Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 SMI; site suneast.uucp Path: utzoo!linus!security!sunne!suneast!geoff From: geoff@suneast.uucp (Geoff Arnold) Newsgroups: net.followup Subject: Re: Firearms ownership (was Re: Air raid on Libya) Message-ID: <182@suneast.uucp> Date: Mon, 14-Jul-86 07:44:34 EDT Article-I.D.: suneast.182 Posted: Mon Jul 14 07:44:34 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 15-Jul-86 01:02:16 EDT References: <902@kontron.UUCP> Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc. - East Coast Division Lines: 48 >> If you've let the genie out of the bottle and can't get it >> back in, you have my sympathy. But don't expect us to make >> the same mistakes as you. >> -- >> Peter Kendell >> > >If firearms ownership were as widespread in Britain as it is in >the U.S., I suspect that your burglary, unarmed robbery, and rape rates >would be dramatically lower. Extremely unlikely. The majority of burglaries in England are of unoccupied dwellings - don't forget that a significantly higher percentage of women are in full time work. And the rape rate is so much lower, it's not statistically significant to try and compare and extrapolate with the U.S. > I suspect that your murder rate might be >slightly higher. How about manslaughters due to intrafamilial violence? How about accidental gunshot deaths? Both are at present VERY low compared with the U.S. > Armed robbery rate would be higher -- how much I >don't know. As in the U.S., a growing number proportion of robberies are drug related, to finance the perpetrators' habits. This group of criminals would probably acquire firearms at a much higher rate than the rest of the population, leading and accelerating the kind of patterns seen over here. >Overall, I think Britain would be better off -- but not >dramatically. But unless your population is too dumb to behave rationally, All populations include rational and irrational elements (including Usenet readers :-), and it's the irrational ones we have to worry about when we talk about free access to socially dangerous commodities such as drugs, guns, nuclear weapons...... >I see no way you would be worse off. > >Clayton E. Cramer Go on - TRY and think of some ways. Really - there IS a world out there which is NOT the kind of Dante's Inferno you seem to inhabit.... -- "disclaimo, disclaimas, disclaimat, disclaimamus, disclaimatis, disclamant" UUCP: {hplabs,ihnp4,nsc,pyramid,decwrl}!sun!suneast!hinode!geoff