[MFogleman]

If Adam shoots Bill with the intent to kill him, leaves the scene, and paramedics rush Bill to the hospital, and he lives, Bill is not murdered. Bill was the victim of an aggravated assault

I can't vouch for the reliability of this source[1], but it will serve for my example here. The murder rate in the US was 5 and 5.1 in 1960 and 2019 respectively. The aggravated assault rate was shot from 86 to 250.

Life didn't get safer, we just got better at saving lives.

Then again, this looks like its probably based on UCR data, which is sent to the FBI from local/state law enforcement. I imagine there are certain demographics, especially in 1960s America, that didn't get crimes against them reported with full accuracy.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Especially regarding crime. "Gun violence" can include suicide in some reporting systems, and not in others. Some will put a shooting at a bank robbery in with the same category as a single mother shooting an intruder in her home, and some wont.

My point is that the subject of safety is far more complicated than "See, less people are dead, it's safer". Imagine a special forces team of 20 conducts 100 hostage rescues in a year, gets in a firefight in every one, takes multiple injuries, but no one dies. Now imagine the logistics unit of 20 that performs maintenance, paperwork, administrative functions, etc, at a forward operating base has one of their members crushed by a vending machine.

1 in 20 people in logistics died, 0 in 20 in the special ops team died. Most people would not reasonably argue that the logistics team was more dangerous.

[1]http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

[michaelmrose]

Do you have a source that isn't so deficient? The home page is a weather website which doesn't state who is behind the site or how they collected their data. When I see numbers without information about how they arrived at them I just naturally assumed they made up whatever numbers aligned with their ideology and since its from AK I'm assuming this is a conservative one.

If you can't vouch for a source then using it to make a point is wasting your time and mine.

[MFogleman]

The data wasn't to prove a point. The data was there as an example that you can construe different results from the same data. Given that data, you can make claims of "safety" quoting a lower murder rate, disregarding other factors such as improvements in emergency medical services and treatment of major wounds.

I'm not asserting whether things are safer or not. Im asserting that judging "safer" cannot be accurately done with metrics such as "murder rate".

[CyberRabbi]

My initial comment is about the crime rate but he responded with a reference to the homicide rate, which is a clear deflection. For some reason the general person has a hard time reckoning with the fact that 1950s America was drastically safer than 2020s America. It’s very interesting.

[michaelmrose]

It's not a clear deflection it's an attempt to break down the numbers instead of indistinct notions.

I picked murder because I thought it would be more straight forward because people are pretty clear about who was killed whereas rapes and assaults might go unreported especially if the victins were minorities.

I think it's pretty clear that it wasn't particularly safe to be anything but a straight middle class+ white person in the 50s.

[CyberRabbi]

> I think it's pretty clear that it wasn't particularly safe to be anything but a straight middle class+ white person in the 50s.

>= 90% of the US population in the 1950s were middle class white people. Ignoring that, the national aggregate crime rate was lower for non middle class white people then as well. On what are you basing that claim that it wasn’t safe for them?

[michaelmrose]

I think you are using a different definition of middle if you believe 90% of people fall within it. If the population was 85% white and 60% middle class white middle class people were about half of the population. The portion of the population actually privileged in 1950 was basically the male half of that demographic so around 25% of the population.

A substantial minority of that segment now shrunk to more like 17% wish they could have the 50s back for some reason despite how bad the total picture was for most people.

Do you have a cite on the 1950s being substantially safer? Please note an actual and official source of data wherein data collection is to a uniform standard over the time frame discussed. For example a system where figures are collected from some areas and not others and coverage increases towards 100% over time will show an increase in crime rate even when there isn't one. Conversely a system where crimes against minorities aren't investigated or punished will see fewer crimes reported even when reported crimes are faithfully counted.

An example of a bad source is disastercenter.com which doesn't obviously cite how its data is collected, whose frontpage says nothing about who runs it. It is at best a summery of other sources which you aren't at liberty to inspect. Wherever they get their data might be a good source but its impossible for me to ascertain this.

[CyberRabbi]

You still haven’t provided a basis for your claim that 1950s america wasn’t safe for non middle class white people.

My claims of the safety in america are based on aggregate crime rate statistics since the 1960s from the FBI UCR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Cri...

[michaelmrose]

It seems to support my position not yours. The notion that the homicide rate has gone down only because superior medical care in particular seems ridiculously unsupported by any evidence whatsoever. Its not clear that reporting standards for rape and assault would be similar across 70 years.

[michaelmrose]

What portion of crimes against poor and minorities made it into your numbers exactly? It's apples to apples only with similar reporting standards.