From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Mon Oct 27 1997 - 13:27:42 MST
I have metad (to meta?) this posting with [GUNS] to perm2it easy
filtering, I believe preserving ones own life/freedom to be an
appropriate extropian topic.
Wayne Hayes <wayne@cs.toronto.edu> writes:
>True, but the price is that petty crime has far more potential to
>develop into violent crime, and gangland-style crime has the
>potential to become more common. For example, being mugged at
>gunpoint is *completely* unheard of in Toronto, because the kind
>of people who'd like to mug can't get their hands on a gun.
Thats because HANDGUNS are rare, would you share Canadian muggings
at knifepoint statistics with us......
Here in Chicago two years ago there were 950+ murders, 140+ by
"kitchen knife", 130+ by "Baseball bat" and only one (a domestic)
by a so called assault weapon. Guess which one was banned.
>I'm under the impression that "mugging at gunpoint" style
>robberies are more common in large US cities than here.
It happens here where I live here in Chicago, which is shocking
(sarcasm alert) since handguns have been illegal in Chicago since
1983. "Only criminals and cops have handguns in Chicago."
>That's what I mean by "petty crime developing into violent crime".
>As for gangland crime: it becomes easier for young
>gangster-wanna-be's to fulfil their dreams of gangster-dom if guns
>are easily had. I know that in Toronto, a few schools are
>becoming more violent these days than any schools were when I was
>young, but it's mostly knife violence. I shudder to think how bad
>it could be if the kids could buy a gun at the local pawn shop.
>Heck, it could become as bad as some places in the US.
Once again by your own admission we are seeing an increase in
violent trends, but the lack of handguns means they are knife
attacks instead.
Gang shootings are down, that's because the shooter is often
identified, that information makes it back by word of mouth to
the rival gang, and the shooter and his family now become targets.
The crime is becoming rarer because the gangs are literally
running out of shooters. The gangs have attempted to reduce the
"transaction cost" by the increased anominity of the "Drive-By"
type shooting.
In areas where concealed carry has been reinstituted, the
murder,rape and armed assault crime rates drop dramatically. The
best known case of this was in Miami, where the criminals began
targeting easily identifiable tourists (unarmed) rather than risk
confronting an armed citizen.
The answer to crime is a combination of early detection and
prevention, (education) and swift and serious punishment when
commited, i.e. a twenty year sentence with no chance of parole for
commiting a crime with a handgun. (raise the transaction cost to
appropriate levels)
Brian
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