Watch what happens when Guns are banned in Australia

Walter said:

They're coming after you NFA guys first.

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teratos said:

I made a bet with my brother that my suppressors would float. Tragically, they didn't. If we didn't do this over the Marianas Trench, I would have gone down to get them....

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Crime in Europe and the US: Dissecting the “Reversal of Misfortunes”
Paolo Buonanno, Francesco Drago, Roberto Galbiati, and Giulio Zanella*
February 3, 2011
Summary
Contrary to common perceptions, today both property and violent crimes (with the exception of homicides) are more widespread in Europe than in the US, while the opposite was true thirty years ago. We label this fact as the "reversal of misfortunes". We investigate what accounts for the reversal by studying the causal impact of demographic changes, incarceration, abortion, unemployment and immigration on crime. For this we use time series data (1970-2008) from seven European countries and the U.S. We find that the demographic structure of the population and the incarceration rate are important determinants of crime. Our results suggest that a tougher incarceration policy may be an effective way to contrast crime in Europe. Our analysis does not provide information on how incarceration policy should be made tougher nor does it provide an answer to the question whether a such a policy would also be efficient from a cost-benefit point of view. We leave this to future research.
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1. Introduction
Despite the interest of policy-makers in crime and the long tradition of economic analysis of delinquent behaviour, there is a surprising lack of quantitative research on the determinants of crime and on the effects of crime control policies outside the US, particularly in Europe. Much of what we know is based on analyses of American data1, and is summarized by Levitt (2004) and Levitt and Miles (2007).2 The primary goal of this paper is to fill this gap: we employ data on crime in Europe as well, and perform a cross- country empirical investigation of crime trends during the last forty years. Here and in what follows, by Europe we mean Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK. Although this choice is primarily driven by data availability, these seven countries account for more than 80% of the pre-2004 population of the current European Union, with an aggregate population above 300 million –a figure comparable to the US population.
It is well known that the US experienced an unexpected drop in crime rates after 1990. In Europe, on the contrary, crime rates have been on the rise since at least 1970. Contrary to common perceptions, crime is today more widespread in Europe than in the US, while the opposite was true thirty years ago. This fact, which we label the "reversal of misfortunes", is documented in Figures 1-3. Figure 1 shows the dynamics of the total crime rate (crimes of any kind reported to the police per 1,000 inhabitants) in the US and in Europe. In 1970 the aggregate crime rate in the seven European countries we consider was 63% of the corresponding US figure, but by 2007 it was 85% higher than in the US. This striking reversal results from a steady increase in the total crime rate in Europe during the last 40 years, and the decline in the US rate after 1990. The reversal of misfortunes is also observed for property and violent crimes. Figure 2 documents the trends in the property crime rate. Although in this case Europe and the US have been moving along a common trend since the early 1990s, the European rate in 2007 was still 20% above the US rate, while in 1970 the Europe/US ratio was below 30%. The same pattern is found when looking at individual countries, with the exceptions of France and Italy. Figure 3 shows the reversal for violent crimes: in 1970 the violent crime rate in Europe was 62% of the corresponding rate in the US. By 2008 it was more than twice the US figure.

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teratos said:

I made a bet with my brother that my suppressors would float. Tragically, they didn't. If we didn't do this over the Marianas Trench, I would have gone down to get them....

Click to expand...

teratos said:

I made a bet with my brother that my suppressors would float. Tragically, they didn't. If we didn't do this over the Marianas Trench, I would have gone down to get them....

Click to expand...

Baccusboy said:

If that's the video I saw several weeks ago, it was sort of misleading. Near the end, they finally tell you it was a long-gun ban, or something like that. Not to say I'm not bothered by the idea, but I felt the video was a little sensationalized.

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