What do the "bad guys" in Britain and Japan do without guns?

[moondust]

Any insights into that?

[bench scientist]

1. umm, not kill their fellow citizens in record numbers? n/t

[backwoodsbob]

8. record numbers?really?

got a link to back up that 2011/2012 we killed in record numbers?

[EOTE]

10. The U.S. ALWAYS sets the records for firearm deaths in the developed world.

It's been that way for many decades. That's one metric that I don't think we should strive for, don't you agree?

[backwoodsbob]

11. that wasn't the question

in OUR history...are we killing in record numbers in 2011/2012?

[EOTE]

12. Actually it WAS the question.

The post you responded to asked the (perhaps rhetorical) question "Perhaps not kill our citizens in record numbers?" You notice they didn't specify which record, so it definitely rings true. Every year, the U.S. sets the record for gun deaths in developed countries. Why the fuck would we compare modern society to how things were decades ago? Nearly every country in the world is experiencing a downward trend in gun violence over the past few decades, but the U.S. is pathetically lagging behind.

[JDPriestly]

52. It isn't a matter of comparing how violent our recent history to how violent our past history is.

It's a matter of comparing the incidence of violent gun use in our society to the incidence of violent gun use in other societies. How does the incidence of gun violence in our society in which gun laws are lax compare with the incidence of gun violence in societies in which gun regulations severely limit access to guns.

I hope that the topic is clearer now.

[rustydog]

24. American gun deaths beat every other civilized nation.

Every year. USA, USA, USA! American Exceptiionalism! Go Team.

[guardian]

42. So which nations

do you consider to be uncivilized?

[EOTE]

80. There's a clear line between the first world and the rest of the world.

And it's not a liberal trait to think that we should be comparing our level of gun violence to that of Somalia's.

http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/first_world.htm

[guardian]

81. So the

non-first world countries (i.e., poor countries) are "uncivilized"?

[EOTE]

82. Sure, if that's the word you'd like to use.

Are you going to take away my liberal credentials because I think things like lack of taxes and government make a country uncivilized?

[bench scientist]

71. it's clear cut and not even close

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/335-156/12554-58-murders-a-year-by-firearms-in-britain-8775-in-us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

[CreekDog]

77. they do less murdering of people than in the United States

Murder rates:

USA 4.8
United Kingdom 1.2
Japan 0.4

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

1) okay, you asked for a link
2) i gave you one
3) now you will find fault with the numbers, even though they are so markedly higher here, that you will dismiss them all

[bench scientist]

79. aw, yea creekdog

[loli phabay]

2. dont know about japan but bad guys in the uk get guns too easily

Plus there is a huge knife culture there as well.

[Kingofalldems]

7. Huge knife culture?

So you say. Where is the evidence of this 'huge knife culture'?

[loli phabay]

23. seriuosly do a search theres been campaigns to get knifes of the streets

Knife amnestys and education. Knifes have been a blight on many of the schemes.

[muriel_volestrangler]

40. And yet, as the figures in #4 show, knives kill slightly more in the USA

(with size of population taken into account) than in England and Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland's figures are separate).

The difference is that Britain looks at the numbers killed by knife and says "that's too much"; the USA looks at roughly the same number and thinks "it's nothing compared to the murders by gun - it's a far smaller problem".

[loli phabay]

41. still does not mean there is not a knife culture in the schemes

And yes its an issue that is trying to be tackled with changes in the law and education but the original premise still stands that knifes are prevalent within the yob culture.

[muriel_volestrangler]

44. But is it any smaller than the American knife culture?

It doesn't kill any more people than the American knife culture, we know that much.

[loli phabay]

46. depends on where you live. on some schemes stabbings are everyday

And everybody in the young team or tong is carrying a chib of some sort. Hence the money spent by the polis on stab vests. I think the difference is in the Us knifes are more a weapon of opportunity and in the UK more of a weapon of choice.

[Posteritatis]

68. Hysterical tabloids, stuff like that.

Enough people handwring about something and they become convinced it's an apocalyptic epidemic. Kind of like a more mundane equivalent of how people in the US spent years pantswettingly afraid of terrorists behind everything.

[Pyrzqxgl]

78. Not to mention bows & arrows in Sherwood Forest.

[ManiacJoe]

3. They use knives and clubs.

Probably not the answer you were hoping for.

[Squinch]

26. I'd rather look at a knife than down the barrel of a gun.

[guardian]

43. Really?

Look at the following link and tell me that. BTW I intentionally changed the link from "www" to "xxx" so the image wouldn't show automatically. It is pretty graphic for the squeamish.

xxx.chemicalbiological.net/graphic%20knife%20wound.jpg

[muriel_volestrangler]

45. Guns are chosen by people intending to kill

because they are deadlier. I'd certainly say 'really'. I think most people would.

[Squinch]

47. Yes, really. And since it looks as if your link is to some photo of a wound, I don't really

feel the need to look at it.

Are you seriously going to quibble about the fact that guns are more deadly than knives, and base your argument on gross photos?

[Bake]

61. If an attacker has a knife, then I want a gun.

There. That's simple.

Bake

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Figures for 3 years of England & Wales homicides

Sharp instrument 698
Hitting, kicking, etc. 401
Blunt instrument 167
Strangulation/asphyxiation 158
Shooting 140
Other 320
Total 1,884

(note the years for recording crime don't run from Jan-Dec, for some reason. So "combined data for 2008/09 to 2010/11" means 3 years, starting 2008, 2009 and 2010)

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/hosb0212/hosb0212?view=Binary

These can be compared with the US data, available for 2008 here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/oct/05/us-homicide-rates
The US had a homicide by sharp instrument rate of 0.67 per 100,000 per year; England and Wales, roughly, 0.43 (about 55 million population). Hitting etc. - USA: 0.30; E&W: 0.25. So those 2 categories are roughly equal. Shooting: USA: 3.33; E&W: 0.09.

[malaise]

6. But but but

Doesn't American exceptionalism cover everything???

Excellent data.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

37. A point that CANNOT be over-emphasized

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the homicide rate for the United States was 4.8 per 100,000 population. That's for homicides of all types -- firearm, stabbing, etc. The homicide rate for the United Kingdom was 1.2 per 100,000 population. Our homicide rates are just about four times what they are in the UK.

So when some gun-lover tries to make the argument, "If you take guns away, people will just kill each other with knives or clubs" you can respond that it's simply not true. No western democracy has a higher homicide rate than the United States, so clearly people are NOT just killing each other with other weapons.

[DanTex]

5. They commit far fewer homicides.

As others have pointed out, they use knives and clubs instead, and since guns are far more deadly than knives or clubs, the end result is thousands of innocent lives spared every year.

[slackmaster]

9. Britons use knives, fists, beer glasses, and blunt objects. Japan doesn't have much violent crime.

They use mostly sarcasm.

[edbermac]

13. The Japanese use swords.

[dairydog91]

14. What drunks did in the US when booze was banned.

Buy it through a black market. The larger the black market demand, the more suppliers jump into the market. Both GB and Japan have the advantage of being island nations which cuts down on the ease of supplying the black market (Continental europe has more of a black-market weapons problem because the guns need only be driven from Eastern bloc nations into Western Europe). Countries that had large civilian stockpiles before they instituted major registration/bans also have huge stockpiles of unregistered guns which remain usable and sellable for decades (For example, in regards to the UK and Germany, the Small Arms Survey estimates that only 20-25% of guns that should have been registered actually were registered).

[Robb]

18. Island nations have no black market?

Are you writing to us from your pre-boats time machine??

[a la izquierda]

50. Thank you, I just spewed coffee all over my desk.

I appreciate the mid-afternoon hysterics.

[farminator3000]

62. of course! there is not a single leaf of ganja in jamaica, for instance.

also, mexico is technically an island, and virtually crime free!

brush up on your geography, sir!

[dairydog91]

70. Of course they have black markets.

You can ship things into an island nation by sea. But that either means you come in through a port, and risk getting caught there, or you bring boats up to the coast to drop things off there, and risk getting busted by the coast guard. Whereas if you're bringing stuff from Eastern Europe into Western Europe by truck, in modern Europe it's pretty much a question of loading up and driving west, with little worry of getting busted.

[obamanut2012]

15. Japanese "bad guys" have plenty of guns

I expect British ones do, too.

[Robb]

19. They must be lousy shots then.

[formercia]

22. Yakuza use firearms as a last resort

They are considered to be bad form.

[Bucky]

76. So, everybody was kung fu fighting instead?

Cause those cats were fast as lightning.

[Squinch]

28. LOL! So true, it's funny!

[Recursion]

39. They don't use them much. Nor in Britain

Why that is would be a very interesting question to look at.

[HiPointDem]

48. +1

[loli phabay]

51. id say a large part is cultural and another is the guns tend to be held

By quatermasters of the criminal gangs and only used or rented out for certain needs.

[obamanut2012]

74. The question was if they had guns

They do, plenty. Probably as many, per Yakuza, as organized crime does here.

[Puzzledtraveller]

16. This

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-19/two-policewomen-killed-by-uk-fugitive/4268960

[dmallind]

20. Wound each other at approximately twice the US rate, in the UK at least.

Can't seem to find compatable breakdowns on whether wounds are minor bruising or permanent torturous maiming. It's probably safe to assume both nations run the gamut.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_violence#United_Kingdom

[Squinch]

29. But kill each other a whole lot less.

[formercia]

21. There are always firearms to be had, regardless of the laws

I've been to countries where civilian weapons were supposedly not allowed, but a few discreet inquiries could get you what you needed. Usually, ex War souvenirs, stolen from the local Military or Police. If you have the Money, the guns will follow. Wherever there has been armed Combat, there are stockpiles stashed away.

Fix the fucked-up Society and people won't feel that they need a gun, for whatever reason.

Making Laws are just for feeling good, like Mother's little Helpers, they cover the symptom but fail to cure the problem.

[Scurrilous]

25. As for Britain, I think you can rule out biting. n/t

[PLARS1999]

27. Knives, swords, axes.

Not kidding.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2265946/West-Midlands-Police-Array-weapons-seized-police-force-anti-violence-crackdown.html

How bad are things when you carry a stick with nails in it?

[Squinch]

30. How bad are things when you carry a gun with bullets in it?

[PLARS1999]

34. If you don't trust your dealer, don't buy from him.

I pay alot of money to live where I don't have to worry about either.

[Squinch]

35. Huh?

[PLARS1999]

36. Hooligans.

They cause trouble on every continent. Sticks with nails in the UK, AKs in LA, gang violence is everywhere. I moved away from all of it. I can't get cable but I can leave my keys in my car and it will still be there tomorrow.

[loli phabay]

31. I remember for a time it was double bladed Stanley knifes

They made a vicious wound that scarred badly. Then it was giving people the chesire smile. A lot of bladed weapon violence goes on.

[LanternWaste]

66. I'm fairly confident that I have a much better chance of outrunning a bladed weapon

I'm fairly confident that I have a much better chance of outrunning a bladed weapon than I do a speeding bullet. But your mileage may vary... :shrug

[pampango]

32. Call Bush. Weapons of mass destruction.

[oldhippie]

64. Axes were preferred weapons in medieval times ......

I learned somewhere in my combat training that you were more likely to die from a knife wound (bleed out) than from a gunshot wound. I also saw where ER docs would rather treat a gunshot wound than a knife wound. Knifes can inflict more damage.

Main disadvantage of a blade is that you have to get close.

[Recursion]

33. Who says the bad guys don't have guns there? (nt)

[backscatter712]

38. Even the Yakuza won't mess around with guns in Japan.

Gun laws are so strict in Japan that Yakuza mob bosses and most of their underlings stay the fuck away from them.

Seriously. Gun crime is very rare in Japan.

The culture around weapons is very different in Japan.

Here in the U.S., we're all raised having been taught about the American Revolution, the British military's attempt to disarm people, the Second Amendment, that sort of thing.

Japanese history has centuries of regular people being terrorized by samurai, who pretty much did what they wanted, including randomly chopping peoples' heads off with their katanas when they got pissed off. That led to centuries of people struggling to restrain and disarm the samurai, which led today to Japan's very strict weapons laws.

[HiPointDem]

49. Yakuza have guns, & traffic in guns.

[backscatter712]

53. Only a small subset.

Most of them avoid guns - they know damned well if they're caught with a gun, they're going to prison.

[HiPointDem]

59. not really the case.

Currently, the yakuza comprises roughly 79,000 people, divided among 22 groups.

Although referred to by authorities as "anti-social forces," it's actually a semilegal entity with offices, business cards, and fan magazines.

The yakuza groups make their money through a combination of legal businesses -- like dispatching day laborers -- and illegal activities such as extortion, racketeering, and financial fraud. The largest yakuza group, the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, has 39,000 members. The Inagawa-kai, the group most closely tied to former Justice Minister Tanaka, has 10,000 members and is based in Tokyo. Its offices are across from the Ritz-Carlton.

In 2007, two years before it came to power, the DPJ received the coveted endorsement of the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Inagawa-kai. It was a relationship that worked out well, until recently. However bizarre it may sound, there's nothing particularly remarkable about an organized crime group supporting a political party in Japan.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/13/the_yakuza_lobby?page=0,1

Yakuza have long had a symbiotic relationship with Japanese politics and there is a tacit deal: yakuza can have weapons, can even use them for insider yakuza business, can traffic them outside japan -- but not to ordinary japanese or petty street criminals.

if the government wanted to catch yakuza with weapons they could just go to their headquarters, which are well-known. Everybody knows where the yakuza are & who they are.

It's a different culture.

[Kolesar]

55. Some documentation would be a nice thing

I have heard that those gangsters avoid having guns because the penalties are way stiff.

[HiPointDem]

57. ...

http://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=yakuza+guns&btnG=

[Kolesar]

58. Wow, seven

Illegal guns, mostly handguns, were used to kill seven people and injure 11 others that year. The vast majority of the incidents were related to yakuza or other gangs.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/01/29/reference/in-japan-gun-control-is-the-norm-and-discipline-is-rigid/#.UQmMkh1lGSo

Those books you cited say that Yakuza traffics in guns, but does not say that they commonly use them to kill people.

[HiPointDem]

60. Because they *don't* commonly use them to kill people. But they have them, they traffic them

internationally & smuggle them into japan, and the government turns a blind eye.

This is the nature of the complicity between the japanese state and the yakuza.

Which is why people who don't know anything about japan get it wrong.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2284913

[Kolesar]

65. Is it the smell of cordite that brings the snot out from you?

"..people who don't know anything about japan get it wrong. "

[HiPointDem]

67. what? the fact is, unless they've experienced it, americans tend to assume the yakuza operate

similarly to the mafia and have an analogous place in japanese society.

they also view things like gun laws through an american lens, and assume that the reason yakuza kill few people is the law.

no, even before the recent anti-yakuza gun laws were put in place, yakuza killed relatively few people.

it's true, if you don't know anything about japan but what you read in the western press, you get it wrong.

which is true for other countries too. and vice versa.

[cherokeeprogressive]

54. They victimize the weak just like all bad guys do.

Contrary to popular belief, a lack of guns does not equal a lack of bad guys.

[Kolesar]

56. Impulsive and unwise people don't kill others in commenserate numbers, though

Which is why we need to get handguns away from male youths.

[farminator3000]

63. Even gangsters live in fear of Japan’s gun laws by Jake Adelstein

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022262390

[loose wheel]

69. Prey upon the weak.

There was a young man murdered by a mob using swords on Lupus Street in London just this week.

Bad people do bad things. We won't ever be able to create a society where that is not true. Not without repression that would make North Korea balk, and that truly is saying something.

[JI7]

72. Swords ?

[kudzu22]

73. Ever think that maybe Britain and Japan lock up their crazy people?

Whereas we let them roam free and sometimes run for office.

[Bucky]

75. We do too, but we use prisons instead of those mamby-pampy mental treatment centers

They also, apparently, don't egg on their mentally and emotionally unstable people with constant fear mongering and paranoia over right wing radio stations.