>> Right away you can see that 56% are "stranger or unknown"
>
> 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.
That's why it says "stranger OR unknown" ... :-)
> I believe, though I have(n't) double checked, they don't
> even include unknown in the calculations since it is
> simply unknown, end of story.
As the numbers I posted showed, "unknown" is the largest group by far: 6,015 out of 14,054 ... so yes, they do include them, because they are the most significant group.
> It's not unreasonable to assume some are labeled unknown
> because someone's being protected from prosecurition.
I bet that's a really small number of the unknowns ...
> Poor recordkeeping. You name it.
Yes, I mentioned:
>> For 2002, there were an estimated 16,204 murders. For
>> various reasons, we only have UCR data for 14,054 of them
But still: your idea that "3/4 of homicides were committed by acquaintances, neighbors, family members, intimate partners" is wildly wrong and misleading.
> So the uncertainty is to great for them to make the
> assumption you've made.
Wait: I'm the one who is debunking YOUR assumption. I'm making no assumption at all! I'm using published data and a little explanatory annotation to foil your goal of tossing off a significant sounding soundbite that's just plain wrong :-)
> 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.
Well, personal is one thing. But what you claimed is just wrong.
I think you're interested here in "Stranger" which is something like 25% of the ones we know about. And again: when you say "violence" I think "violent crime" -- of which "murder" is something like 1% ... so we don't know anything more about "impersonal violence" here, though we know that there's relatively less "impersonal murder" than one might think. However: read on.
> 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.
I think that's true: your chances of getting murdered in the US go WAY WAY up if you a) deal narcotics; b) are in a gang; c) buy narcotics from other than long-term trusted sources; d) are currently commiting a felony. If you aren't in that group, you're EXTREMELY unlikely to get murdered in the US.
But:
> Which is what I imagine the merikans Woj was
> talking about are afraid of, yes?
I think there's a danger is using murder statistics to say _anything_ about the 'violent crime' rate in the US: first of all, for all the seeming ambiguity above (40% "unknown"), murder is the MOST LIKELY to be cleared violent crime. A LOT of violent crime is, essentially, random in the way that we've shown murder not to be. Not murder: but non-murder violent crime.
/jordan