Knives Out

August 17, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

The London riots have provided tasty fodder for the “Broken Britain” crowd – the conservatives and right-wing tabloids that have been wringing their hands about the social and moral decay they see in the UK. For them, the riots are a delicious “see I told you so” moment.

A British publication, The Prospect, recently ran a long and calm assessment, and generally concluded that Britain is not broken. But it was this paragraph that caught my attention.
Consider violent youth crime, one of the hot-button issues of recent years. No one doubts that there is a serious problem in some parts of the country. Teenage killings in London have risen from 15 in 2006 to 27 in 2007, and stood at 21 halfway through 2008. But to read the Daily Mail, one of the government’s chief tormentors, is to encounter a Britain apparently on the brink of bloody collapse. Take this lurid piece, from 20th July: “A few nights ago, as an 18-year-old stab victim lay in a pool of blood awaiting his statistical turn to become the 21st teenager to die violently in the streets of London this year, we learned that crime statistics are dropping dramatically. All is well. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, while concerned that ‘knives are still being used,’ is best pleased. As well she might be, for the figures are the creation of none other than the British Crime Survey, itself a creation of Jacqui’s home office. If the British Crime Survey sounds like a vast analytical laboratory stuffed with academics in some ivy-clad university city, that is the whole idea.”* [emphasis added]
Knives?? They’re worried about kids with knives? Indeed they are. The article later mentions, “the fear spread by high-visibility ‘signal’ crimes, like knife crime in London.” And a year ago,The Guardian had an article called, “Can the fight against teenage knife crime be won?”

In America, we worry (some of us do) about kids with guns, serious guns. If we’re old enough, we think with nostalgia of the good old days when the authorities and tabloids were sounding the alarm about teenagers with switchblades and zip guns and greasy hair. Or even a decade or so later, when the scourge was the Saturday Night Special, a handgun whose reliability, accuracy, and deadliness are laughable by today’s standards.

A knife or a 9 mm – does the choice of weapon make a difference? Not if you believe that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” A killer will kill, regardless of the weaponry available. On the other hand, look at the numbers. Twenty-one teen murders in London in the first half of 2008. Suppose the trend continued and London had 40 teen murders for the year. Chicago’s population is less than half that of London; in 2006 it had 150 teen homicides from guns alone (I don’t know how many homicides from knives or other weapons, but it was surely far fewer). Houston, with a population less than one-third of London’s, had 89 gun homicides by teens. (More CDC data here.)

Are our kids so much more bloodthirsty than the London chavs? Or is it that the availability of guns makes teen nastiness more lethal here in the land of the free? New York, with a population about the same as London’s, had “only” 100 teen gun murders – a rate two-and-a-half times that of London but well below that of Chicago, Houston, LA, and other large US cities. I’d like to think that our New York teenagers are three times nicer than youths in those other cities, but I suspect that NYC’s relatively low teen murder rate has much less to do with the general level of teenage civility and propriety in the Big Apple and more to do with the NYPD making it much harder for kids to obtain guns and carry them on the streets.

P.S. A blogger friend once told me that sometimes when he’s feeling lonely and ignored, he’ll put up a post about guns, knowing that it’s sure to bring large numbers of people to his blog. Of course, they are mostly hard core NRA types, and they burst in, many of them, with both barrels blazing. I speak from experience. So a word to you gunslingers and other potential commenters: use your indoor voices; otherwise, I will delete your comment.

* Note how the Daily Mail, in good know-nothing fashion denigrating analysis and research, dismisses the evidence from the British Crime Survey.  The BCS is probably most accurate measure of crime in the UK.

4 comments:

PCM said...

But just a few years ago Britain was good and France was bad, at least according to the American right wing. And those socialist Scandinavian states were always moments away from economic collapse, with their "welfare" and "socialized health care," and "income redistribution." It's so hard to keep up.

I suspect that European countries, just like America, will continue to face problems and somehow continue to survive. How's that for a [not-so] bold prediction?

Bob S. said...

Wow...time and time again I hear on this blog that you can't look at one factor in isolation.

And here you go doing exactly that regarding guns.

Why am I not surprised.

Why the homicide rate in the U.K. and America?

Why not mention the violent crime rate in the U.K. is actually 4 times higher than in America?

* The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.
* It has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
* The UK has the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU.
* It has the fourth highest burglary rate and the highest absolute number of burglaries in the EU, with double the number of offences than recorded in Germany and France.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html#ixzz1VPzw9WH0


Why not mention the scandals about the U.K. law enforcement officials under reporting crime?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/violent-crimes-have-been-underrecorded-970172.html

In America, we worry (some of us do) about kids with guns, serious guns.

And the other aspect is the casting of aspersion on all gun owners -- really you worry about all kids with guns?

Or perhaps it would be safer -- if you dared to tell the truth -- that we should only be worried about some kids with guns.

Is there a correlation between gangs/drug trade organizations and violence?

The F.B.I. certainly thinks so, it estimated 80% of all violent crime is related to gangs or the drug trade.

Is there an area of population density, educational achievement, single parent family ratio/absentee fathers that is greater in firearm related violence than others?
but I suspect that NYC’s relatively low teen murder rate has much less to do with the general level of teenage civility and propriety in the Big Apple and more to do with the NYPD making it much harder for kids to obtain guns and carry them on the streets.

Instead of "thinking" why not actually do some research, eh.

Perhaps you would learn that it is the prevalence of gangs in Chicago and the lack of gangs in New York that is a huge impact.

Chicago's gang problem is greater than that in either New York City or Los Angeles, according to Philip Cook, who studies violence at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy in Durham, N.C. Chicago Police Department statistics show that 81 percent of homicides in the first seven months of this year were gang-related, which Mr. Cook says confirms his research that despite policing efforts, gun access is flourishing among Chicago's gangs.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/0830/Behind-Chicago-s-high-crime-summer-persistent-street-gang-violence


This is why people who defend second amendment rights descent in such numbers on a site like this.

Shoddy research, insinuations and obvious bias.

Unknown said...

You can't compare crime rates in the US with crime rates in the UK. For example, the majority of switzerland owns a gun. The majority of switzerland is apart of the army reserve and has a rifle at home (there is a draft in switzerland if you didn't know--yeah the most peaceful country has a draft). They also have VERY low crime rates.

Guns don't commit crime, people do. And people only commit crimes when it is their last resort.

How is switzerland different from the UK or US? Well, their median income is about $200,000 USD. If you are making that much money, why would you even both to commit a crime?

If gun control takes another step, it won't be long before the US have car and knife control. Hell, they might even have expression control.

Unknown said...

Oh shoot, the correct URL was http://lindseystone.net