Bowling For Columbine - So What Is The Cause?

Well, I saw this last night, and it has me thinking. I don’t care what you think of Michael Moore or about Gun Control. What I really want to know is: Why do you think that America has by far the most gun murders annually? Why are we killing each other in record numbers? There are nation’s comparable to us on every level, yet we are the ones with so much killing. What’s up with that?

Can I do the “Cleve”-reply? Pretty please?

We’re completely crazy. Has to be culture.

It is our God-Given right to kill each other!

You’re going to have to qualify that question a good deal more before you get any rational answers (as opposed to leftist “satire”).

“Qualify it?” Lemme try:

Why is it that in the United States of America more people pull triggers on firearms, thus causing rapid-moving projectiles (usually called “bullets”) to enter the bodies of other persons causing them mortal injury, than in other country in the world?

Naw, that’s a run-on sentence. The original question is pretty good as written.

Well, no it’s not. It’s far too imprecise. Most gun crimes per capita? Per firearm in circulation? As a percentage of all crime? On Tuesdays? Help us out here.

Because in other countries, you have killings not counted as murder - some more explosive than others , other countries prefer other methods of killing, some stranger than others but all leading to the same end but not counted as murder.

While some can afford guns and other countries are just starting to pick up our evil influences. Others just cook up their own ways.

Sometimes they can’t be bothered with killing humans and there are things more evil than murder.

But no country is without killing or violence, even neutral peace loving countries. People are just nuts, if they didn’t use guns, they would just do it some other way.

Chet

Damn Chet, that’s alot of reading! By the way, do you get all your news from one source? Just asking…

Looks like a memepool post.

Anyway, I remember seeing that if you statistically adjust for population density, gun ownership, poverty, even the overall crime rate - you still get more murders-per-anything in the US than anywhere else, by a wide margin.

Dude, it’s his site.
Though I don’t think his argument applies, since I think non-civil war democracies should be in focus when you start comparing crime rates. Comparing crime rates is a bit wonky to begin with, though.

Hahahaha! Ok, thanks! How was I supposed to know? :lol:

(People ought to put that in their profile - what sites they run. Heck, there’s over a 1000 members now.)

And it’s our Second Amendment-given right to do it with firearms!

Only if “by a wide margin” means, say, one-fifteenth the murder rate of South Africa.

Have a look at the table halfway down this page, which I found in about three seconds on Google.

Sad sad day when people don’t know who Chet is :/

No, it isn’t. As Union Carbide realized (while making helpful suggestions!!!), “qualify” does not mean “be unnecessarily verbose”. Better let the original questioner clear it up before you start tainting his ideas with your gibberish.

Only if “by a wide margin” means, say, one-fifteenth the murder rate of South Africa.

Have a look at the table halfway down this page, which I found in about three seconds on Google.[/quote]

Excuse me, I meant “first world countries.” Better? :D

I guess I’m just not 1337 like you. :roll:

Why? Are the Mexicans or the citizens of Taiwan such savages that comparing them to Americans is unthinkable?

Besides, the United States is unique among first world countries. Have a look at the map at the bottom of this page. No other first world country on that map practiced slavery the way the United States did. For centuries Americans imported people as property and systematically destroyed the culture they brought with them.

White Americans commit murder every year at a rate of about 3 per 100,000. That is, they kill each other about as often as the Portuguese, and a little less often than the moody, murderous Finns. Black Americans commit murder at a rate of about 26 per 100,000. That makes them a little more murderous than actualAfricans, who kill each other at a rate of 22 per 100,000. From this one might conclude that slavery does more to destroy cultural norms than mere colonial domination.

But it really is the culture that matters. Do you really think that, say, the Japanese are seething hotbeds of murderous hatred, kept from killing one another as often as Colombians only by the absence of weaponry close at hand?

No no, I just don’t think it’s coincidental that the countries ahead of the US on that list are practically in a state of civil war (although I’m not sure what’s up with Tiawan). As to the rate caucasians commit murder - it still places us at the top of the “developed” nations.

But it really is the culture that matters

That’s what I said above. I don’t think it has much to do with firearm ownership:

We’re completely crazy. Has to be culture.