QUOTE(fishlord @ Jan 25 2005, 09:03 AM)
The stupid ass theory that the states has way more gun related deaths than anywhere else (except maybe for columbia)? The stupid ass theory that is TRUE???
Thats not really true.
America
does have a high gun death ratio, but Moore
did skew the numbers even further making it look worse. First he does the total number of gun related deaths in America and compares them to only the number of homicides in the other countries (ie not totals). Second, he never equilabrates the populations. Third, rather than taking a rolling average over say 10 years like a respectable documentary editor would have, he hand picked a year (2001) and countries to compare them too where americas raw number was higher than the average. Fourth, he fails to include countries where gun ownership is higher than the US, and yet firearm homecides are less than the average countries where gun control is enforced (ie countries like switzerland where nearly every male has an assault rifle and which has an average 40 homicides per year). And there are probably other things wrong with his depection that I am not thinking of at the moment.
Just to show examples Ill work with moores numbers without taking a rolling average.
Here is moores:
US 11,127 (homicides + legally justified homicides (ie cops, self defense, accidental, etc)
Canada 165 only homicides
UK 68 only homicides
Germany 381 only homicides
France 255 only homicides
Australia 65 only homicides
Japan 39 only homicides
The FBI puts homicides at 8719 in the year 2001, but well ignore it for now
now equlibrate for population to rate per 1,000,000
US = 39 (FBI STATS drop this to 31)
Canada = 5.5
UK = 1.2
Germany = 4.7
France = 4.25
Australia = 3.42
Japan = 0.3
So in our worse comparative year we are about 12X the average of the compared countries while moores claim that we are 70X the average. He is just way off and that was using moores own skewed numbers. Quite frankly there is no excuse for his representation. He is taking advantage of statistical illiteracy of the general public. Plain and Simple.
Here is a website that almost does it right (it doesnt take rolling averages). It totals all murders and averages per 100,000.
Average Murder rates per Country Ranking
US comes in 24th for murders, 8th for firearm homicides.
Its not perfect, but it is much more honest way of looking at it. It also proves that Moore is at best deceptive.
If you want to do a moore-esk comparison on violence, check out how we compare to the same group when it comes to another violent crime
Rape victims per capita in Europe and N. America