12/21/13 7:30 PM

1. Not sure what you mean here:

quote:

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I don't buy that more people create more violence. Those numbers should be posited using per capita info.

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12/21/13 7:48 PM

...what the per capita consumption of violent media and games is in the two countries. The fact that we're neighbors doesn't necessarily mean that we share the same taste in entertainment.

12/21/13 7:50 PM

Gamers on most systems are identified by country in some way. There is no question in my mind that the violent games are played online by American players much more than other countries. My boys used to play COD until I saw how they played and the way they acted while playing. No more, all FPS games are gone.

12/21/13 8:10 PM

quote:

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There is no question in my mind that the violent games are played online by American players much more than other countries.

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12/21/13 8:46 PM

It's hard to get all the data we want at the levels we want. However, thanks to the web I have (so far) data on firearms per capita by country and homicide rates by country, and I will try to get info on ethnic diversity, economic diversity, and so forth. A crude analysis at the country level using multiple linear regression might tell us something (or it might not). I suspect there's a pretty high zero-order correlation between per capita weapons and homicide rates, but I want to see if some other factors help to undercut that relationship. Might be a Christmas eve project...we'll see if I can find the time.

12/22/13 4:46 AM

That ethnic diversity thing could really touch a rough scale. Don't go there unless you are willing to call it like it is.

The real question is why those numbers are the way they are.

12/22/13 10:53 AM

It'll be interesting. Canada has a pretty diverse population, too, so I'm suspicious of that as a direct explanation per se . It would be nice to get data on fear, but I expect that's not available for most countries.

12/22/13 11:28 PM

"what's in the water of colorado?"

there's no water in colorado! there's only "Champagne Powder"!

12/23/13 2:24 AM

And WEED!

12/23/13 6:04 AM

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/12/24/the-numbers-behind-video-games-and-gun-deaths-in-america/

Japan also has ' violent vid game addicted' youth who love engaging in live and online play and competitions - locally and, internationally....
Curiously, their gun related homicides are extremely low.

12/23/13 6:37 AM

... (0.4 per 100K, vs. 4.7 in the US) indicating that they just don't kill each other very often, regardless of the weapon used. So naturally, their firearms homicide rate is very low.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

The US ranks 103 on this list, so despite what many would have you believe, homicides are much more common in many parts of the world, with rates ranging as high at 91.6 per 100K. The global rate is estimated to be 6.9, so we are well below the average, too.

I don't know where Forbes got their numbers, but they are WAY out of line. How can the US have a firearms murder rate of 10.2 when the overall murder rate is only 4.7? Somebody has an agenda and I doubt it's the UNODC...

12/23/13 7:15 AM

I suspect from what I've seen that the Forbes article is using *all* firearms deaths. In addition to intentional murder, that includes suicides and "accidental" shooting (and there are a fair number of those). That's one of the reasons that the rate varies from one place to another--measuring different things.

So long as you know what you're talking about, the difference between the measures needn't be due to any particular "agenda."

12/23/13 11:20 PM

Doesn't Japan have a very low murder rate to begin with, gun-related deaths predictably also being very low?

And how about Japan's immigration rate from countries with high levels of gang culture? Very low also.
While in the US, the Federal Gov't actually takes legal action against any border state that attempts to apply existing laws regarding immigration status.
So a comparison must be made.

The United states has yet to cleanse itself of the community and family problems descending from the importation of slaves by bankster-owned sailing vessels, and again, Japan doesn't seem to have much of this problem either.

So how about Canada?

12/24/13 1:26 AM

Now, its blame the immigrants...?

"...So how about Canada...?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16/a-revealing-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/

(Btw - curiously, those same violent video games are very much available/played in Canada also)

12/24/13 5:23 AM

To this full article in pdf?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/kykl.12017/abstract

It looks like it would allow me to add tolerance data (i.e. as a proxy for "fear") to a multivariate analysis. We have to have an academic or two out there!

Once I have that (and a little time) I can construct a model including "fear", ethnic diversity, gun ownership per capita, number of firearms, etc., and see which of these factors correlate most strongly with violence (of various sorts) when we control for the others. It should be interesting.

For now, however, my son is home from the Army for a week, so I may be offline a bit more. :-) :-) :-)

12/24/13 10:03 AM

Just thought of this...one thing I do notice a huge difference in, between Canadians and Americans, is fear. In Canada nobody EVER talks about needing to protect/arm themselves due to fear of their government, never mind their fellow citizens. This seems to be a regular point of discussion even amongst vacationers in a campground in the Catskills and that's NY, which is about as 'Canadian' a place as you're gunna find in the US.

I remember years ago Michael Moore made this point about fear in one of his movies. One comparison he did was between Detroit and Windsor, how many people locked their doors. At first I thought, yeah well I usually lock my door when I leave home but often don't bother...then I realised he meant lock your door while AT home and I thought WTF, why would anybody do that??? Seems I wasn't the only Canadian to think this way.

I also seem to recall in previous discussions on this forum not being able to convince some people that the very 'need' to own a gun proved that one was living in fear. I was told that, no a gun allowed one to not live in fear. Well okay, I guess I kinda get it in that if I knew or suspected every freakin one of my crazy neighbors (and their potentially nutso gamed out kids) was armed to the teeth I might want a few guns for myself...and there is starts :-0

12/24/13 11:37 AM

Fear is a huge motivating factor in American society and politics. And politicians use it to manipulate people shamelessly.

Fear of those who are different from us, fear of those who make more than us, fear of those who make less than us, fear of those more or less educated than us, fear of our neighbors, fear of government, fear of people who follow a different religion or, heaven forbid, no religion, fear of people whose sexual orientation is different from the "norm", the list goes on.

Listen to the political "discourse" during election campaigns - candidates demonizing a demographic and manipulating people's fears to get their votes.

Judging by results, Americans are seriously full of fear.

Me? I'm afraid of idiots who know how to use fear to get themselves elected.

12/24/13 3:01 PM

"Me? I'm afraid of idiots who know how to use fear to get themselves elected."

Well then it's high time you got yourself the biggest damn gun you can find with at least a couple 100 round mags, then you will no longer have to be fearful :-0

I on the other hand have far greater things on my mind, like the fear I will not go any faster up the mountains next season. Between my new bike and my lack of gainful employment I'm running out of excuses for not being faster.

12/24/13 11:15 PM

Quoting Rickk:

"Now, its blame the immigrants...?"

Pretty illogical and/or presumptive of you to infer that I was "blaming" anybody, much less immigrants.
America has ALWAYS been full of immigrants, since colonization began.

The point I made was of "immigration rate", particularly from countries with violent gang cultures. With higher immigration rates, the humbling process of assimilation is replaced by sub-cultures with slower rates of language and cultural adaptation, a fact that one can see in our cities and neighborhoods where ALMOST ALL of the murders are occurring.

Somewhat similarly, with respect to the segregation of slavery's descendents and the subsequent herding of formerly hard-working families into housing projects in the 1960's, a sub-culture is established that results in frighteningly high murder rates in many of those same cities. But I'm not "blaming" these people either that their children are attracted to a life of crime, since the stage was set for them to live in economic zones that remind me of what the effects of years of quantitative easing will no doubt produce for the rest of us in the future.

Rickk, your link makes immediate reference to ethnicity and race, which is a very different subject than challenging the viability of Federal policies that attempt to mass-import foreign cultures, particularly when high rates of violence within these cultures force innocent immigrants to join gangs to survive in a region of mayhem.

Having lived in housing project zones in Bridgeport CT and Raleigh NC, and worked in similar areas in Bronx NY and Compton CA, I saw first hand how gangs operated and had many opportunities to discuss why things were why they were.
In particular, one man I spoke to (of African descent by all appearances), in the dark basement of a huge construction site in Compton, expressed surprise at being able to share a discussion with me about how all the jobs that the construction was supposed to create within this unemployment-ravaged community were outsourced wholesale to people brought in from Mexico. My job duties included keeping track of wage and ethnic statistics on site, as a sort of pre-inspection so that the builders stayed in compliance with city contracts.
Those contracts essentially only required that "white" people could only amount to a certain small percentage of workers, so the builder hired Koreans to do the electrical work and teams of Mexican undocumented workers to do most of the rest.

Why the builder hired a "white" guy to do my job is anybody's guess, but it sure reminded me of the lighting company in NY I worked for where the Dominican company president told me flat-out that his company got more money from Uncle Sam for having almost NO "white" people on staff (I was an Engineering Supervisor, replaced by a young guy from India when I finally left for California upon graduation).

So, the city of L.A. helped keep the people of Compton in a state of total dependence while doing their best to create another little Tijuana to house all the workers.

And I continue to sympathize with hard-working immigrants, such as the Armenian shoe-repair guy in Montebello, CA, who told me a harrowing tale of being shaken down by Mexican gangs who knew who his young daughter was at school.

12/25/13 6:44 PM

dddd,

Believe it or not , I'm part Armenian too. And, have relatives in southern CA.
Although my dad wasn't a shoemaker. He's in the oriental rug cleaning/repair business.

Anyways, wasn't busting your b--lls specifically.
Just pointing out the all too often common knee jerk responses I hear over and over... re. this topic...even here in Montreal.

We also have gangs here. Black Haitian, Jamaican, Algerians, White Latino, Russian, Hells Angels, Popeyes, French Quebequers... Mafia/Italiano, etc.
We also have significant poverty sections in our city.
Somehow, some reason, our per-capita statistics are lower than south of the border.

I'm a physiotherapist, not a demographics analyst/specialist, so I dob't know the specific reason(s) why....
But I do get irked when I hear knee jerk, scapegoat reasons repeated ad nausea by TV journalists or by other so-called experts.

12/26/13 1:38 PM

Rickk, I'm sure no expert either. You're right though about there being so many gangs around.

I'm sure that to some extent there is a correlation, between how a particular region's law enforcement responds to shootings, and how often that shootings occur. In particular, most gang members know in advance what happens on their gang's turf if/after a gang member shoots at a cop. It means big trouble for all of them.
As for the more common shootings, perhaps in Canada these gang members can count on a more thorough or invasive investigation following a shooting incident(?).
It could even be that there are fewer shootings in Canada because of a different climate, what with so many gang-related shootings seemingly being directed at outdoor gatherings, at least as it seems to me.
Then again, there could also be very large differences (in terms of exact demographic makeup) between gangs in Canada and those in the US.
I do know (from talking to racers who travel) that Canada is very strict in some regards, compared to the US, when it comes to entering their country with any kind of criminal history (that they might earn while in the US during their years before trying to subsequently enter Canada).

As far as knee-jerk reactions, doesn't it seem that the major media players always do their best to give voice to those who so often try to place blame on broad groups instead of identifying the individuals and/or agencies that are closer to the source of the problem? And, in parallel fashion how politicians so often seem to gravitate far from any reasoned, balanced view, with their constituents in tow!
It's as if a divisive script has already been written, in advance of the discussion.

Oh (and oddly enough) I think it might have been that I had myself sensed in your earlier reply, some kind of "knee-jerk" response, that I, in hindsight, then responded harshly to.

12/26/13 2:25 PM

The vast majority of fire arms deaths are self inflicted or suicide, at a rate of 7.2/100000 in the United States. This combined with the firearm homicide rate adds up to the Forbes cited total gun death rate per hundred thousand.

http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/jsp-sjp/wd98_4-dt98_4/p4.html