. Dropped from '93? Okay. Dropped from '98? Ehhhhhhh....

wut?

Why would you have a hard time believing that gun violence is down a measly 10% or so in the past 10 years? What other information are you processing that would make that so hard to believe?

What makes those stats "realistically not right"?

[archibaldcrane]

Violent crime
Murder rate (all types, not just gun)
Property crime

All have been going down pretty steadily since 1991. All numbers are per 100,000 people.

[Xno Kappa]

Simple. It's not the stats that he likes.

[archibaldcrane]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...arceration.png

Goddamn, 32% of black men spend time in prison at some point in their lives?

Holy fuck.

[Dimmauk]

End the War on Drugs and you'll see gun violence in America decline even further.

This!

The worst single gunman massacre wasnt in America, it was in Norway.

[Dimmauk]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...arceration.png

Goddamn, 32% of black men spend time in prison at some point in their lives?

Holy fuck.

Crime down cause minorities are doing better? Hell, we president now.

[archibaldcrane]

The worst single gunman massacre wasnt in America, it was in Norway.

And by population, for every 1 gunman massacre Norway has, the US should have 62.

[archibaldcrane]

Crime down cause minorities are doing better? Hell, we president now.

Well, seriously, the vast, vast majority of gun murders are going to occur in poor black and hispanic neighborhoods (the thousands of crimes you don't hear on international news). Now, I'm not arguing that blacks and hispanics are doing better (they aren't really) but the drug and gang violence of the early 1990s is WAY better now than it was then.

[bechyni]

we need to step shit up then

[Byrthnoth]

If you look at Gun Violence in isolation from that list waffles provided, you'll see that the variance is fairly large relative to the change that you're saying is significant. The statement that I made was that I didn't think it had gone down significantly since 1998. Ignoring the problems with the data set (where is the year 2000?), you could do this statistical test by multiplying the rate (deaths per 100,000 people) by the population of the US to get the raw number of deaths, then adding the population of the US in each year and the number of deaths in each year for 1998-2008 to obtain one sample for that range of years. Treat it as a binomial distribution (you either died to gun violence or you didn't) and ignore the fact your samples aren't truly independent because people can't be killed by gun violence twice. Then statistically compare that distribution to the 2009 one after doing the same conversion to the 2009 numbers. Keep in mind that this number is so close to 0 that you can't assume normality and will have to use one of the alternative methods listed here.

It's a lot of effort to put into a test when I could just look at it and go, "Yeah, no."

[Dimmauk]

Well, seriously, the vast, vast majority of gun murders are going to occur in poor black and hispanic neighborhoods (the thousands of crimes you don't hear on international news). Now, I'm not arguing that blacks and hispanics are doing better (they aren't really) but the drug and gang violence of the early 1990s is WAY better now than it was then.

Yeah it's still bad, but you rarely see drive bys anymore. Actually some dude a couple miles from my house got ran over, then they got out and shot him. Crime is up here, most blame Katrina.