[geeks] [rescue] Guns - what are they good for? - was Re: TME and Apple II and other Drive emulator questions.

[Jonathan Patschke]

On Wed, 14 May 2014, Lionel Peterson wrote:

>> Plus, as someone who's lived in several countries with fewer than 300
>> million guns, I can tell you that, if anything, they are much more
>> "polite" than the USA. Not to mention safer.
>
> Interestingly, the District of Columbia has the highest gun homicide
> rate (circa 2010), roughly three times higher than the second highest
> state...

If gun ownership were directly responsible for violent crime rates, why
are crime rates falling as gun ownership rises?  If guns prevent homicide,
why are there fewer homicides in countries with harsher gun laws?

Simple: correlation is not causation.

There are many reasons why the US might have a higher homicide rate
compared to other countries: longer working hours in jobs that are not
physically strenuous but are mentally stressing, a mass media that deals
exclusively in fear, a populace who feel like their government does not
and never will have its interests at heart, a culture that places little
respect on working trades, greater consumer and post-college debt, slim
retirement prospects for most, difficult access to mental health care, a
climate of punishment instead of reform, etc.

Talking trash about guns and their owners is either an unoriginal way of
refusing to address the actual problems a society faces, or it is a
delusion that people will behave properly merely by force of law.

See also: all these laws prohibiting the trade of methamphetamine
precursors.  If meth is such a harmful thing and prohibition works, why
not outlaw meth, instead?

-- 
Jonathan Patschke | "Do the difficult things while they are easy and do
Elgin, TX         |  the great things while they are small."
USA               |                                           --Lao Tzu