[Dangime]

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Baltimore murder victims share ties to criminal justice system

80 percent of the 196 people who were slain last year had criminal records, according to Baltimore police statistics released Monday. More than half the suspects had previous gun arrests, and four in 10 were on parole or probation.

"It is further evidence that violence sticks to violence," said city police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, noting that the trend has been steady for years. "The vast number of cases that we deal with are bad guys versus bad guys. What we have to do is put those people behind bars."

I really think this angle deserves it's own thread. There have been a lot of arguments out there about the US having more gun deaths, so I wanted to throw this concept in the mix. Most gun deaths are bad guys killing bad guys. Here you can see an example from a major American city, 80% criminal records, 50% arrests associated with guns, 40% on papers...

Many of you have made heartfelt pleas that guns must be limited to save lives, but when the vast majority of those being killed are basically drug users, drug dealers, under the influence of alcohol, have prior arrests for illegal gun use, or are on some kind of community supervision the question must be asked: Why should law abiding citizens give up their rights to make the streets safer for criminals?

I know it's the children and innocent victims people use to justify their emotional arguements, but in the end, these kind of deaths in America are rare, very rare. They certainly don't add up to the kind of numbers that gun control advocates point to when demanding tougher gun control.

Most of the people dying in murders have already put themselves into the world of violence. Taking guns away from the law abiding citizenry isn't going to change this. The local drug dealer isn't exactly going to walk down to the station and turn in his guns now, is he?

Perhaps looking into some kind of drug legalization, we could remove this money incentive to ride about killing folks with guns whist under the influence of mind warping chemicals

[Savagelight]

Looks like Dexter is real. This explains why prostitutes are a favorite target of serial killers.

[catatonic]

Karma?

[Nemesis]

	Originally Posted by Dangime To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Baltimore

Do you think, maybe... just maybe... singling out the second most crime-ridden city in the US is biasing your conclusion? There's no freaking way Baltimore can be considered representative of the US as a whole. You're talking about a clear outlier, here.

[Gilbo]

Let's look at the national figures then:


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"12,664 murder victims in 2011 in the USA", "Law enforcement reported 653 justifiable homicides in 2011." so the vast majority have no justification in law.*

"54.3 percent were killed by someone they knew (acquaintance, neighbor, friend, boyfriend, etc.); 24.8 percent of victims were slain by family members" so the majority were based on domestic arguments, rather than criminal activity.

So Dangime on what basis are you saying the majority of homicides are justifiable, which is different from the FBI's definition of justifiable?

[Doc Savage]

This may be a bit more informative, in terms of raw statistics....


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[Loneliness]

First of all, in criminal life the main value is trust. If someone steals your drugs, you can't tell that to the police. If someone sells you crap, you can't do anything about it either. If someone didn't pay your share, also, nothing can be done. But not everyone understands that. A "good" criminal is the one, who understands that he has lost this time, but he forgets that asshole who has failed him and searches for a better person. Unfortunatelly, there are many idiots, who can't lose and seek for revenge, which is usually not some mastermind plan of destruction, but simply severe violence or killing.

There are many things that should be legalized.

[zibber]

	Originally Posted by Dangime To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I know it's the children and innocent victims people use to justify their emotional arguements, but in the end, these kind of deaths in America are rare, very rare. They certainly don't add up to the kind of numbers that gun control advocates point to when demanding tougher gun control.

20% of 196 is "rare, very rare"?

It's a limp argument.

[Icy]

so... if the criminals are only killing other criminals... why do we need guns to protect ourselves if we aren't criminals...

just following the logic here.

[Hydro]

	Originally Posted by Gilbo To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	So Dangime on what basis are you saying the majority of homicides are justifiable, which is different from the FBI's definition of justifiable?

You should probably dig a little bit deeper into all those FBI tables. Especially when you look at the gender split between different races you might find some amazing differences that might give you some hints. Just looking at the main table doesn't tell you all there is... Actually that's fantastic data!

And keep in mind:
- Your friendly drug dealer next door is your neighbor, acquaintance and can be even your friend...
- The FBI tables talk about homicide in general and "gun murder" exclusively. Table 11 goes a bit more in detail and I think Dangime was more talking about gun control and not "dangerous tools" in general.

Anyway, thanks for posting this link! It's a great source to data mining and analyzing I was looking for for so long to hone my 6sigma skills a bit.

[hgrail]

Thanks - those Excel tables were informative.

I've read elsewhere that up to 60% of gun related deaths were suicides. I've also read that a high percentage of firearm deaths were gang related. I would be very interested if we could find a source that would fuss this two types of deaths out of the data.

	Originally Posted by Doc Savage To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	This may be a bit more informative, in terms of raw statistics.... To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[Aronnax]

To clarify, are you really trying to argue that "being under the influence of alcohol at some point in your life = not a social problem if murdered."?

[INTroJect]

	Originally Posted by Gilbo To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	So Dangime on what basis are you saying the majority of homicides are justifiable, which is different from the FBI's definition of justifiable?

Of course its going to be completely different from the damn fbi's definition of what constitutes "justifiable".

To murder someone is really never justifiable, but some people just do really shitty things that lead people to conclude that they deserve it.

---------- Post added 12-23-2012 at 02:16 PM ----------

	Originally Posted by Icy To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	so... if the criminals are only killing other criminals... why do we need guns to protect ourselves if we aren't criminals... just following the logic here.

The argument isn't "the criminals are only killing criminals", but an enormous swath of it is. Non criminals might want to have a gun so as to also deter criminals.

[Gilbo]

I liked Judge Dredd when I was a kid, but I still don't think street justice a very good moral basis for arguing that gun control is not needed.

[INTroJect]

	Originally Posted by Gilbo To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I liked Judge Dredd when I was a kid, but I still don't think street justice a very good moral basis for arguing that gun control is not needed.

Its not street justice when its shitty people killing shitty people.

---------- Post added 12-23-2012 at 02:40 PM ----------

	Originally Posted by catatonic To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Karma?

Upon some thought, I would tend to agree.

Aside from the few statistical outliers, like the Connecticut shooting, that get thrown with full fanfare into the national spotlight, pretty much the vast majority of gun violence that takes place are with people in the shady side of town getting themselves involved in shady situations.

Funny how the gun control drones are sounding more and more like the convoluted arguments peddling the war on drugs.

[Savagelight]

Originally Posted by INTroJect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Its not street justice when its shitty people killing shitty people. ---------- Post added 12-23-2012 at 02:40 PM ---------- Upon some thought, I would tend to agree. Aside from the few statistical outliers, like the Connecticut shooting, that get thrown with full fanfare into the national spotlight, pretty much the vast majority of gun violence that takes place are with people in the shady side of town getting themselves involved in shady situations. Funny how the gun control drones are sounding more and more like the convoluted arguments peddling the war on drugs.

That isn't really true. If you're on the shady "urban" side of town you could get shot without being involved in any of the shady business. You'd be involved in shady situations just by living in the shady side of town.

[INTroJect]

	Originally Posted by Savagelight To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	That isn't really true. If you're on the shady "urban" side of town you could get shot without being involved in any of the shady business. You'd be involved in shady situations just by living in the shady side of town.

Sure, anybody could be walking down the street anywhere and some serial wako could shoot them, stab them, hit them in the head with a brick, however, those are outlier situations, but the ones that end up suspiciously all over the national media.

We are referring here to what composes the majority of gun related crime, and its not people just going about shooting at random because they got themselves a gun.

I bet if we ended the war on drugs, for starters, where people are not shooting each other over prohibited black market activities, stemming from being unable to use the justice system to sort problems out, we wouldn't have the gun violence problem that we have at all. Go to countries where the people can not depend on the court system for justice, they have to fight everything out.

All the more reason NOT to increase gun controls, because those people committing most of the gun related crimes are already quite adept at operating around the laws. We can't even keep drugs out of the country, double down on the gun laws even more? They will be importing guns from outside along with the drugs, while responsible citizens will be unarmed.

[Dangime]

I don't see table for "Criminal Background of Murder Victims" which is what we are discussing here. Basically the argument here is that if you get yourself in general into a "life of crime" that puts you at a much higher risk of being murdered. I'm not saying it's "justified" just "understandable" compared to say a school shooting, and these more "understandable" deaths constitute the bulk of "murders" and are already opperating in a realm where gun control isn't going to help, since everyone in that world is a criminal already.

Labeling any murder by "someone you know" isn't really helpful, because there's nothing stopping your friend, boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife, cousin/buddy from also being your drug dealer or your pimp. I'm sure there's a few straight domestic abuse situations, but how many of those situations are also involving drug abuse or alcoholism. Quite a few I'd imagine. By definition I guess your drug dealer is "someone you know" if its the 2nd time meeting them.

And no....drinking any time in your life isn't an excuse to get shot. Being drunk and crazy and attacking someone or getting in a fight over money, drugs, illegal stuff is.

[Icy]

	Originally Posted by INTroJect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The argument isn't "the criminals are only killing criminals", but an enormous swath of it is. Non criminals might want to have a gun so as to also deter criminals.

well, that did seem to be your argument when you posted the statistics, but even still, we all have guns now and criminals still commit crimes. Death penalty exists and guess what it also doesn't lower crime rates. So why do we have them? I know you or someone posted that other countries without guns doesn't lower crime, but I'll just say that I agree with the posters saying it does lower gun violence and over all violent crime.

[Savagelight]

Originally Posted by INTroJect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Sure, anybody could be walking down the street anywhere and some serial wako could shoot them, stab them, hit them in the head with a brick, however, those are outlier situations, but the ones that end up suspiciously all over the national media. We are referring here to what composes the majority of gun related crime, and its not people just going about shooting at random because they got themselves a gun. I bet if we ended the war on drugs, for starters, where people are not shooting each other over prohibited black market activities, stemming from being unable to use the justice system to sort problems out, we wouldn't have the gun violence problem that we have at all. Go to countries where the people can not depend on the court system for justice, they have to fight everything out. All the more reason NOT to increase gun controls, because those people committing most of the gun related crimes are already quite adept at operating around the laws. We can't even keep drugs out of the country, double down on the gun laws even more? They will be importing guns from outside along with the drugs, while responsible citizens will be unarmed.

What about all the innocent teenagers who get shot, innocent kids who get shot, or people who get robbed and shot? Apparently you don't know what you're talking about. People shoot their unarmed wives and husbands, best friends, etc.

[INTroJect]

Originally Posted by Icy To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

well, that did seem to be your argument when you posted the statistics, but even still, we all have guns now and criminals still commit crimes. Death penalty exists and guess what it also doesn't lower crime rates. So why do we have them? I know you or someone posted that other countries without guns doesn't lower crime, but I'll just say that I agree with the posters saying it does lower gun violence and over all violent crime.

I didnt post the statistics, its my argument being inferred from them.

Getting rid of guns will get rid of gun related crime, the same way that getting rid of drugs has gotten rid of drug related crime - it doesn't work. It makes problems a whole lot worse. We already have the highest incarceration rate on the planet, and a lot of people being thrown into very severe poverty because of this. Double down on gun laws even more? It will still be guns all over the place, except there will be even more people sitting in jail for getting caught with them.

Even if commercial guns could be banned completely, and this is possible, it will be people stabbing each other, running each other over with cars, or importing guns illegally, along with the drug trade, and empowered with an even greater advantage from having them.

---------- Post added 12-24-2012 at 03:57 AM ----------

	Originally Posted by Savagelight To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	What about all the innocent teenagers who get shot, innocent kids who get shot, or people who get robbed and shot? Apparently you don't know what you're talking about. People shoot their unarmed wives and husbands, best friends, etc.

Oh god, let's have a pity party over guns, people getting shot instead of their throats cut.

[Gilbo]

	Originally Posted by INTroJect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Getting rid of guns will get rid of gun related crime, the same way that getting rid of drugs has gotten rid of drug related crime - it doesn't work. . ---------- Post added 12-24-2012 at 03:57 AM ---------- .

Where Gun Control has been implemented it has worked. Here is the research published by the American Law and Economics Review as republished by the Oxford University Press.*


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"In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth (and nearly halved the number of gun-owning households). Using differences across states, we test whether the reduction in firearms availability affected homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude but is less precise. The results are robust to a variety of specification checks and to instrumenting the state-level buyback rate."

So an 80% reduction in gun deaths.

[Exelone]

crime makes crime.

[INTroJect]

Originally Posted by Gilbo To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Where Gun Control has been implemented it has worked. Here is the research published by the American Law and Economics Review as republished by the Oxford University Press.* To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. "In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth (and nearly halved the number of gun-owning households). Using differences across states, we test whether the reduction in firearms availability affected homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude but is less precise. The results are robust to a variety of specification checks and to instrumenting the state-level buyback rate." So an 80% reduction in gun deaths.

Super, it sure does sound nice, but you are posting a study ignoring all other unseen factors and unintended current and future consequences. Not only that, but you are also only quoting the abstract of the study, the rest of it is inaccessible.

In other words, way to convey a blinded perspective.

[Gilbo]

At least I posted a study, where's your research evidence as to the "unseen factors and unintended current and future consequences"

I might take notice of your arguments if you bothered to do any research into the studies out there that support it.