"Tony Cox" wrote:

Don is talking about the lower rate of other crimes, not firearm
crimes. Since (IIRC) the night-time burglary rate in New York is
about 20% of that in London, he has a point -- few people are
likely to climb through a window if they think the occupant has
a shotgun on the other side.

From what I have seen of New York, it has a large number of high rise
apartment buildings. They would be a big deterrent to burglars in
themselves - anything without a ground floor exit directly to the
outside would make many burglars think twice. My impression is that
London has less of these.

I could be wrong - I haven't lived in either city - but my point is
that you can't draw conclusions like this from the figures, without
knowing whether they have been corrected for this sort of factor. This
is why statistics have a reputation of being deceiving - you can prove
almost anything if you ignore the right factors.

Assuming that the figures and reasons are correct, I don't think that
I like the tradeoff anyway. You may be less likely to be burgled
overall, but it is still much more likely that you will be burgled by
someone with a gun - which makes it much more likely that you will be
killed by a burglar.