Reply #70: post # 24 [View All]

[iverglas]

The post in which I initially cited this source:
http://www.cfc-ccaf.gc.ca/en/research/other_docs/notes/canus/default.asp

"I would like to see why they havent updated their numbers in almost ten years"

The article was written in 1998. Feel free to find more recent figures that demonstrate significant changes in the comparisons.

" If you noticed the ratio per 100,000 is much lower in Canada too....GENIUS"

I'm at a loss.

The POINT was that the rate (number of homicides/100,000) was much lower in Canada than in the US. Part of that point was that while the rate of non-firearms homicides was higher in the US than in Canada, the rate of firearms homicides was A WHOLE LOT higher in the US thani in Canada. What did you think it was?????

YOU said:

"We had 20 times the number of homocides without firearms than Canada had with all their homocides combined."

If the US had had FIVE times the number of non-firearms homicides, it would then have had a LOWER RATE of non-firearms homicides. The NUMBER is completely meaningless when the size of the population in which that number occurred is disregarded.

OF COURSE the US has many times more homicides, of any type, than Canada; it is a many times larger country.

BUT why would its RATE of homicides be THREE times the Canadian homicide RATE?? THAT is the question.

We've got as far as you noticing that the RATE for non-firearms homicide is lower in Canada, now. Progress.

Have you noticed yet that, while the US non-firearms homicide rate is less than 2 TIMES the Canadian rate, the US firearms homicide rate is over 8 TIMES the Canadian rate? the US handgun homicide rate is over 15 TIMES the Canadian rate?

And I must presume that while you would undoubtedly say that all kinds of things are likely to be CAUSAL FACTORS in this difference -- things that contribute to making the US rate 3 times the Canadian rate -- and that you would perhaps offer some hypotheses in that regard, you are not willing to acknowledge that the much greater accessibility of firearms in the US is one such causal factor that contributes to making the US firearms homicide rate many times higher than the Canadian rate.