---------- From: Reese[SMTP:reeza@flex.com] Reply To: Reese Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 8:05 PM To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net Subject: Re: Did you notice

At 10:20 AM 3/19/01 +0000, Ken Brown wrote:

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Reese wrote:

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England serves as a fine example here;

I'm sure it does, but of what?

Crime rates.

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I think the murder rate in Britain is about 1/6 of what it is in the USA. (I mean rate, not actual numbers, this is not a 28% paternity error). And the proportion of people killed accidentally is far lower here as well. We are perhaps a fine example of finding ways to live longer?

Peter Trei just posted a url to an Economist story, and THIS, lists just about everything BUT murder: http://itn.co.uk/news/20010116/britain/06crime.shtml - so what's the rest of the story?

Reese

Well, you could try http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvintl.html While this is on a page advocating gun ownership, the statistics cited are from non-partisan sources. For some breakdown of US homicides by race, try http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39235bd43dd9.htm once again, this is a partisan page, but the stats straight from the US Gov. (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/homtrnd.htm) This suggests that the US murder rate for whites is about 3 per 100,000, vs 1.41 (total) for England/Wales Only about 15% of murders in the US are by strangers, so if you don't feel that your relatives and acquaintences are particularly likely to bump you off, the murder rate you worry about ("How likely am *I* to be killed today?") is very, very low. Even if it's double the UK rate, doubling a very low number gives you another very low number. Doesn't anyone besides myself know how to use a search engine, or check numbers before posting? Peter Trei