Well, I recently heard someone spout off something like "You know, more people are killed in Los Angeles every year than soldiers killed in Iraq." Almost immediately, my bad stat sense triggered, and I asked the mentioner for a source. Lacking one, I assumed this was not true. LA is bad, but not that bad.

Today, out of curiosity, I decided to check the death rates in Los Angeles and compare them to those in Iraq. Amazingly, approximately 1000 people died in Los Angeles in 2001. These are the latest figures I found, if anyone has newer ones, they would be appreciated.
On the other hand, Iraq casualties have barely passed 900 in 2007. It must be noted that this is for U.S. soldiers, not civilians (that is more in the tens of thousands). However, it seems unlikely that such casualties would go down significantly with our absence.

Don't get me wrong, hundreds of deaths a year is tragic, but not yet comparable to what happens (and has been happening for years) in Los Angeles. This really does put things in perspective. It seems that everyone whining their butts off about saving the troops who are dieing en masse is making two critical mistakes:
1) They are volunteers and subscribed themselves to risk of death. It's not even like they were drafted.
2) The amount of deaths is not even comparable to homicides in one county, let alone the entire nation. It is comparably smaller. There are much worse things happening to whine about.

Well, even if the amount of soldiers dying is inferior to the homocides in Los Angeles, death is still death, it's still a sad event.

Are those deaths including natural causes? Cause for the information to be compatible it needs to be under the same conditions. The army sends people home if they are ill or too old, so natural deaths aren't counted in that statistic. Other than that I agreed with both you and FlyingHat. We do have more problems to worry about in our home country than what's going on over there in the war, but on another note, we honor six men who died in a faulty space craft, we should honor our troops also.(respect their deaths, but let them do what they signed up for)

Not surprising at all.

It only includes homicides.

Oh, I didn't get that that's what you meant, JJ. I would put natural deaths at tens of thousands a year for L.A., but that's irrelevant.
Yes, homicides are greater in L.A. than Iraq.

It would be much harder to stop those 900 homicides than to move out of Iraq without totally screwing up peoples lives in LA, I think.

Doing so would "screw up" several lives elsewhere.

"People Died" proves that people of passed away by any cause. This could be anything but not limited to birth deaths, old age, homicide, suicide and accidental.
1000 - 900 = 100.

This 100 Margin does not satisfy much needed criteria.

Did you even fucking look at the source? It clearly says ALL HOMICIDES LOS ANGELES COUNTY.

Thank you, KK.
Viet, why don't you read the topic before you post? I already answered a silly question like yours. If you still didn't believe me, you should have read the source rather than spouting off nearly the exact same thing.

Keep in mind that L.A. County has millions of people in it, and spans across a massive area. Every time I see these reports about crime and murder in Los Angeles, it's as if all hell has broken loose and we have nothing but anarchy out here. Or at least that's what I see from these reports, and I live here. There are good parts of L.A. and bad parts of L.A., just like any huge city. I'm not surprised by that figure above, I'm more ashamed, I guess.

Are you really stupid enough to think that there were less than 1000 natural deaths in LA, a city of millions?

Start discussing frazz's point or I'm going to lock the topic. We've already established how dumb viet is and blah blah blah.

I really dont see much of a point rather than this is an 'interesting fact'. How is people blabbing about soldiers in Iraq, dying relevent from LA's homicide counts. These happen in other countries too, and other counties too.

I already explained my "point" in the first post.This point is directed at people who make a big hoopla of the tragic American deaths in Iraq. Are the deaths tragic? Yes. Unjust? No. More immense in number and more worth crying about than those happening in our own cities? Most definitely not.

Why is it always me? Inferno and I that is...


Not that. That was more or less of my point. 1000 "deaths" could be anything. I was merely stating that this 1000 could be "natural" and therefore not really a big difference for comparison. Anything else to yell at me for?

That wasn't coming from me here, I was just commenting on what the topic had been about. Anyways, w/e.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 21 2008, 2:06 am by Dapperdan.

This is the key here. In LA we're talking about mostly unarmed or little-armed people getting shot up on the streets. When you compare it to the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, of course you're going to see comparable levels of blood in LA. In Iraq, we're talking heavily armed soldiers of the most advanced country in the world, and yet the still die at rates equal to the homicide rate in one of the largest counties in the country? Like you said, if you want to compare, count all non-natural Iraqi civilian deaths in a year and you will count tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of deaths.

There is no huge difference between the terrorist's and the U.S army's rifle technology.