Thursday, January 31, 2013

A Little Fact-Checking for Mr. Piers Morgan

Mr. Morgan likes to throw round the "fact" that there are 11,000 guns murders in America every year. Guess what, he's wrong. According to the F.B.I., there were 12,664 homicides in the U.S. in 2011 (down 15.1% from 2007)  but only 8,583 (down 15.3% from 2007 - and, yes, that's still a troubling number) of those were caused by firearms. And even of those there were 400 justifiable homicides by citizens and 260 justifiable homicides by police officers. This makes the total 7,923, still an extremely high number but certainly not the 39% inflationary number that was put forth by the Brit.......................................................................................The dude was also a little off on the numbers from his home country. The real number of gun murders there isn't the 35 that Morgan touts but 59, a 41% exaggeration in the other direction. That, and he totally glosses over the overall rate of violent crime in the respective countries. According to the E.U., Britain is the most violent country in Europe with a violent crime rate of 2,034 violent crimes per 100,000 people. The violent crime rate per 100,000 people in America? Try 466. Oops.

5 comments:

Jerry Critter said...

I don't know where you got the 466 per 100,000 violent crime number but this CNN report puts the number at 22.5 per 1000 or 2250 per 100,000. Maybe the two sources define violent crime differently.

Jerry Critter said...

Your number does more closely match the FBI statistics.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

It's probably fair to say that both countries have some issues. And just for the record, I am NOT an opponent of gun control (at least not universal background checks and a limiting of the number of rounds per magazine to 10-15). I just don't think that it's a panacea, that's all.

dmarks said...

The FBI statistics are the most accurate.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

And kudos to Jerry for his integrity in sharing these numbers.