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H_Lunulata t1_ize8t2b wrote

This is the first chart I've seen, in my life, that suggests that Canada has more violent and property crime than the US, per capita.

I believe there is a problem here treating two data sets as equivalent that are very much not.

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yes_its_him t1_izeidby wrote

Your conclusion sounds more like an assumption so far. Why not look and see if that's actually the case?

The assault rate in Canada is reportedly 575 vs. 246 in the US per 100,000.

Burglary is 438 in Canada vs. 376 for the US.

There could be differences in the way metrics are aggregated, but I don't think the conclusion that they are "very much not equivalent" is founded just because the numbers surprised you.

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Alwaysunder_thegun t1_izejbvr wrote

I was surprised as well. But as I thought about it it made sense. I was in lots of fights as a kid. In vancouver or homeless population , and thus petty theft is out of control. We also might report things more often. It's not that hard to believe.

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Rat_Salat t1_izesuv2 wrote

Doesn’t pass the smell test tbh.

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yes_its_him t1_izeu8vj wrote

Who needs facts when we have preconceived notions?

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Rat_Salat t1_izezmmy wrote

Maybe you can just keep Canada out of your health care and gun control debates.

Your disinformation seeps into the consciousness up here.

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yes_its_him t1_izezxrt wrote

I am not doing anything except reporting what governments say in their official numbers.

You seem to be the one making random evidence-free assertions

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Rat_Salat t1_izf3eld wrote

I'm not gonna write a research paper to debunk this American gun propaganda. All you have to do is drive from Toronto to Buffalo, Windsor to Detroit or from Vancouver to Seattle to know that these numbers aren't accurate.

Triple the violent crime rate, despite having a third as many murders. Sure, seems totally accurate. Graph isn't accurate on that one either. Canada's murder rate isn't as low as OP suggests.

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pigecoin69420 OP t1_j2dyhe0 wrote

Numbers are important to understanding the world, though of course there could be bias in any data set. It would be really worthwhile if you could identify a potential cause for bias in the data set. When data seems strange, it could be a sampling artifact (bias), or it could be real and up to us to uncover the reason for the strangeness...
I'll put my tin-foil speculations hat on for a second to offer a pro gun explanation for the data: what if higher rates of gun ownership led overall to fewer crimes overall because some sort of deterrence from gun owning population?
The point is, it could be bias, however the differences are quite large, suggesting that it's more likely to be incomplete understanding of the factors at play, warranting research studies to investigate why such differences in crime might exist between two quite similar countries.

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jrystrawman t1_izeeeya wrote

I don’t mind displaying that to give the reader some idea of potential bias and ‘context’.

In this case, it provides evidence that Canada does NOT under-report “gun-related” crimes given that it likely has more rigorous documentation (or better sources).

Realistically, if I was making a PowerPoint for some stakeholders, that would be a footnote / back-end appendix.

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dmomo t1_izeewr9 wrote

Could it be that final crimes resulting in death are counted as homicides? It's really hard to know what this data represents without seeing how the underlying data is formatted.

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jrodicus100 t1_izepetj wrote

You might be thinking of firearm related crime and homicide rates, which is a stat often used because it paints a different picture than overall crime rates.

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scuac t1_izesynw wrote

It is comparing US 2020 data vs Canada 2017 data. That is a huge problem, didn’t Covid affect crime rates?

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