On Thu, 06 Apr 2000, Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 09:12 PM 6/04/00 -0400, Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
> >They don't mention that if the registered owner isn't
> >home and his wife gets attacked by a rapist/robber/murderer, she has no
> >hope of defending herself or the kids.
>
> Mike, you can't imagine how wildly weird this sort of thing sounds in Oz.
> How pathologically dangerous the society must have become to permit a
> rational man like yourself to regard such fears as natural and attitudes as
> righteous.
I am actually somewhat puzzled by this response. Do you not advocate a
culture with a strong belief in a right of self-defense? Considering, that
violent crime rates in most European countries exceed those of the United
States (with the narrow exception of homicide), it would seem that these
issues need to be taken into consideration the more seriously. Fact
is, I am statistically much safer where I live in the U.S. than most
places in Europe. (I don't know about Australia specifically, but I have
believe it is similar to Europe).
Consider a few things:
1) In many U.S. locales, "taking out the trash" is encouraged as long as
you operate within very strict guidelines. These incidents (a few
thousand a year) are included in U.S. homicide statistics even though no
crime has been commited.
2) According to the Sheriff where I live, every self-defense killing has
a measurable statistical impact on the violent crime rate in the county,
since the number of habitual violent criminals is very small with
respect to the total population. One self-defense shooting can reduce the
number of violent crimes substantially, since many of these
violent criminals are responsible for dozens of serious crimes on an
annual basis.
3) The vast majority of society in the U.S. enjoys an effective murder
rate at or below that of most of Europe, most notably in areas that
encourage "taking out the trash". Distribution tends to be very uneven,
with a few geographically small locales contributing to the vast majority
of the statistics.
I actually think that self-defense shootings have a bigger impact on
violent crime rates than most government crime programs. Having an
accurate and rapid means of selecting out the pathological elements of a
society appear to have a very beneficial effect where allowed. It is
difficult to ignore that the very locales in the U.S. where self-defense
is not encouraged are the same locales that contribute to most of the
violent crime statistics.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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