Subject:
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Re: Sticking my gun where it doesn't belong...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 10 Aug 2003 05:44:10 GMT
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Viewed:
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370 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Scott Arthur wrote:
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Ah. But I don’t live in the USA; I live in Scotland (think Whisky, Haggis,
Great Scenery & Rain). Where I live only 1 or 2 home-owners are killed by
burglars each year. In 2000 there were a total of 64 (sixy-four) handgun
offences in Scotland.
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Okay... Let me toss out a few numbers to put this a bit more into perspective:
Scotland Population (ca. 1991): 5,102,400
Population Density: 169/sq. mi.
US Population (ca. 2000): 281,421,906 (55x Scotland)
Population Density: 80/sq. mi. (0.47x Scotland)
New York City Population (ca. 2000): 9,314,235 (1.8x Scotland)
Population Density: 8,159/sq. mi. (48x Scotland)
Chicago Population (ca. 2000): 8,272,768 (1.6x Scotland)
Population Density: 1,634/sq. mi. (10x Scotland)
Los Angeles Population (ca. 2000): 9,519,338 (1.9x Scotland)
Population Density: 2,344/sq. mi. (14x Scotland)
As you can see, that’s three cities right there that each have almost twice
the population of the whole of Scotland, and range from 10x to 48x the
population density. I couldn’t find any pages that show good stats on violent
crimes in all of those areas, but it’s a generally accepted fact that the more
densely populated an area is, the higher the per capita rate of violent crime
will be. Taking firearms out of the equation isn’t going to stop that. It’s
not the weapons that you should be looking at. It’s the reasons for why the
crimes were committed in the first place. When people don’t have enough
personal space, they’re going to get irritated, and eventually some of them are
going to get violent (and with 80% of the US population living in metropolitan
areas, that’s a lot of cranky people). If they don’t have guns, they’ll use
knives. If they don’t have knives, they’ll use blunt objects. If they don’t
have blunt objects, noone will be able to play baseball anymore and I can pretty
much guarantee that won’t fix anything.
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If handgun ownership were deregulated here, I expect both numbers would rise.
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In the United States there are laws to prevent convicted felons from obtaining
firearms, but there’s enough of a demand for black market sources that it
doesn’t prevent it from happening. The most hardened criminals would likely not
be affected by laws prohibiting ownership of handguns or even firearms in
general. Yes, crimes committed with a firearm would probably go down quite a
bit, but if potential burglers knew they had little to fear in the way of
gun-toting homeowners, I suspect B&E crimes would go up. I also suspect that
total murder rates wouldn’t change drastically, as various forms of melee
weapons would still be legal.
Anyways, last I heard, handguns were completely banned in the UK in 1998, so the
fact that you had a whopping 64 offenses involving “non-existent” handguns is
actually pretty bad. In fact, the BBC News
reported two years ago that crimes
involving handguns rose 40% in the two years following the ban. Sounds about
as successful as our little stint with Prohibition. People don’t usually like
being told that they’re no longer allowed to do something that they’ve been
doing for all their lives. It’s a different matter entirely if it’s something
they’ve never considered doing before, but if they’ve grown accustomed to it...
One other thing that you have to consider is that in the US, if the 2nd
Amendment is repealed, the entire Bill of Rights will no longer be seen as
inviolable, and there is a great concern that the 1st Amendment will be next,
and then the domino effect will set in.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Sticking my gun where it doesn't belong...
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| (...) Does that really surprise you? I expect every hamlet, village, town and city on the planet has a greater population density than the whole of Scotland - think about it. Heck, my office has a population density of 200,000 / sq. mi... and there (...) (21 years ago, 11-Aug-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Sticking my gun where it doesn't belong...
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| (...) Ah. But I don't live in the USA; I live in Scotland (think Whisky, Haggis, Great Scenery & Rain). Where I live only 1 or 2 home-owners are killed by burglars each year. In 2000 there were a total of 64 (sixy-four) handgun offences in Scotland. (...) (21 years ago, 28-Jul-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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