Posted on 02/15/2019 6:04:21 PM PST by daniel1212
Let me show you the magic graph that tells you everything. It’s got all the cool stuff; it tells the future, tells the past, tells your strengths, burdens, who's gonna be rich, who's gonna be overworked, the cause of the Healthcare crisis, the cause of every major financial collapse, and yes, even gun violence.
This is a population distribution map of the United States. It tells approximately how many people we have at every age range.
Who cares? Why is this so important to understand gun violence? Simple answer: Because people at different ages act differently.
A few examples, young adults are in a phase of their lives where they are spending every dime they make to buy a new house, new car, and support a young family, even as they are at the lowest income level of their career. They get the most attention because advertisers love to get their money and they love to spend it. Those in the middle ages have independent kids, the house is paid for, and they are saving and investing everything. They increase the economy the most while also creating huge tax revenues relative to their other cohorts. Then there are old folks. They’ve stopped saving, mostly stopped spending, and are now taking all that investment out of the system to live out their lives. The only place they create a sizable increase in the economy is healthcare and hard caramel candies.
This is related to gun violence too. To understand why you have to compare a nation like the United States to a nation whose population distribution looks completely different. Just out of curiosity, I looked up one of the countries in the world I know to have one of the highest murder rates per capita. Unsurprisingly, it looked exactly like I thought it would.
A near perfect population pyramid.
What you can tell from a graph like this is that the people of Honduras are probably very poor, evidenced by having a huge number of children (children are expensive in rich countries, but a free source of labor in poor countries) and the fact that they have a very small capital rich age bracket creating investments for future opportunities. That means problems for the youngins later on down the road and sort of means that this pattern will repeat itself forever until some quality changes happen with Honduras’ policies. Honduras is also a patriarchal nation (as in an actual one.) An element of a real patriarchy is the prevalence of female infanticide. Notice the 5–10% disparity between boys and girls? That little notch might tell you a lot about their culture. That’s important later on, because there are fewer women available for a competitive male population. But notice who the most populated group is: people younger than 30. That’s an important number, as a recent 2015 FBI crime report on mass murder placed the average age of offenders to be 27 (and also male.)
What’s the big picture?
In general (as in, almost always) younger, more male, poorer populations are more violent. Honduras is a demographic pressure cooker. So if younger populations are more violent, are older populations less violent? Well… let’s look to where the age per capita is much higher.
Oh my. It’s like half of Europe forgot how to have kids about forty years ago. No wonder they are doing so well. Between 60-70% of their population is currently in the high income portion of their lives with about 1.4 children for every two adults. They haven’t reached the point where they have major healthcare needs, and don’t have many kids, so schooling and crime are both minimal problems, and given that they are generating massive taxes… all these problems are even easier to deal with. No wonder it’s a utopia over there… for now.
Granted that’s only going to work for a while. Eventually, you end up with China’s 4–2–1 problem, the after effect of three generations of One Child Policy. There is one child responsible for the care of two parents, and four grandparents later on in life. This is called an inverted pyramid as every generation is smaller than those above it, leaving not enough workers to support too many older middle age managers supporting a massive elder population. You see why European healthcare has those death panel provisions in their “free” insurance? Eventually, the idyllic nature of the EU’s current demographic collapses as the upside down pyramid comes crumbling down.
But let’s zoom in at some of other examples.
Oh, Germany, Germany, Germany. This won’t do. Babies are important. Seriously look at that, there are about as many 5 year olds as 75 year olds, but only half as many 45 year olds. That’s bad. You can’t make new 5 year olds. The problem for those little tykes is that when they reach adulthood, they are going to have to somehow provide for the needs of two elderly Germans each. Then, assuming every person gets married, every married couple needs to have four children each to recover the population. If they were to try that out, which they won’t, that many young people running around all at once is going to stress the system. Marry that to the exploding health care needs of the oldest of their population and you can see that Germany is already looking down the barrel of a national level collapse due to its population woes. I seriously hope they figure out how to make German robots that can do everything, because who's going to do all the work when the boomer generation retires? Seriously. That’s a very, very serious question.
Uh-Oh Switzerland. A little better, but banking won’t buy you babies. At least, I hope not.
Oh, Canada. Come on, I thought you guys knew how to stay warm at night? Actually, this graph looks much worse if you remove one key area, Alberta, where they are much younger then the rest of the aging country.
With that in mind, violence in Honduras basically explains itself, as does the wealth and generosity of European style socialism. But the US is somewhere in the middle. Our baby boomers are still the largest generation, but our population is mostly stable, whereas Europe is actually in a state of population decline, or even population collapse. That said, while demographics explain why Honduras sucks, so do they explain why European countries, or really any country where the median age is significantly higher than 27, have much lower rates of violence. But let’s continue anyway.
This next part will be uncomfortable. While there are many champions of diversity, it usually brings more conflict than peace. This isn’t to say diversity can’t be great. In some parts of the world, where they are free to only absorb those immigrants which have the ability to positively influence your culture, such as those who are smart, self-sufficient, older, have options, have families, and aren’t going to cause a lot of problems in the way of crime or cultural conflict, people who bring with them new ideas, technical skills and experiences, and not the least of all, people who appreciate their new home and will have children they are open to acclimating to it. When immigration happens in this way, it plays into the hands of the host country. There is very little community for newcomers to entrench themselves, forcing assimilation and reducing cross-cultural animus. It’s a symbiotic relationship which avoids creating a disruption to the stability of society.
Where are these places? Let’s look again at Europe.
This isn’t talking about the Balkans, (which could be a discussion on diversity all by itself) but the wealthy parts of Europe. The recent history of Europe, with their wealth and geography, allowed them to be very selective with who came in and out. When they had immigration, it was mostly from the wealthiest, most educated, and most liberal among the world’s poor nations to join their upper middle classes. While this is terrible for their home countries (see: “Brain Drain Effect”) it’s great for the hosts. Everyone gets to share in the free flow of culture, or at least new types of food. While this is generalizing, it is a sort of superficial diversity that is mostly free of the problems too much often brings with it. It’s also no surprise why many European countries and wealthy American liberal cities have very favorable views towards immigrants, where most the rest of the planet are cautious of outsiders. They literally get to pick from the best of every nation in the world.
In recent history, Europe has rarely experienced mass migration of a different kind, that from mostly young, mostly uneducated, mostly male, and mostly working classes. When the Syrian Refugee Crisis hit (which included far more than Syrians and far more than refugees) things started changing. Up to about 2015, Europe was very selective. Now, not so much. Remember those graphs I showed? Europe knows the problems it is facing in the next 10 years. They need people; young people… with strong backs and thick legs. So they are becoming much more open to new immigrants. But now they are having the problems of mass migration. Their new citizens are bunching up, making small and mostly homogeneous communities which are pushing out much of the populations unlike them. They’re likely to engage in identity politics, which has a whole mess of problems attached to it. And if they’re young, and especially young and male (which they are), they will bring violence disproportionate to the rest of the native population. Remember Honduras? Infuse those demographics into your working classes, you are going to have more violence. And that is exactly what we are starting to see from Europe. It goes mostly unreported and talk of it is often verboten, but there has been an increase in violence, ranging from knife attacks, rapes, murder, and even terrorism stemming from areas that are hostile to police and local government presence. This isn’t insulting the people of Europe or their new Europeans. I think if you recreated those situations anywhere in the world… you’d get exactly the same results. Call it demographic growing pains.
The US, however, has been tackling major diversity issues for their entire history. It’s no secret that dealing with the after effects of slavery has been a disruptive, sometimes violent and bloody affair, and that blacks in America still have a relatively harsher time than many whites, and they aren’t happy about it. That’s about an eighth of our population. This is to say nothing of the massive influx of tens of millions of Mexican immigrants, almost entirely working class and younger than the American median population. Remember that in 1970, there was almost no Mexican population in the US relative to today. This has had a massive effect on our displaced working class population and caused huge amounts of racial animosity. This necessitates talk about the conflicts due to income disparity. While the US is far richer, the disparity from the rich and poor is much broader here too. The poor have fewer avenues to reaching the middle class than they once did. When you get high income inequality mixed with low income mobility, you get crime. Even in a nation still very rich, this causes conflict that most of the egalitarian nations of the world simply don’t have to think about, but which positively affects their measurements of violence. Again, don’t start patting yourselves on the back too hard, Europe. You’re more egalitarian than us, but it’s easier to achieve that when there are nearly two adults for every one child. That plan works great until you breed yourselves into extinction. At some point, the pyramid has to flip and you’ll be asking Honduras for advice.
The problems involved with diversity in the United States dwarf that of other countries that are far more choosey, either legislatively or geographically, in who they allow in. Frankly, given that mountain that we have been trying to climb for the better part of two centuries, I’m really proud of how well we manage as is.
Oh, but we’re not done. Moving on to — the Drug War. It’s a thing.
I recently had a pleasant conversation with a Canadian friend about gun legislation. (It was seriously pleasant. Canada, you perpetuate the stereotype with your incessant niceness.) Canada measures much like Europe for the purposes of this question, so I’ll copy those notes.
As most of illegal drugs in the Western Hemisphere flow from South to North, to even reach Canada most criminal activity has to pass through the United States. That means that while our own high demand to ride the white pony causes worlds of problems for us, we mostly absorb those problems before they ever get to you. That’s a good thing, because about half (48%) of all violence in the US is caused by gang violence. That includes the murders. Guns are going to be a part of that as they are necessary from the gang’s perspective, as weapons are needed both to defend yourself from other gangs, as well as to fight them for dominance. There is a reason it’s called a Drug War. This is enough of an incentive that there will always be a market for illegal guns no matter what the laws say, so long as there is a market for drugs, and as long as the US stays rich… there will be. That’s also why a gun ban will do nothing, since criminals will not obey such a law and American citizens will be left defenseless to salivating wolves.
As for Canada and the rest of the world, given that the US is a natural barrier to this means that the scary stuff happens here (if it isn’t happening in Honduras), and it is our taxpayers who are paying to stop it with our agents and police officers who must be hardened to deal with ever hardening cartels. These problems aren’t problems for many other modern post-industrial nations. You’re welcome. But since most of you don’t experience it, and since most Americans don’t realize this is a situation mostly unique to us in the world, it doesn’t usually get factored in the simple graphs denoting gun violence.
But America is so rich, so why do they have these problems when others don’t? The United States is less free to tackle these problems because they have one expense that that other countries in the world don’t. In fact, they actually pay for it for everyone else on the planet. Know what it is?
“But we all have a navy!” You say. Sure, but that big boat in the middle? It has more projection power than all but a handful of countries’ entire navies… And we have 11 of them.
First off, most people think the US is a young country. That might be true of the American people, but we are actually one of the oldest governments in the world. Most of the European governments didn’t even exist 100 years ago. For example, France’s 5th Republic was put to ink only in 1958. Many people reading this are older than the current government of France. Why this matters is that a people define a culture, but the day to day policy is a matter of the government, and most governments have evolved only since World War II.
That is an important point in history. That’s effectively the point that the US said to the rest of the world, “Hey Everyone. Here’s a new plan. Everyone can trade freely with everyone else, but you have to get along.” We made few stipulations, ordered no taxation, installed no governors. We just promised to ensure that the world didn’t fall apart. We built a huge Navy, enough to dwarf all others, and every now and then, our Marines caused a big mess in the house of some bad actors, but because of that, ships could sail from sea to shining sea, pirates were not really a thing anymore, and everyone on the planet who played the game got significantly richer than before the game began. And no, it wasn’t because we were altruistic. We were pragmatic. It was a plan to make everyone so rich by opening resources of everyone in the network to everyone else, that it would isolate the Soviet Empire and bring it to a humiliating defeat. It worked. We defeated the Soviets. Yea!
But then there wasn’t a lot of reason for us to keep doing it besides getting rich. We did that, but many of our enemies and competition were getting rich too, and richer faster. They were closing the gap with the US because of the US. Then they could start affording things for their people we couldn’t. Then they started bragging about it. So that was annoying.
But recently, innovations in shale oil meant that America will soon be energy independent and 3D printing will allow us to no longer be so reliant on cheaply made manufacturing that must be shipped half-way across the planet. That means we have no reason to help out the rest of world. Now think about those “young” governments in Europe. Everything they do they do because that is how they have always done it, but that’s playing to a system that has only existed since WWII and only because of American protecting the global commons. They’ve been playing it on easy mode for 7 decades. They could invest in social programs to ensure that they don’t have crimes because they could allow their militaries to lapse. Soon, the US will enter an isolationist phase and take care of their own problems. That means a lot of other countries are going to have to get good at making militaries on their own very soon, and take our word for it, militaries are expensive. All the social programs and paying teachers like they are doctors is going to come to an end. When that happens, all the social problems from poverty to crime, violence, and healthcare are going to bite hard. Oh, wow, healthcare is going to bite the lopsided pyramids apart. I honestly wonder if some of the European states will even last 50 more years once that happens, much less be bragging about their low violence.
So, in summary, the other states of the world who pride themselves on their low gun violence stance… I’m happy for them, but I don’t think they should be patting themselves on the back so hard. They’ve done well in the current system, but they have advantages that they should be thankful for and not forget to take account of the burdens she bears that would normally crush them. Do I think that their gun policies have had an effect? Sure, but maybe they only account for cutting away 10% off the top. It’s something to be happy about, but when factoring for demographics, such as the currently fat population pyramids, the wealth of the older citizens, the attention given to the young, the high taxation able to focus on social programs, the low diversity, and the fact that they haven’t been forced to maintain or use a military in the better part of a century, all while their ever increasing standards of living are guaranteed by the United States’ military and taxpayers, I’m just not impressed by graphs such as the one below that many people use to prove we in the United States are behind our European counterparts.
Again, I don’t fault the European countries. They do well by their people, but they need to count their blessings. As for Americans, we need to remember that we are a completely different country, with problems unlike any other — bigger than any other. In fact, among our problems is that we can’t screw up, because so much of the world relies on us working. That’s also a big part of why we can’t be as generous as they are, why so many of the things they have, we can’t, why they are in control of their violence better than we are, and why just because they are doing it, doesn’t mean diddly over here.
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Well, Biblically, thieves had to pay back what they stole as via slavery. And many crimes were capital ones , normally executed by communal stoning (the offense was against all), versus antiseptic state execution. And what is missing in the Old Testament is much of any prison system.
This dumb question deserves a dumb answer.
“Because there are no guns”
Instead, a guy who is just stronger than you, or perhaps attackers in pairs.. they win.
You die.
My hero, John Moses Browning, invented a device that allows a little old lady with no combat experience to defend herself.
The comparison should not be "gun crime", it should be all crime.
If "gun crime" goes up, but all crime goes down, it is a win.
Another false premise is the cherry-picking of countries.
Why do they ignore Mexico, Brazil, Jamaica, Russia? Lots of Mexicans, Brazilians, and Jamaicans in the U.S.
Cherry picking the countries compared, and limiting the discussion to "gun crime" is just a way to create the results desired.
Good read...
I’ve left the northeast, and now am leaving Pennsylvania.
Let me tell everyone.. these are dangerous places. Detroit level of danger.
I’m sure there are, but that doesn’t negate what I said. Any discussion of crime that doesn’t factor in demographics is meaningless.
When DC had its prison in Lorton VA - about 25 miles from DC, it was asked why they kept it there and the then Mayor, Marion Barry, said they had to keep it open as it may be the ONLY time some of the locals got to leave their neighborhood.
Believe it was also Barry that said the crime rate in DC wasn’t so bad if you threw out the murders....
Mayor for life huh....some of these lifetime pols makes one seriously believe there definitely should be a litmus test for the VOTERS especially when the only way term limits gets passed is for the people it affects to vote on it.....Nevah Hoppen Cholliee
This is an excellent article. Ignore the title. It leads you to believe that the results of gun control in other nations is somehow saying that we should do it, too. I know what everyone’s reaction here is, because mine is the same. Here we go again, another article glorifying gun control and why the rest of the world is better for it and we are stupid for clinging to our guns in this country.
Just skip the title and get right into reading. Be patient. He makes salient points. He’s obviously a patriot.
I read the article, word for word, even read it out loud to my family. It does a very good job of explaining why other nations actually have us to thank for their low violence and that they are really ticking time bombs because of their demographics that have also aided in low violence. The nations he has chosen to show graphs of are very appropriate. BTW, he didn’t make a big deal out of it being gun specific violence, so I think his point is broader than that.
We are blowing a golden opportunity to get blacks and Mexicans to turn on their slave owning democrap, by not exploiting the fact that they will loose the right to defend themselves. Spread the truth that white democraps want to take away minority peoples guns and right to defend themselves. There is no way in hell that the Democraps could refute it as a lie....especially with Bella Pelosi comment to declare a crisis to confiscate guns!
Quora is liberal claptrap first off, and second iff i have no time to read this mass of garbage.
I have a statistician on guns. His name is Dr. Lott, he is a professor who has written TWO books that show that, in America more guns mean less crime.
maybe that's because they don't have the same sections of society that commit rape robbery an murder out of all proportion of their numbers that we do...
Yes. You cannot compare the US to any other country in the world, a fact the writer actually makes, so why try.
We have unique problems, more due to a lack of strong leadership and common sense than anything else.
We ain’t the rest of the f**king world. We are The United States Of America and our Second Amendment makes all the other amendments possible. For over two hundred years We The People have had the right to keep and bear arms and for two hundred years it’s keep us free and the government in check. “When the people fear the government there is Tyranny. When the government fears the people there is Liberty’’.- Thomas Jefferson. I don’t give a f**k what the rest of the world thinks about our Second Amendment rights.
He did a pretty complete job dancing around the melanin component.
In a tiny closet in the back of the mind of every politician whispers the Second Amendment.
and IQ.
How many of the citizens of the developed nations have this right protected from interference by the government?
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Leftist have difficulty grasping the intent of the 2nd Amendment so a few examples might help to correctly inform them.
A well educated Public, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Books, shall not be infringed.
A well regulated Internet being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Modems shall not be infringed.
A well regulated Carpentry being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Hammers shall not be infringed.
I had wonderful vacations there and never once thought about our safety. People were friendly and outgoing and just seemed to be happy all the time.
That's all changed now that the drug cartels have taken over........
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