From: bill@kean.ucs.mun.ca (Bill Garland)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,talk.politics.drugs,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: The basic problem with anti-gun nuts.
Date: 22 Dec 92 18:08:14 GMT
Organization: Memorial University. St.John's Nfld, Canada

In article <1h50plINN8mu@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>, bz269@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (James D. Del Vecchio) writes:
> 
> In a previous article, smpod@ariel.lerc.nasa.gov (Stefan) says:
> 
>>Newfoundland has one of the highest umemployment rates in Canada and the US.
>>I think it's greater than 20%.  It probably also has a low crime rate which
>>is another rebuttal that crime is caused by poverty.
> 
>    What studies have been done on the correlation between racial/ethnic 
> integration and crime?   It might seem that people would be more willing
> to perpetrate crimes on "outsiders" to their ethnic group than on people
> they identify with more.   Given this, a region or area with more of a mix
> might have more crime than otherwise.
> 
>    Any ideas?
> 
> Jim Del Vecchio

Well, yes. We don't commit crimes here. Only outsiders, known as
CFA's, which means "come from away"'s, commit the crimes.

S M I L E

Actually, "probably has a low crime rate" is likely true, but not
true enough. There are criminals everywhere. It's just that there
are not many people here, you see, even if nobody is working. We
have about 600,000 population, not as many as those who live in
odd-numbered apartments on even-numbered floors on the north sides
of east-west streets that begin with the letter F in New York, 
but there are still criminals. "The ten per cent ring," my father
used to call them.

You may have seen it on the news last night, but we had a mega-fire
here last night, which is still smoldering now as I type. It is fifty
years to the day since a major fire wiped out many servicemen and 
others in a fire that killed 99 people - on the SAME spot. It is 100
years since the Great Fire of 1892, that destroyed the entire place.
That wasn't the first time the city was wiped out entirely by fire.

Well, the reason I mention this is that last night, after evacuating
about 1000 people from the vicinity of the fire, for the first time
in living memory, there were reports of looting. This is highly 
unusual here, literally, as I said, unheard of. But it sort of 
kills the above "rebuttal" about poverty not causing crime, since this
is a very bad year economically, with unemployment in the outports
at 40-60 % and 15-20% here in the city. Not only that, but the fish
are gone and all sorts of businesses are bankrupt. There are a lot
of broke and hungry people around. We didn't have any armed robberies in
a typical year when I started noticing these things, about 25 years ago.
We had one last night, while the police were busy directing all
the traffic away from the fire. Second or third this week...

We watch the Detroit news, so we know how fortunate we are, but 
you still have to watch yourself...   if only we could get those
outsiders to go back home...    8^)
-- 
|-------------------------------------|--------------------------------|
| If we had an index file, we could   | In fact, except for protecting |
| look it up in the index file under  | individual rights, no valid    |
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|           -- Tegan in "Castrovalva" |      ... Dr. Frank Wallace     |
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| Bill Garland = bill@kean.ucs.mun.ca |Commercial : Send me your money.|
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