Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!hoptoad!amdcad!pyramid!lll-winken!ncsuvx!mcnc!labrea!decwrl!ucbvax!ernie.Berkeley.EDU!jwl From: jwl@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP Newsgroups: alt.flame Subject: Re: Nothing to do with Gun Nuts Message-ID: <21282@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: Wed, 14-Oct-87 21:54:04 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.21282 Posted: Wed Oct 14 21:54:04 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 17-Oct-87 10:46:01 EDT References: <'em> <1877@gryphon.CTS.COM> Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: jwl@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (James Wilbur Lewis) Distribution: na Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 40 In article <1877@gryphon.CTS.COM> richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: -In article <21230@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> DU.UUCP (James Wilbur Lewis) writes: ->The USA crime statistics include areas where *millions* of people ->live in overcrowded, economically depressed areas like Harlem, East ->Oakland, the Tenderloin, etc...how many British people live in ->comparable areas? A fair comparison would be to look at Britain ->versus North Dakota, Alaska, or some other sparsely-populated ->state, which closely approximates the economic and population density ->distribution of Britain. - -Compare the ratio of total population to area for the U.S. and the -U.K. and I think you'll find the U.K. is more densly populated. C'mon, Richard, I know that! That's why I said "distribution" instead of just "population density". In this context, a population density figure for an entire country is a meaningless statistic because it doesn't reflect "clumping". What's needed here is a second-order statistic; an interesting one might be "percentage of the population living in cities with population >100,000". I make no claims as to what the comparison between the UK and USA might reveal; only that the degree of overcrowding is an important contributing factor toward violent crime, one which I'm willing to bet is more strongly correlated with crime statistics than the presence or absence of gun control laws. Distribution matters. Just ask the guy who drowned in a river that was 3 feet deep (on the average!) :-) To those of you claiming that Britain's gun control laws are responsible for their lower rate of violent crime compared to the USA: I'd be interested in your explanation of the crime rate of New York City, which has very strict handgun laws. (Remember why Bernard Goetz was carrying that illegal weapon in the first place? He had been robbed and brutally beaten once before, and *still* couldn't obtain a permit!) The only explanations I can come up with would tend to invalidate any conlusions based on comparisons between American and British crime rates. But don't let that stop you; I'll gleefully pounce on whatever lame rationalizations the anti-gun faction can come up with! :-) -- Jim Lewis U.C. Berkeley