(Hey folks, if you're bored or offended by this thread -- you don't have to
read it.)
Gavin,
Viewed from your far-left perch (romanticizing "wars of national
liberation"???) I suppose I do seem vanishingly far to the right. It's all
in your perspective, I guess.
Actually, the category you refer to you is a common misinterpretation
arising from the way the FBI tabulates data in their Uniform Crime Reports.
They report a category of crime wherein the perpetrator was "known to" or
"acquainted with" the victim (I forget the exact wording and don't have it
at hand). Quite a few violent crimes fall into this category. If the
perpetrator, for instance, loitered on a neighborhood street corner and so
was recognized by the victim -- or if the robber had been seen in the store
on other occasions before the night he shot the clerk -- then the shooting
goes in that category.
Some of that total probably are indeed "friends" or "family members", but
that does not automatically make the shooter an innocent person driven to
madness by proximity to the evil instrument -- the gun. Those who shoot
acquaintances or kin versus total strangers are still most often career
criminals, who are in the habit of violence, and often work their violence
on those nearby.
Those sort of people we could do without; but if they did not have access to
guns, I believe they'd find knives, clubs, bricks, and bottles to do their
dirty business. And without guns for self-defense, the physically weak
would always be at the mercy of the strong. That does not sound
particularly civilized to me.
I won't argue about the murder rate in Washington DC, don't know the
details, but I do know it's high. For those who haven't spent time there,
Washington away from the monuments and government sector is a wasteland of
poverty and lawlessness. A national shame. And, incidentally, it has some
of the most draconian gun laws in America, fat lot of good they do. Outside
the inner cities of America (and incidentally where most of the gun-owning
citizens live), all violent crime rates are much lower, and everywhere in
America in the last two decades they are declining.
Crime and culture are enormous topics; my point is that it is overly
simplistic to assume that access to guns is the only, or the primary reason
for America's crime rates being what they are. If that were the case, why
are the rates falling while the number of guns in private hands continues to
grow? While state after state passes legislation for the issuance of
concealed carry permits to law-abiding citizens? And why, if access to
guns causes crime, are the notoriously well-armed Swiss so peaceful toward
one another?
Gotta stop somewhere... for now.
路路路
----- Original Message -----
From: Gavinwj <gavinwj@compuserve.com>
To: <mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2001 5:55 PM
Subject: Re: [mepbmlist]Lighthouse story
G. W. Tallen wrote:
> The civilian U.S. deaths you refer to are at the hands of criminals not
> citizens, mostly repeat offenders that our broken criminal justice
system
> cannot manage to keep confined -- or reform -- or deter.
I thought most gun deaths in the US were the result of family members or
friends having access to the guns and then using them. Can we have some
FBI
figures, please?
> Perhaps someone would speak to the rising tide of criminal gun violence
in
> Britain and Australia, since the forces of 'civilization' there finally
> succeeded in disarming the populace and making them easy prey for the
> predators. A telling statistical comparison for a long time has been
that
> home invasion (criminals breaking into occupied homes and doing violence
on
> the occupants) is far more common in the former Empire than in the
U.S.A.,
> where there's about a 50/50 chance that the target household is armed
and
> the residents will provide an unpleasant welcome. I understand that all
> categories of violent crime are on the upswing now in the UK and
Australia
> even as private gun ownership disappears; while violent crime has been
> diminishing in America while more and more citizens receive permits to
carry
> concealed weapons. Coincidence? Sure.
More people were killed in Washington DC in one month than in the whole of
the UK in one year. Then, of course, there's the problem of Switzerland,
where every male between the age of 18 and 55 has a weapon at home; yet
the
violent crime rate is sooooo low.
And you wonder why I thought you were a Republican. I erred in placing you
too far to the left...
Gavin
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