From: "Christopher Gould", [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have received a letter via my MP from Charles Clarke at the Home Office in which he claims that gun crime in Switzerland is higher than that in Britain. I have always thought that the reverse was true. Can anyone point me in the direction of authoritative figures with references? Chris Gould -- This claim is based on very faulty research conducted by Pat Mayhew at the Home Office RSD, which was comprehensively blown out of the water during the course of the Dunblane Public Inquiry, I am amazed he has the balls to mention it again. The Home Office used two sources, the World Health Organisation and the Killias research. The Killias research is pretty stale now, plus it contains serious flaws (related to the method of statistical analysis) and Killias is a self-confessed anti-gun advocate. Much of his research contains very basic flaws, e.g. saying that the service pistols issued to the Swiss Army and kept at home are useless to criminals because they are not concealable, which is obviously nonsense. The WHO research is less biased, but it's not really detailed enough, and it contains a flaw in its methodology in that they represent the figures the same way in the report but in fact those figures are extrapolated from a huge number of different sources with myriad reporting methods, and with something so rare in both countries (i.e. armed crime) it's not statistically sound. The other huge mistake the Home Office makes is to claim that the Swiss Government doesn't keep statistics, which must come as a big surprise to the Federal Office of Police who compile the Police Criminal Statistics every year. It's difficult to compare our stats with their stats, because the reporting methods are different. Swiss stats for example lump homicide and attempted homicide together. Swiss armed robbery is fairly stable at about 250-400 reported cases a year, however ours fluctuates quite substantially, in 1993 there were nearly 6,000, I think last year it was around 800 or so. So it depends on which year you are comparing as to whether there is more armed crime per capita. The police in Switzerland have a category for "Serious offences against life and limb" which includes GBH, assault, homicide and attempted homicide, which is around 150-200 offences a year. For the years 1993 and 1994 in E&W the same categories have around 1,800 offences. If you work it out per capita the rates are virtually identical (population of Switzerland is about 7 million I think, E&W is 56 million), in fact E&W is slightly ahead of them. I think if you did a proper statistical analysis over ten years you would find more armed crime per capita in Switzerland than in GB, but it's a very tiny difference, it's not like the comparisons with the US and the UK. In both GB and Switzerland the un-PC but true statement is that most of the armed crime seems to be committed by immigrants and ethnic minorities. I did compare the PKS data with the HO data for armed robbery from the period 1990-1995 during the Dunblane Public Inquiry and I found the armed robbery rates were virtually identical in both countries. However that data is five years old now. Steve. Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________________________________ T O P I C A http://www.topica.com/t/17 Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
