Bash Him All You Want, But Do You Have A Better Answer To Moore's 'Columbine' Query?

RR, I'm sorry that you can't handle my post. I made comments I felt were a potential cause of violence. Many other industrialized nations do not have the same sort of demographic breakdown that the US does, and I am throwing that out there as a potential cause for violence. It's hardly fair to make an attempt to belittle my post and squash it with your one line post and the famous roll-eyes.

 

I guess one way to test the disparate wealth hypothesis would be to compare countries or even US states on a distribution of wealth vs gun violence.

It would make for a very worthy thesis or project. I have noticed, however, that we seem to have virtually no social science majors on this bbs.

 

Why more murders in the US?

-Our judicial system is too lenient on murderers. Kill someone and there is a possibility you won't even go to jail. Claim your daddy hit you or your mommy neglected you or claim the person you killed really tormented you to the point where it was unbearable. Better yet if you are rich hire a great legal team that can attack all the witnesses and experts and put them on trial.

-Even if you are convicted there is a chance if it's your first time that you won't get much due to plea bargains or for the simple fact there are so many career criminals that we have to keep behind bars. Just be good while in jail and they'll probably let you out early

Just my $.02 but I think the system doesn't deter people enough as in other countries, where if you kill someone they either kill you or lock you away for life.

 

-Our judicial system is too lenient on murderers

We can definitely say this is wrong. We lead the world in imprsionment and harsh sentences. Our murder rate is among the highest.

Emotionally satsifying thought is a way, but rationally very unsatisfying.

 

i would have agreed with this sentiment back in the late-70's and early 80's...but the sentencing guidelines have changed a lot of that...and people are serving a much higher percentage of their convicted term than in those years past.

 

Glynch-
Any facts to back that up or just something you know?

Can you get numbers showing:
-Murder conviction rates
-Average sentencing of murder cases
-Average % of sentence served of murder cases

And compare them to something (historical facts/ stats from other nations).

Again it's fine to say someone is wrong but to blanket statement say it is wrong just because doesn't cut it.

 

When you hear a teaser ad for the news that says "Another Houston man gunned down. Story at 6." do you think "Oh, no another innocent dead and gone" or do you think "Oh good, another criminal bites the dust."

Does anybody have any reliable statistics about who is dying these kinds of deaths. I know we hear the sensational cases about the innocents who die by handgun, but is that truly representative of the dead-by-handgun population?

There's that old axiom "live by the sword, die by the sword"... somehow I suspect it applies. I suspect that many of these deaths are crooks killing crooks in the drug business, etc.

 

Wow, this thread was moving along quite nicely in a civil manner.. then here comes traitorjorge in to destroy any semblance of rational thought with more defiantly ignorant, reactionary statements.

 

Your challenge is a double edged sword Chuckie--perhaps YOU should show your historical and emperical evidence as to how "lenient" the justice system is...How can you call someone else out for not providing facts and neglet to have the facts to back up your claim? Sorry, that just doesn't cut it.

 

In regards to the inequality bit, the United States does not have that much greater a wealth disparity than most other developed countries in the world.

But all that aside, there have been numerous studies on the effects of wealth disparity on social statistics. It has been found to have statistically insignificant effects on crime and murder rates.

For a relatively non-technical reading, you may want to look at Chapter 3 of Agenda for the Nation (edited by Aaron, Lindsey and Nivola). There are lots of much mroe technical treatments of this in the economics and demography literature, but they're dry and require a decent amount of econometric background to be appreciated.

The bottom line of is this: Inequality is increasing the United States. That much is certain. However, it is not clear that inequality has any adverse effects on social indicators.

Plenty of people have done stuff on this, there's just not that much to be discovered.

 

Doesn't make any sense. If our cultural and economy priorities cause us to use violence, then why is it that poor people- the people who least buy into these priorities, that commit the most crime? The people who own guns for hunting, have traditional values, watch football on weekends, etc. have a lower homicide rate than those in the inner city.

As far as government policy influencing the average Joe to shoot his neighbor, "even setting aside this questionable chain of causality, Moore contradicts his own thesis that foreign bombing leads to domestic gun violence when he approvingly notes that the United Kingdom, which played a leading role in bombing Yugoslavia with the U.S., had only 68 gun homicides the same year America had 11,127."- Spinsanity.com

Canada also has a much lower poverty rate and I would guess a much lower level of immigration. They also do have some more restrictions on gun control.

 

I expressed my OPINION like this thread wanted. I never said my theory ws right but Glynch said it was clearly wrong.

Glynch came in and said "Nope that's wrong" without any facts.

 

We simply live in a culture of death. People don't want to obey the law because they feel that it is something good to do. Most obey the law simply for fear of retribution and imprisonment. There is no moral reason for following the law being taught any more. Morality has become a bunk topic for somoene to advocate because they come off as a bible thumper or religious freak (I'm not saying that there aren't people who do advocate it). So, when faced with a decision of whether one should kill another or not, sometimes the irrational side of the would be murderer overcomes the thought that they could face imprisonment, simply because we have failed to teach the value of life. And I do agree with Moore on the point about greed (although I haven't seen the movie and generally don't respect someone who tries to pass off a movie as a documentary after admitting they changed some shots and edited clips to make certain people look bad, if there's going to be a narrative voice than I have trouble buying it as a documentary.) I think the problem goes back to our schools though, simply in they fail to teach a core curriculum based liberal (not that kind of liberal) arts education. Everything is about the buck these days, (which school is going to make you the most profitable to employers) we fail to educate the soul before we move on to bigger and more specialized professions, and we fail to see the value of the life we might take. The effect trickles down to the poorest of the poor, as well as the richest of the rich. We are all accountable, but it is certainly not the guns fault. Those kids at Columbine broke numerous gun laws already on the books.

 

4 chuckie gives no facts for his opinion that we have lots of violent crime because we don't have strict enough anti-crime laws and procedures.. He says he doesn't have facts because it is just an opinion.

Well my opinion is that chuckie is wrong. I guess I don't need facts either then.

YOu started this first. Get some facts than I will.

 

Well, things are changing for the worse in many parts of Europe - France and England especially. Violent crime (though not murders) is skyrocketing, in conjunction with a large influx of poor immigrants from Africa and the ME. Not sure how intertwined the two are, but it does seem that the US isn't the hellhole (as mentioned by StupidM...why anyone watches the local news is beyond me, sensationalistic drivel, but the sheep out there eat it up apparently) nor is much of Europe the shangri-la that we previously thought.

 

Fair enough--your statement, to me, seemed as though you were grilling him for not having any facts and then not providing facts of your own. Opinions are different...I think you BOTH have a right to your INFORMED opinion.

 

You are clearly wrong

http://www.nber.org/digest/oct98/w6484.html

This says violent crime has been going down per capita

 

Well, fear gives you ratings and allows you to charge big money for advertisers. That will never change. People may complain about how they want to get rid of all the negativity on the news, but it will never happen.
And for Michael Moore, he is a total idiot. His "documentary" was nothing more than a bad collection of half-truths trying to prove his point that guns only belong in the hands of government and criminals.

 

How in the hell did you ever come to that conclusion? Earth to Mork, Earth to Mork.

 

That's a side effect of watching Fox News.