🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <NEWTNews.27247.782625008.woolfson@woolfson.unicom.net>,
Eric Woolfson  <woolf@unicom.net> wrote:
>> >     Florida passes a concealed weapons law, crimes goes down.
>> >     Morton Grove bans guns altogther, crime goes down.
>> >     Texas makes no weapons law changes, crime goes down.
>> >
>> >     See a pattern there, do you?  

Morton Grove isn't a very representative example, and neither is
Kennesaw, Georgia, which has mandatory handgun ownership.

The stats you posted raise the same questions that looking at
gun ownership and gun control in Switzerland, Israel, England, Japan, etc.
do.  Could it be that is little correlation between guns and violence
because the root causes of violence are tied to other
factors like poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, mental illness, and our
culture's voracious appetite for violence as entertainment?

An important statistic that I used before bears re-stating.
Dr. Gary Kleck (and other researchers) have tried to determine how
often a firearm is used for self-defense each year in situations where
no shots are fired and no one is killed.  His low estimate based on
several studies is around 650,000 times a year - possibly up to 2.5 million.

Gun control is a dead-end approach to changing our culture's attitudes about   
violence.  Prohibition didn't stop us from drinking - and alcohol is still
a bigger killer every year than guns if you believe the AMA stats.
The War on Drugs has cost the US taxpayers an incredible amount, and it
hasn't made a dramatic impact in drug usage.  There are already 200 million
or more guns out there that aren't going away no matter what laws we pass.
The Canadians tried to ban tobacco and created a black market, now the US
is considering similar increased restrictions.  In all cases laws have
done little to change human behavior.  A more successful approach to stopping
violence ought to be modeled on the MADD program, which tried to change
public opinion about drinking and driving coupled with increased penalities
for DWI.  If we really want to save lives we should focus on changing the
cultural attitude that violence is "cool" - but also accept that self-defense
is a basic right and that firearms ownership is not a public health risk
if it is done by responsible law abiding citizens.  By the way even HCI
admits that the continued decrease in firearms accidents *is* due to the
efforts of volunteer instructors and the increased emphasis on training.

Karl
rehn@arlut.utexas.edu