Is safe storage legislation something we should push?

[Tither]

Link Gun Violence and Constitutional Issues

The FBI statistics reveal that 75 percent of all violent crimes for any locality are committed by six percent of hardened criminals and repeat offenders.18 Violent crimes continue to be a problem in the inner cities with gangs involved in the drug trade.

Link Click here for a study done by the University of Tennessee Med School wait a moment and the link will take you to the exact paragraph.

Looking only to official criminal records, data over the past thirty years consistently show that the mythology of murderers as ordinary citizens does not hold true. Studies have found that approximately 75% of murderers have adult criminal records, and that murderers average a prior adult criminal career of six years, including four major adult felony arrests. These studies also found that when the murder occurred [a]bout 11% of murder arrestees [were] actually on pre-trial release--that is, they were awaiting trial for another offense.

The fact that only 75% of murderers have adult crime records should not be misunderstood as implying that the remaining 25% of murderers are non-criminals. The reason over half of those 25% of murderers don't have adult records is that they are juveniles. Thus, by definition they cannot have an adult criminal record. Juvenile criminal records might well show these murderers to have extensive serious criminal records.

Link Violence in America - Effective Solutions

more than two-thirds of gun homicide "victims" are involved with drug trafficking or have evidence of ante-mortem illicit drug use.

Not only do the data show that acquaintance and domestic homicide are a minority of homicides,[26] but the FBI's definition of acquaintance and domestic homicide requires only that the murderer knew or was related to the decedent. That dueling drug dealers are acquainted does not make them "friends." Over three-quarters of murderers have long histories of violence against not only their enemies and other "acquaintances," but also against their relatives.

The gun control advocacy literature from the "medical community" shows that fully two-thirds of gun homicide "victims" are, in fact, drug dealers and their customers who wreak tremendous human and economic havoc upon society. In failing to account for this, the medical literature cannot and does not honestly assess these deaths.

Understanding all of this will, in my opinion make a real and actual difference in making laws that actually will combat crime.

[haspelbein]

haspelbein You know I respect you and your position however I do think there is plenty to learn from some comparisons. For instance, if we could learn how to better control crime from Germany than hooray for us. So I went on a search for the answer.

I feel honored that you respect my position. I agree that there is a lot to learn from such comparisons, but they are generally very deceiving.

Things are relatively straight-forward for murder. A person laying dead in the gutter with a knife in his back is considered murdered worldwide. Now, let's take the definition of "assault" or "rape". Such crimes are reported very differently. The definition of 'rape" in the US is usually more inclusive than what I've seen in most European countries. I'm not even considering outright political motivations that may factor into the reporting of these numbers.

When I read a report that England has the worst crime rate in the world, then my immediate assumption would be that England is reporting a lot of crime. If the same level of crime would be reported the same way in a differenct country is another question.
I remember trying to report a property crime in the Czech Republic myself. The police was just laughing at me.

[...]
So our overall victimization is greater than Germany, but not as much disparity as one would think.

I have seen a very wide range on statistics regarding vitimization. I'm not saying that the numbers are wrong, but it is very hard to validate that they are indeed comparable. Because of the differences in reporting I would almost put more trust in surveys based on common criteria than in meta analysis of government reports.

Accurate? I think so.

I will agree with you on murder, but I will be less trusting regarding suicide.

Like haspelbein said “International comparisons are very tricky, and crime statistics are almost never comparable one-to-one.” However what is clear is that Germany’s crime and murder rate is lower than ours. So what does this all mean? Can differences in population density and population dispersal give us a clue to the causes crime?

Maybe, but if you pick a single parameter and disregard external factors you are skewing the results. (It's the same method that the antis use when they claim that stricter gun control laws in xyz countries are responsible for their lower crime rate.)

The problem is that internationally only factors such as the wealth disparity (GINI Index) and secondarily police enforcement hold any halfway decent correlation to the murder rate across an extended number of countries. Even then we bury a lot of cultural factors that don't have anything to do with wealth, gun laws, or population density.

In Germany crime peaked in the 1990s. The main reason was Germany's very liberal law regarding refugees seeking asylum, which led to Germany accepting a lot of asylum seekers from the former Yugoslavia and also many Kurds. The Turkish/Kurdish conflict was indeed fought by proxy in Germany, and the same happened with refugees from the Balkans. Much of the "low-level civil war" was recorded as crime.

This is of course just an example of one particular factor. It however illustrates that if you pick a particular country, you may overlook external factors that may weigh far more strongly than the parameter that you're trying to correlate.

This is why in discussions I ususally prefer data from the US, such as the FBI Unified Crime report of the CDC studies that you also quote very often. Because different states in the US vary in gun laws but are culturally very similar and share (to a certain degree) reporting standards, their data is far more comparable.

[Tither]

I agree with much of what you said, however there is this one point that should not be overlooked.

Can differences in population density and population dispersal give us a clue to the causes crime?

Maybe, but if you pick a single parameter and disregard external factors you are skewing the results. (It's the same method that the antis use when they claim that stricter gun control laws in xyz countries are responsible for their lower crime rate.)

This is a US Department of Justice report I quoted that clearly states the fact that crime does indeed happen with much grater frequency in the city rather than the suburbs or a rural setting. This is a hugely important fact when considering how to fight crime in America. And I think this is a universal truth, even though culture and other factors play an important role in other countries.

Here is something everyone instinctively knows. Why is it important where you live?
Link Urban, Suburban, and Rural Victimization, 1993-98

The average annual 1993-98 violent crime rate in urban areas was about 74% higher than the rural rate and 37% higher than the suburban rate.

Tie this in with the social economic factors and this study from Tennessee Med School and I think we have pretty much nailed down some important causes of crime in the U.S. and possibly some of the important differences between our societies.

Link In sum, increased firearm availability to honest, responsible people--of any race--does not cause increased violence.

"Fixating on guns seems to be, for many people, a fetish which allows them to ignore the more intransigent causes of American violence, including its dying cities, inequality, deteriorating family structure, and the all-pervasive economic and social consequences of a history of slavery and racism."

Germany is a great collection of smaller communities, while here in the U.S., 80% of our population lives in cities.

[haspelbein]

[...] Germany is a great collection of smaller communities, while here in the U.S., 80% of our population lives in cities.

Again a tricky question, mainly in regards to the definition of "rural". Overall, the population density in Germany is about a factor 8 higher than the one in the US. (based on 1996 data)

Germany simply does not have rural communities that you would encounter in the US. Quite frankly, most of the German countryside would be part of the commuter belt by US standards. Very few Germans live beyond 30 driving minutes from the nearest city and most small towns have a definite suburban feel to them.

Nor do the German cities have the same murder rates that you would encounter in the US. The reason for this is to a large degree the condition of the urban core of many US cities. It is largely a question of who lives in the urban core, their economic condition and integration (or lack thereof) with the rest of society.
Similar conditions are just starting to develop in Germany.

I believe that crime fighting is indeed easier in smaller communities, but I don't considered population density alone to be one of the main contributors to crime. Otherwise the crime rates in many parts of Asia would be far higher.

[Tither]

Nor do the German cities have the same murder rates that you would encounter in the US. The reason for this is to a large degree the condition of the urban core of many US cities. It is largely a question of who lives in the urban core, their economic condition and integration (or lack thereof) with the rest of society.
Similar conditions are just starting to develop in Germany.

I think we just said exactly the same thing here. That is exactly what the study from the U of Tennessee also said.

I believe that crime fighting is indeed easier in smaller communities, but I don't considered population density alone to be one of the main contributors to crime. Otherwise the crime rates in many parts of Asia would be far higher.

Again, I think we are kind of on the same page, but let me clarify. Do I understand you to say that the same amount of crime happens in cities as in a rural community? If not, we are making the same point. Cultural and social economic conditions aside, more crime happen in bigger cities than in a rural setting. And that is what the USDOJ report says.

[haspelbein]

[...] Again, I think we are kind of on the same page, but let me clarify. Do I understand you to say that the same amount of crime happens in cities as in a rural community? If not, we are making the same point. Cultural and social economic conditions aside, more crime happen in bigger cities than in a rural setting. And that is what the USDOJ report says.

I think I need to differentiate here a bit. There is (in general) very little crime in rural areas, even though meth has changed that a bit.

Traditionally the per capita crime in urban areas has always been the highest. However, there are now some cities in the US who are reversing the trend. The urban core is being redeveloped or gentrified. Oakland, CA is a very good example for such a demographic "crime ring".

What i'm saying is: Crime happens in desolate neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are traditionally in inner cities. This is in particular the case because the more affluent residents left for the suburbs in the second half of the last century. A number of these suburbs are now threatened by the same fate as the inner cities, and we will continue to see a crime increase in areas that are a notch below the inner cities in population density.

Or to summarize it in one sentence: It's not the population density that is a problem in those neighborhoods, but rather the concentration of poverty.

Just take a look at the murders in Columbus. You can list just a few neighborhoods that are responsible for the majority of murders.

[Tither]

haspelbein Well said my friend! Well said.