VirgilT7@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 7/7/98 10:38:35 AM Eastern Daylight Time, mark@unicorn.com
> writes:
>
> <<(and, of course, the reduction in murders in NYC has come from increasing
> the clearup rate and hence the risk to murderers, not by new restrictions
> on guns).>>
Actually, its partly because concealed weapons permits are easier to get than before (you used to have be either a mafia don or a politician's family member to get one) and partly because police and the prosecutors are classifying more deaths as self defense (as they are finally recognising an individual's right to defend themselves) so those deaths are not counted as murders.
> Actually, many police officers attribute, partially, the reduction in murders
> to more aggressive police work which has reduced the number of guns on the
> street. :) But they're just sticking to their ideology rather than facing
> reality, right?
No, police cheifs attribute the reduction to improved police work (of course, they need to take the credit), while the prime police cheif lobbying organizations are anti-gun, while the rank and file police officers and their representatives are pro-gun, and they will all tell you that the reduction is a result of more armed and active private citizens.
> << >My point here, since I really do not want to become entangled in a long,
> >detailed, gun-control debate, is that the facts simply are NOT clear,
>
> Of course that's only true if you prefer your anti-gun ideology to reality;
> amongst independent criminologists the facts are indeed very clear, as you
> would have discovered if you'd read the paper I pointed you to yesterday.>>
>
> The study by John Lott? I haven't read it. Given the sheer amount of
> criticism the book has come under, I certainly don't think that it's clear
> that the facts are "very clear." I will try to learn more about it though.
Criticism by who??? The most hilarious thing about his study was that prior to the study he was anti-gun, and was hired by Handgun Control, Inc., the #1 anti-gun group in the US to perform the study. When his conclusions contradicted what HCI wanted to see, and was convinced they would see, they fired Professor Lott, and Lott had to publish the book to recoup all of the money he spent on the study that HCI refused to pay when his conclusions contradicted their agenda. His study is by light years the most comprehensive study of FBI crime statistics in history, and by correlating stats with timelines of specific public policies (not just gun control liberalization laws) in specific jurisdictions where and when they were enacted; he was able to show a number of other things, like, for example, that the Death Penalty has little to no effect on crime rates.
> << Gun control is almost entirely irrelevant to crime rates; there are
> countries with strict laws and lots of gun crimes and countries with lax
> laws and almost none. Relaxing those laws does reduce the murder rate, just
> as increasing the number of cops, but that's still a small change compared
> to social factors which can make one area a hundred times as dangerous
> as another even though the less dangerous area has almost no gun laws
> and the more dangerous area bans them almost entirely (e.g. Vermont and
> DC).>>
>
> I think that it depends on the effectiveness of the gun control, much like it
> depends on the effectiveness of the increase in the number of cops.
If you have a population of people that is directly descended from a feudal population of serfs and peons, you will of course have a much more cattle-like acceptance of gun control, and gun control will be irrelevant, since a cattle-like population will have a much smaller percentage of deviant personalities than one that is made up of people who were kicked out of that cattle-like population.
> <<But like most anti-gunners, you think and feel, you don't bother to
> actually study the subject you're ranting about.>>
>
> You've come far closer to ranting here than I have. And you've deviated much
> further from the issue than I have, into statements the only possible purpose
> of which is to be inflammatory. So let's go easy on the self-righteous
> champion of the truth act.
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------ How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?