On Thu, Aug 28, 1997 at 08:37:46AM -0700, Jonathan Wienke wrote:
And nor the innconent bystanders. The 'you pissed me off - bang bang you're dead' mentality was the reason for one of the largest genocides in human history.
Excuse me, but if you are referring to the Old West, you are seriously misinformed.
I believe he was referring to native americans.
While there certainly was violent crime, the murder rate (excluding self-defense, deaths from wars, etc.) was actually lower than it is today. I came across a doctoral thesis written several years ago that did a statistical analysis of population data and newspaper obituaries in cities like Tombstone from around 1850-1890. The conclusion of the paper was that while the drinking/gambling/red light districts were certainly violent places, in general, there was less crime than there is today. The life of criminals is hard when everyone is armed, and when the justice system actually executes convicted murderers in a timely fashion. (Capital punishment is the only treatment for criminals that has a 0% recidivism rate.)
1. There are lots of doctoral theses that are seriously flawed. Off the top, you mention that "self-defense" was excluded. That begs the question -- you now have to define self-defense. 2. Of course the "old west", as usually portrayed, is largely a myth. 3. Raw crime rates are not that useful -- go to Iran or Iraq. 4. The fact remains that settlers established governments and laws, and did *not* leave enforcement to the individual.
Of course, the primary flaw in your logic is that you assume anyone who wants to own a gun is deranged or unbalanced somehow, and that gun ownership causes crime.
Oh piffle. No such assumption was stated. You are erecting a strawman so you can stand on a soapbox and shoot it full of holes. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html