Things like this make me sad...
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kgaddy wrote: Personally I would like to see all law abiding citizens (the people I do not worry about) have guns. I think the gangsters would think twice about using theirs. Kinda leveling the playing field. I seriously doubt that handing out weapons to everybody will make life a easier. :~ Basically we (europe) would end up being like you (us): full of fear and not trusting the person walking next to us. When was the last time you had a relaxed nice walk through a park in the middle of the night with your girlfriend? When was the last time you were drunk fell asleep on a bus riding the complete city without any worries? I could go and sleep on almost any parkbench of this multimillion city I live in (berlin) and I'm pretty sure, none of the armed gangsters would kill me. Maybe a bum would come over and claim his bed, but bums don't have guns either. How many of those involved into roadrage are real gangsters anyway? /matthias
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[Douglas Adams]Guns aren't the problem. Even had he not had a gun, the guy who perpetrated that incident would have attacked his victim with anything he could find (a lug wrench would have been just as fatal). As another post above points out, overcrowding is more likely to play a role, as is the constant brain washing we get from a media that focuses on every incident of violence, often making it seem as if these were commonplace rather than rare. See tomaz' earlier post comparing the crime statistics per capita between the US and Sweden. You might be surprised to see the numbers, which suggest that Sweden is no safer that the US, in spite of the absence of guns in the general population. And NYC is hardly a representative place for developing an opinion about the behavior of people in entire US, it has always been a rather hostile place for visitors (even from other parts of the US), in my opinion. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
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kgaddy wrote: Personally I would like to see all law abiding citizens (the people I do not worry about) have guns. I think the gangsters would think twice about using theirs. Kinda leveling the playing field. I seriously doubt that handing out weapons to everybody will make life a easier. :~ Basically we (europe) would end up being like you (us): full of fear and not trusting the person walking next to us. When was the last time you had a relaxed nice walk through a park in the middle of the night with your girlfriend? When was the last time you were drunk fell asleep on a bus riding the complete city without any worries? I could go and sleep on almost any parkbench of this multimillion city I live in (berlin) and I'm pretty sure, none of the armed gangsters would kill me. Maybe a bum would come over and claim his bed, but bums don't have guns either. How many of those involved into roadrage are real gangsters anyway? /matthias
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
[Douglas Adams]matthias s. wrote: asically we (europe) would end up being like you (us): full of fear and not trusting the person walking next to us. You confuse us with the French, no fear here matthias s. wrote: When was the last time you had a relaxed nice walk through a park in the middle of the night with your girlfriend? 2 weekends ago, replace girfriend with wife. matthias s. wrote: When was the last time you were drunk fell asleep on a bus riding the complete city without any worries? When I was a kid at 20. I grew up since then. matthias s. wrote: could go and sleep on almost any parkbench of this multimillion city I live in (berlin) and I'm pretty sure, none of the armed gangsters would kill me. Maybe a bum would come over and claim his bed, but bums don't have guns either. Why not go home to sleep? Is this common in Germany?
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The point being. If gangster know that the citizens are unarmed, they see it as an opportunity. If the citizens were armed the gangsters would think the risk is too great.
Some evidence to support your view: If gun-owning is so dangerous and such a cause of social ills, then surely the most dangerous place in America - if not the entire planet - must be Kennesaw, Georgia [a suburb of Atlanta], where since 1982 a law has required every household to have a firearm and ammunition. (Conscientious objectors are excluded.) There has not been a single reported crime of domestic violence in Kennesaw since the law was passed. There have been no injuries to children involving guns since the law was passed. Furthermore, violence has actually dropped since 1982. Burglaries per thousand inhabitants fell from 11 to less than 3. There hasn't been a single murder since 1986. All this despite the fact that the population in Kennesaw doubled in that time. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
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Some evidence to support your view: If gun-owning is so dangerous and such a cause of social ills, then surely the most dangerous place in America - if not the entire planet - must be Kennesaw, Georgia [a suburb of Atlanta], where since 1982 a law has required every household to have a firearm and ammunition. (Conscientious objectors are excluded.) There has not been a single reported crime of domestic violence in Kennesaw since the law was passed. There have been no injuries to children involving guns since the law was passed. Furthermore, violence has actually dropped since 1982. Burglaries per thousand inhabitants fell from 11 to less than 3. There hasn't been a single murder since 1986. All this despite the fact that the population in Kennesaw doubled in that time. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
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Some evidence to support your view: If gun-owning is so dangerous and such a cause of social ills, then surely the most dangerous place in America - if not the entire planet - must be Kennesaw, Georgia [a suburb of Atlanta], where since 1982 a law has required every household to have a firearm and ammunition. (Conscientious objectors are excluded.) There has not been a single reported crime of domestic violence in Kennesaw since the law was passed. There have been no injuries to children involving guns since the law was passed. Furthermore, violence has actually dropped since 1982. Burglaries per thousand inhabitants fell from 11 to less than 3. There hasn't been a single murder since 1986. All this despite the fact that the population in Kennesaw doubled in that time. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
Link? Never forget: "Stay kul and happy" (I.A.)
David's thoughts / dnhsoftware.org / MyHTMLTidy -
Link? Never forget: "Stay kul and happy" (I.A.)
David's thoughts / dnhsoftware.org / MyHTMLTidy -
Some evidence to support your view: If gun-owning is so dangerous and such a cause of social ills, then surely the most dangerous place in America - if not the entire planet - must be Kennesaw, Georgia [a suburb of Atlanta], where since 1982 a law has required every household to have a firearm and ammunition. (Conscientious objectors are excluded.) There has not been a single reported crime of domestic violence in Kennesaw since the law was passed. There have been no injuries to children involving guns since the law was passed. Furthermore, violence has actually dropped since 1982. Burglaries per thousand inhabitants fell from 11 to less than 3. There hasn't been a single murder since 1986. All this despite the fact that the population in Kennesaw doubled in that time. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
I wouldn't exactly talk about evidence here: http://timlambert.org/category/guns/kennesaw/[^] And I haven't seen a comparison between Kennesaw and a comparable city without guns. "God doesn't play dice" - Albert Einstein "God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dices where they cannot be seen" - Niels Bohr
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I wouldn't exactly talk about evidence here: http://timlambert.org/category/guns/kennesaw/[^] And I haven't seen a comparison between Kennesaw and a comparable city without guns. "God doesn't play dice" - Albert Einstein "God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dices where they cannot be seen" - Niels Bohr
Removing the spin from Tim Lambert Tim Lambert, unsurprisingly, says that the Kennesaw ordinance makes no difference. But I don't understand why this should be true: There was also a large increase in the population of Kennesaw, which meant that by 1998, although tthe number of burglaries had not changed, the burglary rate per 100,000 population had decreased greatly. It is hard to attribute this to the ordinance since the large increase meant that the people living in Kennesaw in 1998 were almost completely different from those living there in 1981.http://instapundit.com/archives/012684.php
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Put too many rats in a box and they will start to kill one another. I think the root cause of incidents like this, and a lot of other anti-social behavior, is that people are too crowded. There are just too many people in too small an area. The traffic bottlenecks, lines at the supermarket, etc, that are indicators of this are the little things that cause tension to build until it explodes in an irrational manner. I observed a weird phenomenon in California in the latter years of my stay there. People coming to a stop light in their cars would stop 2, 3 or more car lengths from the car in front of them. Absolutely no logical reason for it, and by doing so they would make traffic congestion much worse; cars behind them that wanted to get in to a turn lane would have to wait for the next cycle of the traffic lights, when, if the clowns had pulled to within a reasonable distance of the car in front, it should have been possible for traffic to move more smoothly. I think what drove this behavior was the unconscious desire of people to get some space for themselves, where they weren't crowded bumper to bumper by strangers. Since moving to Wyoming I haven't seen people do this; nor have I heard of any road rage incidents. People have elbow room here, and it's reflected in a reduction of anti-social behavior of this sort.
LunaticFringe wrote: People coming to a stop light in their cars would stop 2, 3 or more car lengths from the car in front of them. It's to leave space for an emergency getaway, in case of carjackers. If you're packed in like sardines, you're as good as dead. If you leave enough space to exit, either onto the sidewalk, the median or even into oncoming traffic, you can drive away from anything unpleasant trying to get into your car...
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No problem, I just thought you copied it from some page and forgot the link :) Never forget: "Stay kul and happy" (I.A.)
David's thoughts / dnhsoftware.org / MyHTMLTidy -
LunaticFringe wrote: People coming to a stop light in their cars would stop 2, 3 or more car lengths from the car in front of them. It's to leave space for an emergency getaway, in case of carjackers. If you're packed in like sardines, you're as good as dead. If you leave enough space to exit, either onto the sidewalk, the median or even into oncoming traffic, you can drive away from anything unpleasant trying to get into your car...
I don't buy that explanation; or are you speaking from personal experience? I would see people do this when in the middle lane(s) of multiple lane roads, where there would be no way to go anywhere. And if that's really what's driving this behavior, that's just freaking pathetic. If they're that afraid, they should probably stay home behind locked doors and barred windows. Personally, whenever I found myself behind someone pulling this stunt, I'd creep up as close as possible to their back bumper. After a moment or two they'd realize I was invading their little 'safe zone', and pull ahead a few feet. I'd then move right up on them once more, and continue this little game until they were within a reasonable distance of the car in front of them.
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I wouldn't exactly talk about evidence here: http://timlambert.org/category/guns/kennesaw/[^] And I haven't seen a comparison between Kennesaw and a comparable city without guns. "God doesn't play dice" - Albert Einstein "God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dices where they cannot be seen" - Niels Bohr
Lets see, there was a statistically insignifficant increase in the total number of burglaries while the population grew by 250% - (i.e the number of burglaries per capital decreased by 250%). During the same period, the nationwide rate for burglaries decreased from 7.1/1000 to 5.2/1000 (the same FBI statistics you cited earlier)- a much smaller decrease. And if you examine the FBI statistics a bit, it seems reasonably clear that the rate per 1000 increases as the population density increases (larger communities have a higher per-capita rate, as well as raw rate), quite the opposite of what happened in Kennesaw. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
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matthias s. wrote: asically we (europe) would end up being like you (us): full of fear and not trusting the person walking next to us. You confuse us with the French, no fear here matthias s. wrote: When was the last time you had a relaxed nice walk through a park in the middle of the night with your girlfriend? 2 weekends ago, replace girfriend with wife. matthias s. wrote: When was the last time you were drunk fell asleep on a bus riding the complete city without any worries? When I was a kid at 20. I grew up since then. matthias s. wrote: could go and sleep on almost any parkbench of this multimillion city I live in (berlin) and I'm pretty sure, none of the armed gangsters would kill me. Maybe a bum would come over and claim his bed, but bums don't have guns either. Why not go home to sleep? Is this common in Germany?
kgaddy wrote: matthias s. wrote: asically we (europe) would end up being like you (us): full of fear and not trusting the person walking next to us. You confuse us with the French, no fear here I just love those generalisations. On both sides. :P Never forget: "Stay kul and happy" (I.A.)
David's thoughts / dnhsoftware.org / MyHTMLTidy -
Lets see, there was a statistically insignifficant increase in the total number of burglaries while the population grew by 250% - (i.e the number of burglaries per capital decreased by 250%). During the same period, the nationwide rate for burglaries decreased from 7.1/1000 to 5.2/1000 (the same FBI statistics you cited earlier)- a much smaller decrease. And if you examine the FBI statistics a bit, it seems reasonably clear that the rate per 1000 increases as the population density increases (larger communities have a higher per-capita rate, as well as raw rate), quite the opposite of what happened in Kennesaw. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
Sure, but those statistics doesn't actually say anything about guns being a Good Thing. The difference between crime rates in this city and the rest of the US could be caused by other factors like eg. the wealth of the citizens compared to how far the city is placed from not so fortunate elements. The fluctuations in the crime charts makes it obvious that the sudden fall in crime isn't unheard of in the area, and it could be pure coincidence that it happened on that point. "God doesn't play dice" - Albert Einstein "God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dices where they cannot be seen" - Niels Bohr
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Sure, but those statistics doesn't actually say anything about guns being a Good Thing. The difference between crime rates in this city and the rest of the US could be caused by other factors like eg. the wealth of the citizens compared to how far the city is placed from not so fortunate elements. The fluctuations in the crime charts makes it obvious that the sudden fall in crime isn't unheard of in the area, and it could be pure coincidence that it happened on that point. "God doesn't play dice" - Albert Einstein "God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dices where they cannot be seen" - Niels Bohr
jan larsen wrote: The fluctuations in the crime charts makes it obvious that the sudden fall in crime isn't unheard of in the area, and it could be pure coincidence that it happened on that point. Since it is an anomally among it's neigboring communities (check tha statisitics for Atlanta, Marietta, Dunwoody, and others, it would seem there is something unique about Kenessaw, that is not shared by its close neighbors. Similar statistics for a community (Morgan Hill, Mi.) that prohibited gun ownership in the same time frame show no statistically significant change in the crime rate. jan larsen wrote: those statistics doesn't actually say anything about guns being a Good Thing. Nor do they say anything about guns being a 'Bad Thing'. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
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Only a couple of notes on the topic: It sometimes makes me really happy to know that I live in a country, where not everybody is running around with a gun. Seriously, I don't understand why its so easy to get in gun in the us (and many other countries). Here (germany) its close to impossible (unless you start hanging out with the gangsters) to get hold of anything more dangerous then a hairdryer or a butterknife (right, you can have gun-replicas, but sticking feathers up your butt doesn't make you a chicken). I believe that one of the reasons why people turning into monsters especially in the states, is, that fear is an omnipresent element of your day-to-day life. I've been living in NYC for a couple of years and I have never seen more fearful people then the americans. But the only thing to fear is fear itself. No offense here, just my modest opinion [plus I hardly had any sleep last night]... /matthias
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
[Douglas Adams]Wow! There a still Americans living in NYC? Amazing! "Capitalism is the source of all true freedom."
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LunaticFringe wrote: Why don't you ask that of the family of the kid who had an axe placed in his skull last week in England? Or is it your assertion that these things only happen in the US? No, I didn't say we don't have any crime here. But there is an awful lot more in the US. Various statistics have the US as the top runners for crime in the world, except the countries where war is raging. Excample.[^] Excerpt:
Looking at the above statistics, one would think that Europe is soft on crime, while the U.S. approach to law and order is based on no-nonsense deterrence. In reality, Europe is relatively crime-free, and the U.S. has the worst crime rate in the world:
Murders committed with handguns annually:
United States 8,915
Switzerland 53
Sweden 19
Canada 8
United Kingdom 7Murder rate (per 100,000 people):
United States 8.40
Canada 5.45
Denmark 5.17
Germany 4.20
Norway 1.99
United Kingdom 1.97
Sweden 1.73
Japan 1.20
Finland 0.70/matthias
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
[Douglas Adams]I don't know where you got those numbers, but they appear to be incorrect for the US. according to the FBI's crime statistics[^] for 2003 (latest complete available) the US murder+non-negligent manslaugter rate per 100,000 was 5.7 (not 8.4) not since 1994 has the murder rate approached 8.4 - it has been on a steady decline (as has violent crime in general) for the past decade (nearly a 37% decrease in the murder rate since 1994). Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke