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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2657 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 13, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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I see. My assumption would be that criminals are much less capable of getting guns in Scotland than in an American state (even one with restrictive laws) and therefore that this points to Scotland's murder rate being abnormally high. A comparison to Scot-descendant groups in Canada would be nice.

Canadian Scots were much less border-inflected in general, so I think the selection effect would be pretty different. Handgun availability is probably more like Massachusetts than Scotland, but nothing like the Southern states.

Scotland itself can be... pretty violent? Knife fights are I think statistically more deadly than handgun wounds...

It would also be interesting comparing rates of e.g. grievous bodily harm between Scotland and Scots-Irish-colonised regions of the US.

This might be confounded by presence of firearms. Getting close enough to someone for GBH is more dangerous if they might have a gun; conversely people might beat their opponent down harder to reduce the risk they draw a firearm when you look away.

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