>Right away you can see that 56% are "stranger or unknown"
I'm not sure if it's at UCR or another crime stats report, but thee's a detailed discussion of this issue. Basically, they've concluded that it's not a good idea to conclude that because the perp is "unknown" it follows that it's a stranger. I believe, though I have double checked, they don't even include unknown in the calculations since it is simply unknown, end of story. It's not unreasonable to assume some are labeled unknown because someone's being protected from prosecurition. Poor recordkeeping. You name it. So the uncertainty is to great for them to make the assumption you've made.
That snippet was written to Chris Doss back in 2001 when he wanted to claim that, while Moscow had a high homicide rate, it was mostly because they were instances of men killing wives. The implication was that, in the US, we suffer a lot of impersonal violence. That's not true, as you can see yourself. A good number of them may be because it was a dealer killing a customer who won't pay up but they're still someone you know, not some random freak who pulls a gun and pops a cap in your skull while walking through a "bad" neighborhood. Which is what I imagine the merikans Woj was talking about are afraid of, yes?
Speaking of, in my childhood, I vaguely remember a rash of sniper incidents. Is that my memory playing tricks or did something like that really happen one summer?
Kelley