International Crime Statistics
Dean
One of the more interesting things I learned in this charming movie is that Canada has a violent crime rate almost twice that of the United States. I was rather startled so I started checking some statistics and it's basically correct. Canada's murder rate is lower than America's, but its total violent crime rate is damn near twice as high as ours. Fascinating.
I tried finding online free sources of international crime data and was surprised how tough it was to find. But I did find this New Zealand Ministry of Justice report comparing New Zealand to other major countries, which coincidentally includes Canada, the United States, the UK, and a number of other countries for comparison.
I'm some kind of weird geek that things like this fascinate me....
As they say in the New Zealand study you cited.
I would say that the difference in rates of reported crime has more to do with the reporting than the crime.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold, with you that phrase is redundant.
It turns out it is very difficult to compare the official stats of Canada and the US. We have one criminal code, the US over 50. Definitions vary widely. The US does not track charges and incidents the way Canada does.
Statistics Canada published a report back in December 2001 that described the problem and made some partial comparisons.
http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/011218/d011218b.htm
They said that, on a per capita basis, Canada has less violent crime, but more break-ins, car theft and arson.
Stuart at moorelies.com got caught by this too.
http://moorelies.com/news/archives/display.cfm?newsID=540
To me both the New Zealand and the Canadian reports seem reasonable in their approach to the problem. Yet they make opposite conclusions.
I don't know the truth.
I do know that I feel safer in downtown Detroit than I do here in downtown Windsor, just across the border. With the younger drinking age we get an alarming number of fights, stabbings and shootings.
Canadians have no grounds for complacency.
When we are out doing shooting practice on a gun range, we are not armed at all unless and until we come up to the line or step into the designated shooter's box under immediate control and direction of a qualified range safety officer, who orders the shooter to load and made ready. At that point, the shooter is armed. But he is not dangerous, because his intent is only to shoot at carefully delineated paper, steel or frangible targets.
In a home defense situation, where a burglar is in my house, and I must assume that he is armed, and therefore dangerous. In which case, I too am armed, and I am prepared to kill him.
Which is precisely what I will do if I spot him with a weapon in his hands, even if it is not directly pointed at me. It takes only a split second to redirect the aim of a firearm, at which point I am at risk of death at the hands of the burglar. Therefore, I factually have no choice but to neutralize him first. If this makes me dangerous, so be it.
"Neutralize him" means to render him incapable of doing me any harm. Which means he gets two quick rounds aimed right in the center of his bodymass. Guaranteed to lift his body up a couple of inches and drop him lengthwise to the floor about 1-3 feet back from where he had been standing. In other words, neutralized.
If his finger is still inside the trigger guard of his firearm, I clear the family out of there, with one of them calling the sheriff's department. Then I remain under cover with my firearm ready and never taking my eyes off the burlar until the police arrive.
Like any other conscientious firearm owner, I think carefully about what I will do in any contingency that I can envision. It goes without saying that I know every square inch of my house, including the basement and garage, and I can report further that I have trained myself in this by walking around every inch of the house in pitchblack darkness, making no noise whatsoever and keeping my ears alert for someone else's breathing anywhere in the same room.
And if I can do all this as I have described, at 71 years of age, so can any of the rest of you. Or, if you want to be victims, suit yourself.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI