[kcima]

"England has a complete ban on guns. No UK citizen can carry a gun. Period. Not a one. Result? UK violent crime rate is 3 1/3 times higher than America. The FBI reports 386 violent crimes per 100,000 in the USA. The UK Home Office reports 1,361 violent crimes per 100,000 in England."

[Steko]

Those statistics are not apples to apples. Notably the UK started classifying common assault (no injury) as a violent crime which more than doubled the "violent crime" rate.

You might ask why the people who fed you this talking point used a clearly deceptive statistic instead of an obvious one like murder.

[kcima]

They sure are apples to apples. Violent crime in the US vs violent crime in the UK.

These are not clearly deceptive statistics. Murder is not the only kind of violent crime.

Allowing people to protect themselves is a great deterrent against violent crime of all types. That is what these statistics point to.

Why do you so easily want to give up these hard-won freedoms?

[Steko]

"They sure are apples to apples."

I just told you why they weren't.

http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/01/12/fact-checkin...

the definitions for “violent crime” are very different in the US and Britain, and the methodologies of the two statistics he cites are also different...

First, it should be noted that the figures Swann gives are out of date...

Second, and more importantly, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports defines a “violent crime” as one of four specific offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

The British Home Office, by contrast, has a substantially different definition of violent crime. The British definition includes all “crimes against the person,” including simple assaults, all robberies, and all “sexual offenses,” as opposed to the FBI, which only counts aggravated assaults and “forcible rapes.”

When you look at how this changes the meaning of “violent crime,” it becomes clear how misleading it is to compare rates of violent crime in the US and the UK. You’re simply comparing two different sets of crimes.