In article <1993Apr14.195912.16613@grace.rt.cs.boeing.com> rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik) writes:  >In article 734629856@misty, john@anasazi.com (John R. Moore) writes: >>papresco@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes: >> >>]I'm not.  I'm in Canada.  We have far fewer shootings like this.  We have >>]had, I believe, one mass murder in the last twenty years. >> >>]I'm not going to say we don't have our gun problems.  But we do have the >>]world's largest undefended boarder with one of the most gun-happy countries  >>]in the world.  I think Canada illustrates that gun control does have an  >>]effect.  In fact, it's suprising that there is any difference considering >>]how easy it is to smuggle a gun from the U.S. >> >>Yes, it's amazing, isn't it. In fact, it should tell you that gun control >>is NOT the reason your crime rate is low, since any idiot can smuggle guns >>into Canada from the US at any time. > >I think Paul was trying to make the point that "any idiot" doesn't.  There are >surely some idiots who do smuggle guns, but Paul seems to feel that the exis- >tence of stricter gun control laws has had a deterrent effect.           This seems a strange argument to make considering that Canada's violent crime rate in general is far lower than that of the U.S.  (Our non-gun crime rate is greater than their *entire* crime rate).  It would seem strange to suggest that it, to, were the result of gun control laws.         I think if we looked we'd find very specific (cultural and enforcement) reasons why the non-gun rate is low as well, and then that reasons could be applied to the with-gun rates as easily.  >Given that most >criminally used guns are either legally purchased or stolen from those who >purchase them legally, having more restrictions on legal possession does  >seem to have the effect of reducing gun-related crimes.           Aside from the fact that I find the idea of being punished because somebody might steal something from me and go and commit a crime with it a silly solution, it still doesn't address the question of Canada.  (Which is now, by the way, blaming their rising gun-crime rate on the U.S.  Strange that the border used to "magically" keep the guns out, but now isn't.)  >It certainly makes >sense that it would.  (Well, it makes sense to some of us, anyway.  ;-)         The other side of the coin, of course, is that far "illegal drugs" are purchases legally or stolen from people who purchase them legally.  I've still not been convinced that guns, a commodity which criminals have shown their perfectly willing to pay for from illegal sources (stolen either from police, military, or civilian) we wouldn't simply see South American sources from which drugs come start smuggling guns as well, since there's a thriving gun manufacturing industry down there.  >>If you would just look a little closer at the crime statistics, you would >>realize that: >>  -our non-gun crime rate is also very high, so guns per se are not the issue > >Directly contradicted by the NEJM study that compared crime in Seattle and >Vancouver, B.C.  The non-gun rates were roughly the same for both cities.  The >difference in violent crime rates was almost totally gun-related.            And as was not pointed out in the study, but in critiques of it, (two seperate articles by James Wright and David Kopel come to mind) it was pointed out that the difference was *also* almost entirely minority related.  That is, the gun crime rate skyrocketed for poor minorities (Blacks and Hispanics primarily) while when you compared the white majority they were virutally identical.          The problem with the NEJM study was they compared minority vs. non-minority percentages but failed to take into account the relative conditions of those minorities.  That there was an eqaul percentage of nomn-whites was about as far as they went.  They failed to take into account that the non-whites in either city were not living in the same conditions.          If the situation was entirely based on availability of guns, then we'd expect that the white rates, the two groups which are arguably fairly comparative in the two cities, would have a far higher rate in Seattle.  Yet the majority in Seattle is not only not significantly higher when the minorities are excluded, but slightly lower.  >>  -violent crime is highly concentrated in the inner city > >Surprise.  Pick the area with the highest incidence of poverty, drug use, disease, >etc.  Since rates are lower in suburbia, us middle class folks can ignore the >problem.          The point is, of course, that many of the U.S. "inner-city" problems are not mirrored in Canada.  As such  if there is a condition which is significantly different in Canada from the U.S., and violent crime is highly correlated to that area, suggesting that gun control is the source of Canada's low rate is highly questionable.  (As one Canadian pointed out on talk.politics.guns, Canada's major gun control in 1978 did not result in either a reduction or a slowing of an increase in violent crime rates, which have been rising steadily since.  Apparently they didn't even mirror the U.S.s very large drop of violent crime in the early eighties.  >>  -most violent crime occurs in areas with strict gun control already > >Post hoc ergo propter hoc.  Those areas implemented gun control because of >the high rates.           True only to a certain extent.  Take Washington D.C., where gun control was instituted while it had crime problems true, but that crime proceeded to explode afterwards.  Similarly for New York.         The question is not simply a point in time where crime was high or low.  Did the gun control significantly and positively impact violent crime.  Since it's gone up in those areas, often faster than it was going up before, you can't simply dismiss the high crime rate by saying gun control was caused by it.  Yes, gun control may be instituted to deal with high crime.  But if the crime is not positively impacted, you can't continually say that that crime rate was entirely a cause of that gun control, since much of that crime rate increased after gun control was implemented, just as happened in Canada.  >Similar or worse rates exist in cities with poor gun control.         As would be expected if violent crime was generally independent of gun control.  >And the jury is still out on the question of whether recent tough laws in  >Washington D.C. may have alleviated violence and suicide rates there.         Would this be the laws which made manufacturers liable for what others did with their guns, and suddenly the police found nobody would sell to them?