On Mon, Nov 30, 1998 at 05:41:08PM -0800, hidden wrote:
>
> You get my sound argument award. Yet I have a question about that 0.2% can you
> translate that in to a body count.
Sorry, nope. The 0.2% figure was cited in an article I ran across a while ago; I'd have to do some serious digging to come up with hard figures, and as I don't work in a library ...
One other point to note; although general crime levels in the UK are comparable to the USA, the murder rate is an order of magnitude lower. Don't know why: highly suspicious of attempts to pin the blame on widespread gun ownership in the USA (as there are other high gunownership countries that have a much lower murder rate).
The upshot is that in the UK, you're as likely -- or more likely -- to have your car pinched or your house burgled, but far less likely to be assaulted or killed in the process. And interestingly, the murder rate didn't rise significantly following the abolition of the death penalty.