DiAnna, I agree with you on the tone and style of Plato's post, he's new here, I hope he learns that heavy rhetoric and sarcasm aren't great debate winners around here.
I do have to take you up on this last paragraph of yours, however. I assume you were taking your statistic from this list:
List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In it, there are indeed seven European countries with high intentional homicide rates than the US, two of which are EU members (Estonia and Lithuania). I doubt Plato was referring to these countries when he was speaking of Europe. He should have been much more precise. You must concede that western European, or EU nations generally have a much lower rate of intentional homicide than the US. It really doesn't help your case, if indeed it IS your case, to compare the US with the likes of Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus and Moldova, all mired in endemic corruption, violence and social breakdown.
I don't understand this point, I'm afraid.
Why wouldn't you pick those countries and compare both their individual homicide rates and their collective homicide rates? Why not pick the most westernized countries to compare with the most westernized country in the world? The populations kind of work too.
USA: pop. 300 million
UK: pop. 60m
Germany: pop. 90m
Italy: pop. 60m
France: pop. 60m
Spain: pop. 45m
Total of Euro 5 = 315 million
What's unfair about that? The US has a
GDP higher than all of those countries, why would you give a pass to the bigger states with a higher crime rate?
You are quite right however, you cannot say the US has a worse homicide rate than Europe, unless you define what you mean by Europe. But I don't think it's a stretch for Plato to claim: I assume he's referring the US (although all true-born Yorkshiremen grow up knowing that they come from 'God's Own Country'
TM) I don't think, even for rhetorical purposes, we could include Georgia, Russia or Moldova in a list of the most advanced nations. Added to this, 2 of the 7, Russia and Belarus retain the death penalty.
Plato is quite wrong, and really ought to have read the rest of the thread before blustering, that the DP defendants in the main use the deterrent argument. Badmutha may do, but he's really not much of a player in this debate thread.