Lindens Please Help The Aussies

You do realize that cops shoot more wrong people every year than people who are defending themselves against aggression?

Where is your data showing that more people being armed will lead to the OK Corral? In the US, the opposite effect has been documented.

Edit: And the Wild West was safer than most American cities today. Violence against women was especially rare.

McElroy is an interesting thinker, and she certainly represents intelligently one strain of left-wing/feminist anarchism. I'm not quite sure, however, how I feel about a statement like this:



Well, actually, I am being coy. I DO know how I feel about it: if every individual is going to be morally free to kill the politicians whom they "think" may end up being the "next Hitler," the KIND of anarchy we are going to end up with is going to be a return to a Hobbist state of nature: "nasty, brutish, and short." And it's a bit unclear how she reconciles THIS statement, with her comments on the nonviolent approach of "individualist libertarians" in this (much much better) essay:

http://www.wendymcelroy.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.158

Are you against anarchy or chaos? The two are not the same thing. Most people live their daily lives under anarchy. They make choices for themselves in their best interests. They don't harm others. And they don't need someone sitting in a seat of power to do this.

Well, that's a stat that has no bearing in Canada, as the incidence of people defending themselves against aggression with countervailing violent force is almost nonexistent. The police certainly DO shoot people wrongly, and that, in my view, is a separate issue, because they tend to be much more apt to do so when they are faced with someone who is nonwhite. The whole issue of police shootings is a very fraught debate up here.

For what it's worth, I'd be entirely happy with taking sidearms away from most of our cops.


The OK Corral (spelled correctly this time ) effect is of course relative. It may well be (I am not familiar with all of the stats) that in the US this is true. But the US has a different kind of gun culture to begin with: arming our citizens in Canada would be introducing guns into a society that is relatively free of them in the first place.

Again, I guess I'd point to overall comparative stats on violent crime and gun crime between places likes Canada and the UK, that have relatively strict gun control, and the US, which doesn't. We have a much lower incidence here, per capita, and such gun crime as there is is usually gang-related. Very few civilians who are not involved in gangs get killed by guns here, unless (as in the case of Jane Creba four years ago in Toronto) they are innocent by-standers of a gang gun battle.


I have no doubt that shootings of women were rare. But other forms of violence against women? I very very much doubt it.

Well, I am for a culture that maintains a balance, allowing its citizens as much liberty as is possible in the context of also maintaining public safety and the common good. I am against a culture that allows the kind of "liberty" that enables the strong or privileged to prey upon the weak and disadvantaged.

So you disarm the weak and disadvantaged and empower government? Government that is run by the strong and the privileged.
In the last year, the US government passed new "product safety" laws to "protects teh childrenz". The big toy companies supported it with full force. Because they could afford to comply with the law where there smaller competitors were forced out of business.

Do you disagree with Franklin's statement that "those who trade liberty for security will soon have neither."?

Actually, the nutjobs and crooks probably do not have a concealed carry permit because they have to go thru a more thorough background check for that and they usually do not want to do that.

If a campus allows concealed carry and a weapon is concealed, it is either a nutcase, a criminal or someone that is sane and has decent training in firearms. If a campus does not allow concealed carry, then the nutcases and criminals are the only ones with the weapons. Additionally, the vast majority of all campuses here do not have "armed" campus police/security and the nutcase will probably manage to kill quite a few before true police can arrive. At least, if I have a concealed carry and and the nutcase comes to my area, I have more of a chance.

I don't know why there is all this discussion about gun laws. It's common knowledge that generally not allowing people to have guns produces a far safer environment than allowing guns. The problem that the U.S. has is that it comes from a background/history of guns, whereas the UK, for instance, comes from a background/history of generally no guns.

When you break the crime stats down by race or ethnicity, groups in the US usually have lower rates of violence than the country their ancestors came from. But this is a dirty little secret.
Want to end the gang problems? End restrictions on drugs and quit inviting the world. The MS-13 gang, imported to the US from Central America, uses the machete as it signature weapon, not a firearm.

Rape was a fairly rare crime. It was said you could put a young woman on a stage in St. Louis and she could arrive unmolested in San Francisco with no problems. Would you ride a bus across country now days?

Which explains the UK's skyrocketing crime rates? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html

The US has a violent crime rate of 466 per 100,000 people. Even lower than Canada's.

Fixed it for ya.

Your discussion isn't about violent crime, is it? I thought it was about guns used in crime (offensive and defensive).

Well, if they are coming from Thailand, or Uganda, or the Philippines, or even Bulgaria, maybe. But these countries hardly constitute a valid comparison with the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, and so forth.


Well, I am actually all for the legalization of pot, for precisely that reason, among others. Legalizing gambling, however, has not exactly kept the mob out of that business, has it?


Well, yes, actually. I travel a LOT, and for a fair distance, on the bus and the train, as my school is in a different city from my main residence in Toronto. That's not to say that I am not wary, of course. Where I live "random" rape is very uncommon, but I still won't get off a bus at night at a secluded bus stop, and I am very careful walking down dark deserted streets, or through parks at night. But that's just common sense.

Defense is a crime.....oh wait, you are in the UK. Here we have the right to self defense. In states that have adopted the Castle Doctrine, citizens have no requirement to retreat in the face of a criminal. If you are in my house uninvited, I am legally able to shoot you. Violent crime is offensive. Doesn't matter if they use a gun, a hammer or a knife.

Why have virtual sex in Second Life when you have real sheep?

Nope, that stat even applies for the "civilized" nations. But is the mob shooting up street corners to control gambling?

Well, we can quote stats at each other all day, I suppose. I'd like to know how they define "violent crime" for one thing, and what the source of their statistics is.

Here's a comparison of per capita murder rates, which shows Britain and Canada FAR below the US rate. The source is the Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998 - 2000 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention):

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita#source

You misread what I said, Chris. I said "used in crime". For instance, the Texas guy in his car, who shot a robber, used a gun in a crime - not as a crime. Perhaps I should have said, "in the course of a crime".

I think everyone everywhere has the right to self defense, Chris

But shooting the robber isn't a crime, so the Texas guy isn't using his weapon in the course of a crime. He is using his weapon to end a crime.

This article would suggest that self defense isn't quite as allowed in the UK as you say.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3613417/An-Englishmans-home-is-his-dungeon.html

The biggest problem is that blackmarket weapons are all to easy for the criminals to get, so outlawing guns would simply ensure that the criminals never have to worry about anyone else except law enforcement having one.

Do you have a comparison of firearm ownership rates between the United States and Canada? Does that rate correlate with the murder rate?

That doesn't say anything about guns though. We could eliminate all guns and possibly still have those same numbers.


ETA -- click on "Interesting Crime Facts" and you see:
"Per capita, South Africa has the most assaults, rapes, and murders with firearms."
and
"One in every three Australians is a victim of crime."

I couldn't help but click on a few more of those links.

Most Corrupt:
# 11 is UK
# 14 is Canada
United States is #17

Most Rapes per capita: Canada is #5 whereas the US is #9

Well, according to Wikipedia, citing a 2007 study, gun ownership rates in Canada are 31.5 per 100 citizens, while they are 90 per 100 in the USA. Rates are even lower in the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_ownership

This correlates fairly directly with a stat that I posted here, on another thread, a while ago, relating to homicides by guns:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir_percap-crime-murders-firearms-per-capita

USA: 0.0279271 per 1,000 people
Canada: 0.00502972 per 1,000 people
UK: 0.00102579 per 1,000 people

Self-defense is always allowed in the UK. I haven't read the article but what's not allowed is a level of violence in self-defense that is way over what is actually needed. I live here and you can take my word for it

The ending of the Texas crime comes under during the course of a crime. It's no good arguing about it, Chris - an environment in which carrying guns is generally not allowed, is a much safer environment than one where guns are generally allowed.