Michael S. Lorrey wrote (quoting myself):
> > I have to say I don't really understand this paranoia of yours.
> Its not paranoia when it actually happens to many people,
I apologize if I was teasing too far. I don't know what actually happens in
your country, other than that I constantly watch your films, news and
talk-shows and read your newspapers. Yes well, basically, these are the same
sources of information that you have - but still, I believe you scrutinize
facts like these much more carefully than I do.
[Note to Michael: please make sure to read the second half of the message. I
am looking forward to your rebuttal regarding what I found your statistics
to be. Hint: 'made up' would be a very kind expression for what you tried to
pull off.]
> Yes, I understand this was also the case in 1938 in some
> countries. Lets see, you are in Slovenia, according to whois.net,
> which is a former Yugoslav republic. Hmmmm, no, I'm sure every
> person killed in your country definitely needed to be killed.
;-)
Yes, in 1945, the socialist government killed mercilessly thousands of
people who weren't friends with the new forces that be. Later on, they were
quick to brand you as an "enemy of the state" if you showed the least sign
of a liberal outlook on life, and they put you away to "Naked Island", a
small island in the Adriatic. Just a couple of hundred meters from shore,
but incredibly difficult to escape from because of the strong currents. Many
people spent decades on that island, and many more died there, too.
They did all this stuff. We separated from Yugoslavia in 1990, had a short
10 day 'war' in which something like 8 Slovenians and something like 100
Yugo soldiers were killed, and now we're on our own.
Since then, I have had little complaints with the government, other than
that taxes are enormous. I've been involved in a few driving misdeeds in the
past 10 years, such as dangerous overtaking, and I have to say the police
have always treated me well. No handcuffs or going to jail for 30 days.
Sure, I've heard about some of our policemen beating the hell out of a
(relatively) innocent guy, and I'd like to have them more than just
reprimanded for that. But overall they're quite alright.
I think you would have liked this country if you ever came to visit. [But
make sure you deposit your money in Switzerland, you don't want to pay a 50%
income tax. ;-) ]
> No european nation has any right to claim they are
> in any way more peaceful or safer. The odds of a european
> dying from gun fire is about a hundred times higher than
> for any American.
I'd like to hear where you got these numbers from, and what part of Europe
they refer to.
I had some difficulty verifying your claims. I visited the website of our
Ministry for Internal Affairs, and they say we had something less than 200
criminal acts involving arms in 1998. That translates to 0.0001 such act per
citizen per year. The number of such criminal acts involving firearms (not
arms in general) should be significantly lower.
The number of murders in 1996 (couldn't find data for 1998) was 34, and most
murders around here don't involve firearms.
So, I guess overall not less than 10 and not more than 30 people die from a
bullet around here each year. That gives a probability range of 1:66666 to
1:200000. That corresponds to some data I found on
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ears5/handouts/Prob_dying6_25_99.html, which says
the probability of death by homicide in Europe in any year is 1:100000.
And what do you have?
Ah-ha, let me see. Here it is, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Homicide
Trends. Weapons Trends. Look'n'look: "Homicides are most often comitted with
guns, usually handguns." If you trust me to read that graph correctly, there
were something like 7000 homicides with firearms in 1999 in USA.
Hint: that's a probability of 1:40000 at best.
So, Europe is one hundred times as dangerous as the US, right? Yeah.
Who is it that has been making up their statistics? You or me?
- denis
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