> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ray Ludenia [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 5:01 AM
> To: BRIN L
> Subject: Re: eurohostages
>
>
> Chad Cooper wrote:
>
> > I see no correlation between gun ownership and murder
> rates...do you? I do
> > know that the US has a lot of immigrants and illegal aliens
> from countries
> > that have greater murder rates than the US, especially from
> Mexico, Russia,
> > and the Phillipines, all of which have higher gun murder
> rates than the US.
>
> Chad, the implications of the above statement worry me. Are
> you implying
> that the unfortunately high gun murder rates in the US are
> significantly
> affected due to immigrants' higher rate of murders? Poorly
> phrased... I
> mean are immigrants from the countries you quoted significantly
> over-represented in US murder statistics? Can you cite any
> references for
> this? (genuinely curious).
>
> Regards, Ray.
I was wondering when I would be called on this one. Now at the risk of being
called a 'racist' I will carefully tread here.
>From DOJ Crime Statistics -
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/hvvc00.txt
Between 1993 and 1999 (the year of
most recent data) the NVSS recorded an
annual average of 409 Hispanics being
killed -- a rate of 9.1 homicides per
100,000 Hispanics. The national homicide
rate was 6.2 per 100,000
This appears to support my theory, except for the fact that Hispanic
Homicides only account for 3% of the total Homicides in the US.
Most murders are committed by blacks killing blacks and whites killing
whites. Since most Blacks are not immigrants, my statment will most likely
be proved false.
Presence of weapons during violent crime, by race of victim
White Black Indian Asian
No weapon 68% 54% 65% 58%
Weapon 24% 36% 28% 32%
Gun 8% 18% 9% 14%
knife 6% 8% 6% 9%
I will have to state that I have not evidence that my statement about how
immigration relates to murder rates. Frankly, there is not a lot of studies
out there recently that studies whether there are relationships between gun
ownership and murder rates. (see http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/fireviol.txt
). This article suggests the following:
Because evaluation opportunities have been rare,
researchers have used four less powerful
approaches to study how gun availability affects
violence and its consequences. The findings,
while somewhat tentative and not entirely
consistent, suggest that greater gun availability
increases murder rates and influences the choice
of weapon in violent crimes, but does not affect
overall levels of nonfatal violence.
So there you have it. I am probably wrong in that there may be a direct
correlation. But, there is no recent data availible nationwide to support
it.
In introspection, I believe that I was suggesting that strong cultural
beliefs influence whether a gun is used or not. Black people clearly prefer
the gun. But I have no good statistics on Hispanics, and how many of them
were immigrants.
Perhaps I am racist. I certainly hope not. Maybe I am xenophobic.
Nerd from Hell
