I recognize that a large amount of a countries homicides committed by one individual is something to take into consideration and would skew the numbers. When that information was brought to my attention, I asked if all of those homicides were added in the year 2003. I also asked if anybody had a revised graph of UK homicides with these homicides removed.
No they weren't some of them were added to 2002 and some to 2004, most were added in 2003. No I don't have a fancy new graph to post for you. You posted the original graph, onus is on you to fix it.
I'm focusing on homicides because of the title of the thread we're in; where we discuss the homicides that occurred in Parkland.
If you are suggesting that the science confirms that restricting access to firearms reduces suicides, then I am going to take issue with that assumption.
Please not the "only takes one bullet" rubbish.
Reducing access to guns reduces suicides because shooting yourself is a quick and easy method. If you can't put a gun to your head then the remaining options (hanging, jumping off a tall building, jumping onto tube tracks, overdosing, cutting wrists) are all more painful and take longer to actually go and do, and in the time it takes to walk out to a tall bridge or go and get hold of enough painkillers to overdose on you could well have second thoughts. On top of cool off time it's more likely that other methods could fail and you might survive the attempt.
If you're found in time after an overdose then you are likely to survive (depending on how much and what you have taken) - shooting yourself in the head is a very reliable way of ending your life.
Ten years after the implementation of this law,
Baker, J and McPhedran, S (2007) attempted to answer the simple question "does reducing the stockpile of firearms in civilian hands result in a reduction in firearm or overall suicide death rates." I'll let you read the report.
That paper is now 11 years old. I read it. At the end of the paper it says "we need more data"
We now have another decades worth of data to go on. What might that tell us?
Research published in the prestigious American journal JAMA demonstrates fears that gun suicides would merely be replaced by other methods have proved misguided, with an initial spike in suicide deaths immediately following the buyback followed by a steady downward trend.[
source]
from the
paper itself we read:
Total suicides (all methods including firearms) increased by a mean of 1% per year before the introduction of the 1996 gun laws and decreased by a mean of 1.5% per year after the introduction of the new gun laws. Although the annual trend in total homicide was slightly declining in 1979-1996 by less than 1%, this trend accelerated to a 3.1% decline after the introduction of gun control laws (1997-2013). The ratio of the prelaw-to-postlaw trends was statistically significant for both total suicide (P < .001) and total homicide (P < .001)
The paper concludes that while less people are dying today there's still not enough data to know how much of this decline can be attributed to changes in gun laws.
As of yet, the homicide rate has not been statistically proven to have been reduced since the implementation of strict firearms laws in Australia.
Incorrect. The paper I just quoted shows a 3.1% decline in
total homicides year on year, for the period 1997-2013. How much of that decline is down to gun law reform is open for debate, but I'd suggest that the gun laws are responsible for at least some of it.
If you have any better evidence to back up your claims, I'm all ears.
