A question for the Brits and Aussies.

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Neocavo

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Feb 19, 2011
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Australia generally avoids the weird shit especially mass murdering because A. we dont have any religious nuts besides the ones we ship back to the arab lands every other week B. hate crime doesnt exist in australia so no one can hide behind a flawed law C. we are a nanny state...everything is australia has super harsh penalties seriously 10 kmph over the speed limit is $180 fine....2 years ago i heard we had a massive increase im afraid of speeding ever again D. to get a gun in australia you have to jump through so many hoops and pass so many police clearances its to much effort only bikies really bother with getting weapons.....rape happens all over the world.....and i dont understand why everyone cares so much for underage sex? perhaps its different here in australia, we get sex education in year 6 and 7 not to mention since we have fuck all religious types theres no one complaining about it and getting it banned from schools or dragging their kids out of class....i personally had my first time in year 10, its only bad when theres no education about it to guide people.
 

Anaklusmos

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Jun 1, 2010
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In my area, by the time we all turned 16 only one of the girls in my whole year was pregnant, and roughly 20% of the girls and boys had sex, we didn't have any gun incidents, the worst incident in my entire school life was where a fight had occurred and the person who lost had his arm broke, and even then the person who did it apologised and bought them a new game as an apology...
 

lRookiel

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Jun 30, 2011
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In the UK this happens, less with the gun crime but there is still an invisible presence.

however my point stands as this.

 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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The sex stories happen all the time in the UK. (Worst teen pregnancy rate in europe.). I haven't heard quite so many stories like that in australia.

A lot of bad things happen all over the place though. (Rapes, murders, etc). On the other hand, Gun crimes are pretty rare outside the US.

Not non-existent, mind you, but they aren't at all common.

Still, news tends to focus on extremes. It's much harder to work out how prevalent these horrible things actually are.

And it's quite another to witness them. I've seen people taking drugs at least once. (and the evidence of several other examples too) - They probably didn't notice I could see them, because the path behind where I live looks quite secluded to anyone on it.

Meanwhile though, local news has mentioned murders and violent robberies in close proximity to where I live, but I've never noticed it.

Which just goes to show how close you can be to serious crime without it registering. (Or alternately, how news media can make things seem a lot more prominent than they actually are.)
 

HalfBakedCheeto

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Aug 20, 2011
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There was an article recently about a pregnant ten year old in last week's paper (UK) so yeah, we still get stuff like that, though less guns, more underage sex and knifes.
 

Thaluikhain

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Jan 16, 2010
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Kopikatsu said:
The reason that way back when, when it was considered normal to have kids by 12-ish, the maximum life expectancy WAS 30. 12 was entering mid-life. Settling down by 30 is a new thing because people live long enough that they can do that now. They didn't used to. Also, a result of massively increased lifespans is that humans develop (Physically, emotionally, and behaviorally) slower.
Not actually true. While it is, of course, correct that average life expectancies used to be much smaller, this was mostly due to infant mortality rates being very high. In Ancient Greece (or at least parts of it), a baby wasn't considered a baby until several days after birth, IIRC, because so many wouldn't make it that long. If you made 10 years you'd probably make 20, if you made 20 you well make 60, and sometiimes people lived significantly longer.

...

Anyhoo, in Australia, we have strict gun laws, and as a result, less gun crime, though there's still the odd bikie gang shooting at each other's houses (or the really odd case of people making their own silenced variants of Owen guns in 2004). I could buy a crossbow with no hassle at all in the western states though, here I need to be in a shooting club.

Not sure about underage pregnancy, however Australian schools teach actual sex education, not pretending that contraceptives and so on don't work in order to get people to not have sex, because the idea is mind-numbingly wrong.
 

Batou667

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Oct 5, 2011
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Of course the teen pregnancy stuff happens in the UK. I'm sure just about every British person on this forum can remember a good few "village bikes" from their school days who lost their virginities (or even got knocked up) well before they turned 16. As soon as you venture outside of plummy middle-class suburbia you have entire communities where muggings, stabbings and sexual assault are depressingly common. A lot of kids experiment with drugs, especially cannabis, and kids (usually 13-year olds and upwards) getting drunk in parks on cheap cider is very common too.

We don't have that much gun crime in the UK, probably because there are less guns. Gang-related gun crime is steadily increasing (but still thnakfully rare), but a lot of that in "imported" gun crime associated with Eastern European and Jamaican gangs.

I can't really comment on why there appears to be more crime and social disorder in the USA. I expect that a lot of it is media-driven (a case of the media making a bigger deal of it than other countries might), having a particularly large country to begin with (more people = more crime, more pregnancies, etc), and the attitudes towards sex education, letting young girls have contraceptives or abortions, gun control, and so on.
 

Edible Avatar

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Oct 26, 2011
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AusGamer44 said:
These stories make me sad.I'd like to know more of why these 'normal' kids went ballistic though.I'd suggest they had a LOT more going on than the articles indicate.I'd wager there's more to the story of why the 'good religious kid' went nuts.And precocious sexuality in mid/pre-pubescent children is often a sign of abuse.
Shooting murders outside organized crime are pretty rare in Australia as personal ownership of guns for anything other than sport or farming were pretty much banned following the Port Arthur Massacre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#The_Port_Arthur_massacre_and_its_consequences
I still find it amazing that so many Americans insist on having these intruments of death in their houses and yet don't lock the f***ing things away from their kids.(Correct me if I'm wrong-but wasn't the 'Right to bear arms' written in mind of having a red coated British soldier in your backyard,not for Mrs Jones to be allowed to keep a Glock next to the jam?) And even if you don't have rugrats,it takes 10 seconds to reach for a gun in a fit of temper & commit a crime that will have you rotting in a jail cell for 30 years.
I don't think Americans have these crimes because they're especially different from anybody else.'Glassing' attacks are on the increase in Aus & knife crime has been a concern in the UK for years.But if you get pissed off with somebody, a punch,broken glass or knife is not always fatal.Gun to the head though-it's game over.Add the huge population-312 million as opposed to 62 million in the UK & 22 million in Australia,the odds of violent crime increase purely by dent of numbers.
And if I lived in an area where I felt I needed a gun to protect myself,I'd pawn everything I own and work three jobs to get out of said sh**ty neighbourhood.
meh, you'd be surprised really, i read from A FBI source a while back that only 1.3% of gunowners have ever committed a crime (study includes crimes not relating to guns)(i know, i know, i'm looking up the citation now). Also, gun crime has dramatically fallen in the past 10 years:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2009/december/crimestats_122109

Also, any gunowner with half a braincell will lock away their weapons in a vault, lockbox, or gunbox.
 

omega 616

Elite Member
May 1, 2009
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Kopikatsu said:
http://blog.chron.com/momhouston/2011/10/study-finds-one-in-10-texas-6th-graders-have-had-sex/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/11/us-rape-mcdonalds-idUSTRE7AA5KY20111111
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/19/national/main20055336.shtml
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41883757/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/boy-accused-shooting-parents-siblings/

So, I want to know if that kind of shit happens in the UK and Australia, too. Because...seriously. (There are literally tens of thousands of articles I could have taken, I just used those four as examples)

Stories like this crop up literally every other day. It's starting to feel like all of the crazies are centered in the US, so, I'd like to know if it's true or not. (For anyone who wants to say 'DON'T JUDGE EVERYONE ON SOME PEOPLE', this isn't 'on some people'. The US has less than 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoners. Also, that would be the purpose of my asking)
Unless you know the right people getting a gun in the UK is hard, so it's not like we have them in drawers and cupboards around the house, so the shooting ones are a no. Even if you are born into one of the families who has guns, the chances of the kid taking one to school are none existent 'cos the family wouldn't want attention from the rozzers. Shooting the family up could happen but our 13 year olds are like the 13 year olds in Rio de Janeiro, a lot more mature than they should be.

Talking of mature 13 year olds, a lot of them have had sex ... we call them chavs, they are also the ones likely of being in families with guns. (chav stands for council housing and violence.)

I very rarly watch the news but I have never heard of a 13 year raping a 5 year old (or anything close) but I wouldn't say it has never happened.