Rape is a tough stat to track because so many incidents go unreported due to the perceived guilt and shame that go along with it. Perhaps Canada just has the populace staunch enough to report it.

Oh, and Orph, about your three things on Kerry, only #1 was true. Kerry is pro-choice.

He is against gay marriage (despite coming from Massachusetts) but believes that there should be no national position on the subject - that states should be allowed to come to their own conclusion. This is the same view Dick Cheney has on the subject, btw. And as you might have seen, on Tuesday 11 states had a referendum on whether it should be banned in that state, and every one passed it, even the fairly liberal Oregon which had a big push trying to shoot it down.

I haven't heard a thing about him being anti-guns. I think what is likely is he wants to reinstate the ban on automatic weaponry. The difference between

Previously Illegal: Automatic: Holding down the trigger will fire consecutive bullets

Always Legal: Semi-automatic: The gun will reload itself, but the trigger must be released and pulled again before another bullet is fired.

You can hold the view that automatics sould be allowed, but I fail to see how supporting a ban for what really has little need outside of a combat situation is evil.

lol Tracer, I love that graph and how it "squashes" the higher rape and murder rates... So, "400/100,000" assault in the UK compared to "310/100,000" in the US? So you're 1.3 times as likely to be assaulted. But note that rape rates are twice as higher than all the other countries on that graph, except the strange Canada figures, and it doesn't seem to list murder, for which I have heard statistics that you are up to 6 times as likely to be murdered in the USA. And again according to your graph, it doesn't seem like Israel has the lowest rape figures at all.

Perhaps most crucial of all, it says nothing about gun crime!

Anyway, you can always find all sorts of crime figures, and ones fudged to show what you want them to- and don't forget, these figures probably only show *reported* crimes, so of course there will be some extra bias there (I'm sure if you looked at Zimbabwe's crime levels right now there wouldn't be much being reported!). If you want to tell us your actual source Tracer it would be appreciated

Since we're talking about letting people own guns to defend themselves, I guess it's ok for countries to own nuclear weapons to defend themselves too?

Why the hell do you guys continue to make up excuses to try and make it look like your country isn't as bad as the "big bully America". Do you really think that just because a women is in another country will make her report her own rape? Being in another country and reporting I crime against you will be the same if you were in America. Oh but I guess its better to report it in Canada because I'm sure you mountian man police force which we all know is the best in the world can catch any criminal. If canada had the population of America they would have equal the crime. Forgive me for saying this but a lot of our crime also comes from the black population.

Now I want to note that I am not just saying this to everyone in Canada but all the rest of you who bash America for such a horrid place it is because our crime rate is higher than yours, but then you don't want to take into fact that our population is higher than yours because we all know that would change nothing.

i have lived in 3 different college cities.. belton texas,conway arkansas and jonesboro arkansas, and rape is a bit higher here than anyplace else i have lived.. perhaps its because of the kids, perhaps its no means yes, perhaps the numbers are skewed i dunno, but rape is reported often here.

assault is pretty high in jonesboro, people are always drinking beer and you know how rednecks are .. guns.. i cannot even remember when i heard a thing about guns.. maybe its so common people do not report it as much anymore, maybe the level has dropped i dunno, but the only time i ever hear about guns anymore is during hunting season... most deaths are reported as accidental.. many deer rifles have much more power than our military weaponry used in the US.. they have less range, but lots more knockdown power.. most people hit with ammunition intended to kill deers.. well they don't fare very well..

According to Yahoo New Mexico has been declared for Bush and that Iowa has Bush at 50% and Kerry at 49% with 100% of the precincts reporting. Dunno why they are still holding out, as it makes no difference whatsoever.

On the whole crime rate thing. Here it is for where I live.

You'll notice its still pretty heavy. Not so bad in the "this week" column, which is from last week. I live in Orleans, which is South-east of Ottawa. Blackburn is just North-west of Orleans, Gloucester is more or less north, and Cumberland is to the east. So I guess you can call it the crime rate for the east end of Ottawa. It includes quite a bit however. And unfortunatly, most of it is located here in Orleans. All the local teens with nothing to do

[edit] you'll never believe some of the dumb crime thats going on around.

That sounds like quite the utopia! Remind me again how that is seriously better than a US with guns aplenty?

EDIT: Maybe with the expiration of the ban on assault weapons I can finally legally buy myself a fiveseven... awesome.