From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Wed Sep 22 1999 - 22:26:58 MDT
m wrote:
>
> --- "J. R. Molloy" <jr@shasta.com> wrote:
> > From: Bryan Moss <bryan.moss@dial.pipex.com>
> > >I bet active hunters tend to live in areas that
> > have low incidences of
> > >criminal behaviour to begin with.
> >
> > Good bet. I'd also bet that areas with low
> > incidences of criminal behavior
> > have high incidences of active hunters to begin
> > with. First come the hunters
> > to new areas, then come the gun laws, then comes the
> > crime.
> >
>
> Considering what happenned in the Wild West and any
> number of remote places around the world (where there
> would be hunters) that doesn't stand up.
>
> After hunters, things tend to develop. Are none of the
> changes from hunting to an urban environment (where
> most of the crime is, at least in total) to be
> counted?
> It's just gun laws?
Considering that my state, New Hampshire, which was one of the original
13 colonies, has more deer, bear, and moose than before europeans
arrived, also has very permissive gun laws, and has a significan
percentage of the population that hunts actively, versus its immediate
neighbor, Massachusetts, which also has a decent, if not quite equal
amount of wilderness and wildlife. Mass has strict gun laws (to even own
a BB airgun you need an FID card) that inhibit or discourage hunting,
and most property is posted against hunting. Crime is at least ten times
higher in Massachusetts than in in New Hampshire, despite nearly equal
population densities. Vermont and Maine are much like NH or even more
so, while Mass is much like Conneticutt, Rhode Island, and New York
(upstate NY tends to be somewhere in between.)
You could say that crime is caused by urban compact zones, sort of the
old rat experiment writ large, but from what I've seen the crime comes
as a response to busybodies trying to make life miserable for as many
other people as possible with as many laws and taxes as possible. Cities
with the most laws and taxes have the most crime... duh....or else that
city has cops on every street corner... martial law.
Mike Lorrey
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