about those declining homicide rates in the US ...

[iverglas]

Maybe nobody here has ever run into this kind of information. I mean, it's not the kind of thing likely to be posted at you'renotthebossofmefrommycolddeadhands.com ...

http://www.jems.com/article/news/advances-trauma-care-keep-dayt

Advances in Trauma Care Keep Dayton’s Homicide Rate Down
DOUG PAGE, Dayton Daily News | | Wednesday, April 27, 2011

DAYTON - The homicide rate in Dayton has dropped by almost 50 percent since the 1970s.

One of the reasons: more of those shot, stabbed or beaten survive because of advances in medical technology and trauma care.

"It would be fair to say gunshot wound victims, if they suffered the same injury 25 years earlier, their chances of survival would be much less," Dayton police Maj. Pat Welsh said. "It's a credit to the advances in medical technology and procedures, particularly 'The Valley.' "

... National studies seem to back up the veteran cop's take on the city's homicide rate.

"(T)he principal explanation of the downward trend ... involves parallel developments in medical technology and medical support services that have suppressed the homicide rate compared to what it would be had such progress not been made," according to the findings of "Murder and Medicine," a 2002 study led by University of Massachusetts Amherst sociologist Anthony R. Harris. ...

http://books.google.ca/books?id=XwAAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA56&lpg=PA56&dq=cache:hksOdpBgGngJ:www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2455809/posts+homicide+rate+trauma+treatment+guns&source=bl&ots=8gz_2aqXKb&sig=yP80LwaRLPwKpyMED8npq5IVY5c&hl=en&ei=xi8_TvuZIovogQeP--HoBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false (Popular Science Oct 2003, quoting from pp. 60-61)

Harris's statistics on the subject are staggering. He determined that without advances in emergency response and trauma care there would have been 45,000 to 70,000 homicides each year for the past five years instead of 15,000 to 20,000. Back in 1964, 17 percent of assaults were with a gun, and 16 percent of those were fatal. In 1999, ... 19 percent of assaults were with a gun, yet only 5 percent were fatal. ...

http://www.thefreeradical.ca/research/traumaCare.html

The ambulance-homicide theory
New York Times
By Ryan Lizza
December 15, 2002

For all the theoretical talk of ''broken windows'' and ''zero tolerance'' policing that has dominated the public discourse on crime during the past decade, research published this year suggests that the most significant factor in keeping the homicide rate down is something much more practical: faster ambulances and better care in the emergency room. ...

... In "Murder and Medicine," a paper published in May in the journal Homicide Studies, Harris and three other researchers determined that the murder rate is being artificially suppressed because thousands of potential homicide victims each year are now receiving swift medical attention and surviving. ...

Between 1960 and 1999, the proportion of criminal assaults ending in death -- what Harris calls ''the lethality rate'' -- dropped by 70 percent. (The steepest decline came in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when advances in battlefield surgery led to innovations in civilian emergency care.) ...

If he's right, the focus by criminologists on the stable or declining murder rate is actually masking a radical increase of violence in America, a fact that has unexpected consequences. For example, communities without access to the most advanced emergency medical services may have higher homicide rates. "How much is the black-offender rate inflated?" Harris asks. And there are strange implications for the criminal-justice system. An attempted murderer carrying out his crime in an area with poor emergency services is more likely to succeed than one operating near a high-tech trauma center. The former may be executed, while the latter spends just a few years in prison, their punishments determined not by any disparity in lethal intent, but by the unequal levels of local medical care.

Well. How about them apples? Lots of interesting food for thought there. Thoughts?