But there are studies from Yale and Harvard that indicate that an increase in gun ownership has an effect on reducing crime because criminals don't know who is armed.
Compare that to crimes that happen in places like Chicago and New York, where firearm ownership is all but prohibited: the number of homicides, assaults, hot burglaries and sexual assault are higher.
As for rape, I suppose you would have to ask a woman if her sanity and security are worth it. I would not want it to happen to any woman I know.
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BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Mon 14 Jan 2013, 20:45,
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Beware of any study that cites some statistics
and then uses the word "because".
Crime rates correlate more strongly to poverty than to anything else. Chicago and New York are big cities in which poor people have easy access to middle class neighbourhoods.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Mon 14 Jan 2013, 20:55,
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You're poisoning the well by implying that I'd want it to happen to anyone at all.
Of course I don't. It doesn't follow that I have to accept everything that might possibly reduce its rate. If women weren't allowed out without a chaperone, that'd doubtless reduce the rate, too; but that's not the proper response to the problem, and it'd be absurd to think it was. It's not obvious that arming people'd be the proper response either.
There's a lot of things that might be supportable to reduce violent crime of all sorts; but not everything is. It's a long way from being obvious that firearms are the way to go.
You're conflating, too, the number of reported crimes with the number of actual ones. LIke I said: a higher rate of reporting might actually indicate a better environment, inasmuch as that people are more willing to take the effort to go to the police in the first place.
The fact that a study is from Yale or Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge tells us nothing about its credibility. It a quick look at the news will show that homicide rates are much, much higher.
With what are we supposed to be comparing NYC and Chicago, by the way? It's hardly surprising that crime rates are higher in cities than elsewhere. It's hardly a mandate for guns.
And there's any number of studies showing that, if you really want to reduce crime, it's going to require all kinds of social intervention in terms of welfare, education, and so on. There's even a public health aspect: there's a very close fit between a drop in the use of leaded petrol and, about 20 years later, a drop in the rate of violent crime. Implication: exposure to lead in the developing brain makes it more likely that the owner of that brain will be violent in later life. And violent crime around the developed world has been falling since about the 70s.
The point is that there's all manner of ways in which you can explain patterns of crime and crime prevention without having to mention guns once. All of which makes your belief in the redemptive power of the pistol look, at best, ill-founded.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 14 Jan 2013, 21:05,
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I liked this
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20536201
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gingerfreak Why? Why not., Mon 14 Jan 2013, 21:14,
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Remind me to never engage you in an argument...
*Doffs cap*
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wheresthefish Partly filled with wrong, Mon 14 Jan 2013, 21:22,
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The ol'...
...jumping-out-of-a-bush-with-a-knife-and-a-raging-boner style rapes are in the vast minority, I should imagine. Therefor gun ownership would make very little difference to incidence of rape as perpetrators are more often than not known to the victim, even trusted by them. Certainly in the western world anyway.
(, Mon 14 Jan 2013, 22:36, Share, Reply)
Pro-tip about those statistics
The guns got banned in urban areas like New York and Chicago BECAUSE of the increasing murder rates. It's a response to the issue, not the cause. Perhaps you'd like to speculate how much lower or higher the crime rates would be without the added gun control - but it would only be speculation.
On the flip side, the locations with lower gun crimes and lax gun control tend to be more rural; with sparse populations, less poverty, better education etc. (confounding variables which greatly influence crime rates as well).
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maninahat Too many cocks spoil the brothel., Mon 14 Jan 2013, 23:52,
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