[PLUG-TALK] More Guns

[AthlonRob]

On Wed, 2004-06-30 at 14:12 -0400, Brian Beattie wrote:

> Yeah, but Ninjas are a lot cooler.  In any case by your original logic,
> the "Wild West" should have been crime free.  In fact, dispite the
> "draconian" and some claim unconstitutional guns laws in this nation,
> crime has been going down for decades.  By your logic it should be going
> up.

It is quite true a team of ninjas would be a lot cooler, especially if
they have swords and things.  :-)

I never made the statement that if everybody had guns, there would be no
crime; I'm not quite that crazy.  I do think the Libertarian's point of
view on gun control has some validity, though... if everybody *did* have
guns crime would probably decrease.  It has long been believed for crime
control to work, punishment must be guaranteed, proportional to the harm
done, and happen shortly after the crime.  In today's system, we're zero
for three.  If everybody were armed and willing to shoot at people
obviously doing wrong, we'd be at two or three for three.

It's also worth noting, I think, that in some cases gun laws have been
relaxed over the last few decades; it wasn't, for instance, legal to
carry a firearm concealed on your person in Oregon, I think, before
1980-something.  Many states have passed so-called right-to-carry laws
in the last twenty or thirty years.

In urban cities where gun control has gone to the extreme (Washington,
DC the best/worst example) and guns are all-but outlawed, I think it is
worth noting violent crime hasn't gone down at all.  When last I heard,
the murder rate is up a significant percentage over what it was a year
before the gun control laws were set in place.

As the saying goes... outlaw the guns and only the outlaws will have
guns.

-- 
Rob                                |  If not safe,
   Jabber: athlonrob at axpr.net   |    one can never be free.