From rosserjb at jmu.edu Wed May 5 09:30:26 1999
A very large (but less than 50%) of gun deaths are among family
members.
It's true: people who are in close proximity to each other kill each other, sometimes at what appears to be an alarming rate. Very often (by a ratio of about 3:1) it is a man killing his spouse/girlfriend/ex.
But I think you are confusing the numbers; this group is actually quite small: in 1997 there were (430 male + 1174 female) 1604 total homicide-by-intimates[1] (vs. about 18,000 homicides [about 70% with guns]). I don't have the intimate-homicide broken down by weapon type, but even if they are all by gun (they aren't), your "less than 50%" starts to look more like "less than 10%" ...
And it's not "gun deaths" since "gun deaths" are dominated (more than 50%) by self-inflicted wounds.
[1] http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/intimate.txt
Are these people your precious "criminals"?
I'm not sure what you mean by 'precious' but yes, I think killing an intimate is a very serious violent crime. In fact, I'll go on record as saying that I'm firmly against it.
But compare this number (1604) to the number of homicides that are committed under "unknown" circumstances: that is, they find a body but have no idea what happened: 5,827; or those committed in the process of committing another felony: 3,459. Now it's also important to note that intimate-homicide is probably the highest-cleared type of homicide, because it happens in the home with no other possible explaination.
Sam Pawlett's (I think) post is "spot-on." Many other
countries have higher rates of all kinds of crime than the US
does (some don't, of course). So it is not that the US is this
"high crime" place. But somehow we have this far higher rate
of deaths, mostly by guns.
I'm of course only talking about violent crime, in which there *is* an aberration. I think we've heard quite enough about the problems of comparing crime rates (or public-transit-effectiveness, for that matter) in various countries.
All the talk by you and Margaret about ropes and knives is
silly. Guns kill a whole lot easier and quicker than do ropes
and knives or other potential weapons.
Absolutely, but there *is* a clear substitution effect for suicide, the largest group (the majority, actually) of gun deaths. This substitution effect is shown to have no impact whatsoever on the rate of suicide when guns are taken away. And while guns (and handguns in particular) dominate the homicide numbers, the 1997 numbers look like this:
Guns 12,397
Handguns 9,796
Other guns 2,601 Knife 2,355 Blunt object 822 Other weapon 2,637
So 31% of homicides are commited with non-guns, a not-insignificant number.
As for the NRA, I think that they should take seriously that
bumper sticker about "they'll have to take my gun out my hands
when I am cold and dead." Let the NRA be that.
Last I checked, the NRA accounts for less than 10% of the gunowners in the US -- they certainly don't speak for all gun owners. They have their agendas and problems just like any other special interest group. I think it's important to not allow the NRA to be "the alternative" in a discussion about gun rights.
/jordan