re my gun is like my american express car in article apr grace rt cs boeing com rwojcik atc boeing com richard wojcik writes in article 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 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 david veal univ of tenn div of cont education info services group pa utkvm utk edu i still remember the way you laughed the day your pushed me down the elevator shaft i m beginning to think you don t love me anymore weird al
