I think it fair to conclude that you didn’t give these links a lot of thought, these are five flaws I spotted almost as soon as I opened them:
Firstly, two of the ‘sources’ you provide are Fleet Street papers. They have a vested interest in selling news paper, sensationalism sells papers. So what they say, especially in their headlines, isn’t necessarily the way things are, or are reported in a manner designed to evade the full picture. To provide an example, the Independent notes that thirteen police authorities have under-reported crime. It fails to tellus by how much, and also fails to point out that this means that the other thirty two authorities did not under-report crime. The Telegraph’s article, more ellusively still tells uinitially that authorities have been under reporting crime, in the very next sentence that certainty implied by ‘have’ is replaced by the far less decisive ‘may have’. Again we are not told by how much this under-reporting has distored figures.
Secondly, the most interesting of your sources, the academic paper, was written a full decade ago, pertains to data long preceeding even that, and discusses only a small portion of crime on the whole, burglary. Hardly that relevent.
Thirdly, all the sources fail to take into account that there are at least two sources of data which offset each other and reduce the impact of flaws in the data. So one source may be in error, and that is what is picked up on in your link, but they then fail to take into account that the data that the home office employs to produce the kind of graph I provided, employs multiple sources limiting potential for a single source to misrepresent the overall picture.
Fourthly, even if we assume that crime is constantly under-reported (via all sources), as your links suggest, then that is hardly going to make a massive difference to a graph like the one I provided which shows massive fluctuation in general crime trends over a period of time. In other words even if in each instance crime has been under reported, and in fact all crime has been around say 20% above the reported figures, the trend would remain largely the same.
Fifthly, this is something of a moot point. We all know that crime statistics are likely to under-represent crime. Not all victims report crimes, not all crimes are discovered and the police may be doctoring their figures to present themselves in a better light. Crime surveys face the dual challenge of A. not being able to survey everyone and under reporting crime. B. they face the possibility of gathering false positives and over reporting crime. This is why you offset the two sources of data against each other in the hope of eliminating problems with the data. But still it is obvious that crime is geneally likely to be under reported. And that is a universal fact. Which is why the graph I provided is important, because it doesn’t just represent data in individual years but over a period of time presenting us with trends. So you are positing a repost to an argument nobody has made.
With a little more thought, doubtless I could find still more problems.
You are quite correct, I apologies. But tell me what correlation is there between the legal status of fire arms and national honesty? What an idiotic thing to suggest.
Secondly, in the UK you are in fact at liberty to use a wide variety of ‘impliments’ in your defence.
I have reported the facts perfectly honestly, and in doing so provided you with ample aid, and opportunity, to conduct your own independent research to verify my statements.