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Comment by msrpotus | Hacker News Reader

Knives are a lot less lethal than guns.

That's bullsh*t, knives kill just as guns do. In the UK we have many more knife related crime than we do gun related crime.

That said, the issue here is not how lethal one is over the other, but Google playing judge,jury and executioner for something they should have no right to jurisdict over.

The UK has knife crime but not knife murder, despite what the fearmongering press would have you believe. The UK murder rate is a quarter that of the US, and is in line with similar countries.

The UK also has 1/5 the US' population - what does all this mean?

Murder rates are often given per 100,000 inhabitants - so size of country isn't really a factor:

   United States: 4.8
   United Kingdom: 1.2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

vacri's statement seems completely accurate.

While I agree the US is far more violent than the UK, most of the US's incremental violence is explained by the drug war. Even if we had zero guns and the UK had US-style gun possession and laws, I suspect US drug laws (and other forms of extreme economic/political/legal inequality) would give us a higher murder rate.

And if we had a more sensible culture around alcohol use in the UK, particularly in my native Scotland, I'm sure we'd have a much lower level of all violence.

A large portion of violent crime (~75%) in the US involves either family members or other acquaintances ("nonstrangers"). I'm sure some of that relates to drugs, but most of it probably doesn't.

http://bjs.gov/content/pub/press/vvcs9310pr.cfm

Thanks, I missed the important word 'rate' in vacri's post in my haste.

http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/01/12/fact-checkin...

4.8 murders per 100,000 in the US vs 1.2 per 100,000 in the UK.

The figures _do_ take size into account.

Yes, I stand corrected. Thanks.

This is a gigantic diversion, but saying that the UK doesn't have knife murder is pretty profoundly ignorant. The last stat I saw was that the UK had some 330+ stabbing murders a year.

There is an implicit "of the scale of gun murder in the US"

Murders in the US are currently sitting at 14k, ~11k of which are from firearms. The US only has 5 times more people than the UK, which would turn your stat into a rough US-equivalent of 1.7k.

Kives are just as lethal as guns? Hey, good news, armies of the world! Stop wasting money on complex mechanical weapons and ammunition, just buy knives! Your soldiers will be just as effective!

Armies don't typically fight unarmed opponents in close quarters. If you're unarmed and the attacker is within a few yards of you, a knife or a gun are not that different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9igSoJHEdUo

So lets ban guns then, people only need knives for self defence.

Self defense is not the only reason for the legality of guns.

Overthrowing government is the other I guess?

Good news is that their soldiers will have guns, and you can get a good advantage on them by staying in close quarters environments with your knifes.

Recreation. Target shooting. In countries where guns are not demonized, this is a perfectly acceptable activity.

A murder is a murder, does it really matter whether it is using a gun, a knife or even with bare hands?

Citation?

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