Technotranscendence wrote:
> At 03:42 PM 7/4/98 EDT, Andrew <VirgilT7@aol.com> wrote:
> ><< Don't shut up about it! I believe I read in either Benson's _The
> >Enterprise of
> > Law_ or Friedman's _The Machinery of Freedom_ that Dodge City's worse
> > year had only five murders. That's hardly material for one episode of "Gun
> > Smoke" -- much less a year in highly gun controlled New York City.:)
> > >>
> >
> >That's five murders for, what, a population of less than 2000? I don't think
> >that NYC has five murders per every hundred thousand.
>
> True enough, though to be fair, we'd also have to look at guns possessed
> per unit of population too. Also, the point is that Dodge City just was not as
> violent during the late 1800s as people tend to think it was. Until we have
> reliable stats on it, we should not use it as an epitaph to the Second
> Amendment.
>
> A question: would you rather live in a society which is more violent but freer
> (in terms of choices you can make about living your life) or one which is less
> violent but also less free (in terms of ditto)? I tend to think the freer a
> society is, in general, the less violent it will be -- if one factors in
> government violence too. (How many people were gunned down by cops in the US
> this year, under questionable circumstances? Howw many people were jailed,
> etc. under ditto?)
Police are more likely to kill innocent civilians in a shoot out than they are to kill the criminals... hmmm
Yes, if you look at the US on a state by state basis, you will find that states which have more freedom overall will tend to have lower crime rates. That is even with states which are next to each other. For example, crime in Massachusetts is very high, yet its next door neighbor, New Hampshire, which is less than 30 minutes from downtown Boston, has a far far lower rate of crime and a much freer system of gun laws, (we go by the concealed carry standard for everyone except felons, of course), that is in line with small european nations. Another state bordering Massachusetts, Vermont, has an even lower crime rate and has possibly the most free gun laws in the nation (you need no permit at all). I have recently been seeing some really stupid gun laws being proposed in our state legislature, like banning guns from all government buildings, from all public buildings, etc. I expect that passage of such laws will lead to higher crime rates...
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