Guns advocacy OT! 571

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 03:00:30 +0000,

I am not claiming that the firearms rate went down, but that the rate as a whole, went up, and it has. As you point out below. *Despite* increasing the restrictions on firearms ownership.

So does the US numbers. The FBI UCR (which is a good source for these numbers for the US) lists them as "liquidate and non-negligent mandissolution" The US homicide rate, is currently at it's lowest since about 1965. 5.7-100K. Despite the increase in the number of firearms in private hands every year.

853 devided into 53 million, works out to roughly 1.7-100K, quite significantly lower than the US rate. But if (big if, granted) the UK rate keeps trending up at the rate of 1.35%, and the US rate keeps trending down at the rate of 30% over the same 8 year period. (US homicide rate in 1995 was 8.2-100K) then another 15 or so years, and the UK will surpbutt the US. Granted, that's not likely to actually happen without more factors, both rates are likely to change their trends over the next 15 years. But it's instructive to note that the US homicide rate has dropped drastically since it's rather alarming high in the mid 80's.

"Corrective work"? does that mean changing the numbers to account for the rests that were previously thought to be non-criminal?

I remember reading about that whackjob, ick.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU-Linux)

iD8DBQFCEEm7d90bcYOAWPYRAtnyAKDBN5-fEzkWUuTpbYTNqknc2cW5-gCffVTL 4N3zKFguJuYHnCTM1S65Ybk= =+4GG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-- Strip Mining Prevents Forest Fires.