Thursday, August 11, 2011

On British riots...

Something you don't hear mentioned often here...

Seems the neighborhoods that these riots have occurred in are poor, ethnic and crime-ridden. Not surprising, but I read a statistic today that shocked me:

The borough that Tottenham is in has averaged more than 200 gun-related crimes a year for more than three years, and more than 50% of those are shootings (where the firearm is actually discharged in the act of the crime). Now, granted, 100 shootings is a tiny amount of the per capita percentage (less than .3%)... but other statistics are OUTRAGEOUSLY higher.

For example, the actual homicide rate in the UK is more than nine times greater than anywhere else in Europe, and only 7% of them are done via firearms. Compare that to Northern Ireland, where gun ownership is legal, and you see both firearm crimes AND homicide numbers are less than HALF of the rest of the UK. London is particularly dangerous... violent crimes such as rape, armed robbery (presumably with something other than a firearm), and violent assault (is there another kind?) at 12% higher in London than anywhere else in the United Kingdom (with the possible exception of Manchester... they have it bad too).

Where is the correlation between "gun control" and lower crime rates here?

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