Is US society more violent than Western Europe?

[Naomasa298]

This is not correct. They have not looked in my closet...

What's in the closet should perhaps stay in the closet.

 

[Larrey]

We don't have the kind of riots plaguing France or the rape in Sweden.

No it's actually much worse in the US.

 

[Larrey]

I believe Finland and Switzerland have more gun ownership per head than the USA.

No one beats the US at that. There are outliers, and then there is the US...

 

[Linschoten]

Indeed, if one looks for comparative rape statistics, one gets bizarre and frankly incredible results; there is nothing that one has to be more cautious in interpreting than comparative crime statistics. All the same, the USA does seem to have a very specific problem among western antions with shootings and in particular mass shootings. Though it is obviously absurd to say that American society in general is more dangerous than European society.

I believe Finland and Switzerland have more gun ownership per head than the USA.

Yes, but Switzerland is a highly ordered society and the matter seems to be carefully regulated in Finland; so it does not follow if that if the gun laws were altered in countries like the UK or France to resemble the sitauation in the USA, there would not be unfortunate consequences, or that better gun control in the USA would not have good consequences.

On Finland:

"Hunting is closely regulated by the Finnish government. A would-be hunter must pass a written test on game biology, legislation, and management before he can purchase a hunting permit. You also must pass a rifle-shooting test and a background check before you can obtain a firearm license. A hunter must also be licensed for the number and type of animals he plans to kill. (The most popular targets include moose, ducks, geese, bears, foxes, and hares.) ..."While Finns have a reputation for violence, firearms almost never enter the picture. Finlanddoes have the highest murder rate in Western Europe, but those cases—commonly related to alcohol or domestic abuse—often involve knives rather than guns"

(from here: Slate’s Use of Your Data )

 

[LatinoEuropa]

More than 30% of Portuguese have firearms at home, only a small percentage of weapons are legal ,maybe 600,000 legal weapons.

 

[Kevinmeath]

Its very difficult to compare countries as statistics very greatly between countries on how they are collected as classified for instance some 'assaults' in the UK (which would counted as violent if harsh language was used) wouldn't even be counted as a crime let alone and assault in the USA.

It also varies greatly with countries.

I don't see how Western Europe is more violent than the USA and in many areas I suspect it would be much the same.

Big cities and deprived area are a problem around the world couldn't really comment which is worse US or European.

You do have the problem of plentiful guns and in my opinion an unhealthy gun culture in the USA.

 

[aggienation]

Well, there's always things like this, as somewhere to perhaps at least start talking about what it going on:
http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/crime_stats_oecdjan2012.pdf

That said, crime statistics is a bit like the suicide statistics of the 1960's. Some countries back then got VERY high scores because suicide was NOT religiously or morally censured there, but rather seen as a psycho-social problem. While other countries miraculously reported NO suicides, except they instead had large categories of weird "accidents" that annually led to the death of a bunch of people.

The pictures formed reflect what people consider criminal behaviour AND report as such to the authorities, not directly what the laws say.

Glad you brought up suicide, which is actually one of the big problems of crime statistics, especially those involving guns. In the US, suicides with firearms are included in the overall number numbers for gun deaths, which dwarf homicides and murders. Many other countries who provide statistics on firearm violence do not include suicides in the number, hence theirs are much lower.

By and large, men use more direct and successful ways to commit suicide than women, and in places where access to firearms isn't restricted, their use is going to naturally be high. There is a gun range in town that rents out pistols to visitors. About once a year, since its been open, somebody goes there, rents a pistol and buys a box of ammo, goes onto the range and blows their brains out. Its common enough the store has a protocol for it. Close the store, send most employees home that didn't witness it, as soon as the cops finish with witnesses and EMT leave with the body they hire a cleaning service to clean up the scene, and then they reopen the next day like nothing happened. Most foreign countries that have increased gun restrictions, often to the point they're nearly impossible to find unless one is a criminal or terrorist (at which point they're not hard to find), male suicides are more often done by hanging, jumping off tall structures, etc.

Take the US crime rate, especially the murder rate. Remove the numbers from Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Washington DC. Suddenly the US is one of the safest places in the world. The US doesn't have a crime problem. It has a city problem.

 

[aggienation]

You do have the problem of plentiful guns and in my opinion an unhealthy gun culture in the USA.

Unhealthy for someone outside the US maybe, but its purely opinion to label it as unhealthy, as I could just as easily say its unhealthy to not possess guns, because then one is completely reliant on an uncaring govt for all protection.

Either way, if simply numbers of guns are the cause of crime, rural America would be a shooting gallery, as they possess most of the guns. But that's not the case, its the cities causing the massive death tolls. And I'm not talking about the gentrified portions full of trust fund hipsters. I'm talking about the neighborhoods where a typical summer weekend puts a dozen corpses in the morgue. Areas full of crips, bloods, vice lords, latin kings, etc.

Gang culture, is that something common in Western Europe?

Interview with Vicelord Gang Member in Chicago

 

[zincwarrior]

Not just gang culture but cartels. Cartels are active operators in Texas.

 

[aggienation]

Not just hang culture but cartels. Cartels are active operators on Texas.

They are, and they are killing folk near the border, but they're not stacking bodies like the inner city gangs are, who are killing one another as if they're preparing for the Olympics. Those places are where the massive crime statistic numbers are racked up, to the point the police there were completely overwhelmed, and that before the national turn against the police, which caused the "Drive and Wave" problem where, nation wide and especially in major cities with major crime problems, police are not responding efficiently (or at all) to crimes in progress for fear that should they intervene and it goes south and ends up involved use of force they will end up being charged for crimes, including murder, by overzealous district attorneys trying to make a name for themselves to run for future offices.