No, I did not. You said the US's homicide rate is average and I pointed out that it is only true if you include countries that are ravaged by poverty, corruption, crime, wars etc. Many of which I consider hellholes.
I assumed the US inspires to do considerably better than that.

"We might be worse than the UK, Australia, Sweden and Bulgaria but hey, at least we are better than Somalia, Zimbabwe, Mali and Peru."

Fwiw,

I think it's likely that you're not a cowardly racist and it's just that your bad arguments and closed mindedness force you into saying most of the world is a hellhole.

That must be it.

The list of countries and homicide rates really is not simply an ordered list of other ills.

Travel around the US. It's very different than Western Europe. It's not just high gun ownership.

Still considering if I should make "Likely not a cowardly racist" my undertitle.

You're not brave enough to do that.

Colt firearms company files for bankruptcy

http://www.wsj.com/articles/colt-def...day-1434310925

Among its creditors: the NRA, lobbyists

Whole US states that have an obsession with guns sure are. Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, etc. You could include Louisiana if not for a single fabulous couple of square miles.

FYP

Despite the easy availability of guns in the United States our homicide rate not counting gun use is 8 times as high as Japan's total homicide rate and still almost double the UK's.

I don't think anyone has suggested that guns are the only factor.

Yeah. You guys do lots of other really stupid things too... "Drug war"

It's been suggested more or less countless times that guns are responsible for all gun violence.

I fully expect goofy to respond "and what's wrong with that?"

I don't know if this is a typing error or some kind of philosophical 'guns don't kill people, people do' statement??

Which is why, to some extent, the US homicide rate tends a bit towards Mexico and Central America instead of Denmark.

Gang violence largely has to do with drugs and that's directly something like 20% of homicide, but also putting so many people through prison makes them more of a risk (and more at risk).

I wonder how much generally has to do with data collection though. The US homicide rate went from 1.3 to 4.8 from 1904 to 1908 and stayed high after that. Meanwhile the rate in UK was a but under 1 during that time and stayed that way.

I can't think of any reasonable explanation other than the FBI being created in 1908 and keeping better/different records. Immigration was high those years, but immigration was high from 1892 through 1914 and the homicide rate isn't well correlated.

9 killed in South Carolina church.

Probably a drug deal that went wrong though.. Nothing to see here.

Pretty bad imo that you would use that as a point right now, but imo mass shootings are the best reason for banning guns. It's a tiny part of the statistics though and banning or restricting guns would certainly not automatically eliminate it.

That is the point.

To some degree guns increase violence, or at least the consequences, but the ubiquitous use of # of dead from guns = deaths absolutely attributable to the prevalence of guns itt is stupid.

You probably never said it. Good for you. Although, if you think the sentiment that people kill people, not guns, had no merit, maybe that is what you think.

The easier it is for someone to do something, the more likely people are to do it.

Guns are specifically designed to kill.. They are really good at it unsurprisingly.

Do you think if it was possible to kill someone just by thinking about it, the murder rate would go up or down?

Of course eliminating guns would lower the homicide rate.

Pretty bad how? Mentioning a completely relevant event that happened in the last 24hrs, that perfectly highlights one of the main downsides of a society littered with guns?

Number of these incidents in Australia since gun control changes in 1996... 0.

You keep attempting to jump on a moral high horse for some reason, I'm not sure why.

First the random accusations of racism, now this.

It's not random. The notion that half the world is a hell hole is offensive. Probably it was just terrible arguing though, because it suits his position to define any place > 4.7 per 100000 homicide rate as a hell hole.

Using every anecdote, as opposed to statistics, is also bad reasoning. Doing it now, is exploiting a tragedy for an inet argument.

Aside from having 15 times the population of Australia, there are other reasons there are more shootings in the US. In this case, racism right in the heart of slave history.

Half of the world is a hell hole by Western standards. Get offended.

Exploiting tragedy, what? It just happens that these tragedies keep coming every month.

One country changed its gun laws and lo-and-behold, no more mass-shooting incidents. The country that is probably most similar to the US in the world. But noo, the US is a unique snowflake so this doesn't count at all.

Oh no did his point offend your delicate ****ing sensibilities?

The grownups are talking, microbet. About grownup stuff.

[QUOTE=microbet;47284954]
Aside from having 15 times the population of Australia, there are other reasons there are more shootings in the US. /QUOTE]

So China/India having 4x the population of the U.S. have how many mass shootings?

Also, ethnic tension is way worse there than the racism that exists in U.S.