Title: united states - Did the UK homicide rate go up after handgun ownership was banned? - Skeptics Stack Exchange
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Did the UK homicide rate go up after handgun ownership was banned?
3 Answers
3
The numbers are cherry-picked.
Very low UK homicide numbers are susceptible to how individual events are reported.
There was a slow upward trend through 2000.
The "spike" happened years after the ban.
US and UK gun crime and ownership are very, very different.
0.1% of the population turned in handguns.
~7% of UK homicides are with a gun, ~67% in the US.
US homicide rates are 5x the UK, yet they have so many more guns.
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Content: Very low UK homicide numbers are susceptible to how individual events are reported. The absolute rate of homicides in England and Wales (the data I'm using does not include Scotland) is so low, about 500 to 1000 persons per year, that individual events and how they're reported can throw off the trend. Let's begin by using the numbers in Homicide In England and Wales from the Office of National Statistics ...
(Note: Reporting switched from Jan-Dec to April-March in 1997.) However, there are notes about anomalous events included in each year's numbers. Since the numbers are so low these can throw the graph off. In particular two large events which happened in previous years were reported for 2003 and 2017 respectively which accounts for their anomalous spikes. 2003 includes 172 victims of Dr Harold Shipman, one of the most prolific serial killers in history. While these killings happened over 25 years, they're recorded for 2003. 2017 includes 96 victims of Hillsborough which happened in 1989.