Comment by DoughnutHole | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoughnutHole | Hacker News Reader

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> And its not particularly safe spot either - instead of gun violence, there are frequent stabbings, on top of all other crime of which there is plenty.

I presume the reference to gun violence means you're comparing the UK to to US. This is nonsense, gun violence hasn't been "replaced" with stabbings - the UK homicide rate (by any means) is a sixth of the US's - 1.2 per 100,000 people for the UK vs 6.3 per 100,000 people for the US. [0]

Not only that but the US has a higher rate of knife murders than the UK. The US had 1739 homicides by knife or other cutting implement in 2020 [1], or 0.52 per 100,000. The UK had 235 knife murders in the year ending in March 2021 [2], or 0.35 per 100,000.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in...

[2]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...

Just looking at "murder", "homicide" or "manslaughter" crimes with guns and knives doesn't tell you the whole picture; many knife crime victims will not suffer life ending injury, just really really nasty ones. This is obviously also the case with criminal gun usage to some extent too.

If you look at knife crime in the UK, especially in deprived areas, it's been a growing problem for a long time.

For example, there was over 15 thousand knife crimes reported in London alone in 2019/20, many of which are armed muggings etc.

Knife crime statistics include "stop and search" where orinary working people have boxcutters, Leatherman multitools, and Swissarmy knives taken off them. POC and young people are particularly targeted.

Knife crime in the UK is a red herring.

Slightly better knife crime breakdown for London:

Year beginning April 2020 to March 2021:

– Fatal Injury – 223

– Injury with intent to cause serious harm – 21,421

– Threat to kill – 4,984

– Attempted murder – 465

Yes stop and search affects knife crimes, but there is still a lot of violence, and overall rates of violent knife crime have risen notably faster than the population has grown in London over past 10 years.

Are those numbers isolated events or could one attack fall into multiple categories? Eg there was a threat to kill, then an attack and then an attempt to murder?

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